Wanted: A Less Pusillanimous Mayor
Wanted: A Less Pusillanimous Mayor
As the Nutter legacy tour takes off, recent events elsewhere tell us what nosotros should be looking for in this mayor'due south race
Wanted: A Less Pusillanimous Mayor
Equally the Nutter legacy bout takes off, recent events elsewhere tell us what we should be looking for in this mayor'due south race
Aug. 25, 2015
Recently, in the pages of Philadelphia magazine, writer Simon Van-Zuylen Wood asked a compelling question: "Michael Nutter is about to leave the city younger, safer, bigger, and smarter than he found information technology—and then why don't we like him?"
It's a question Nutter himself has grappled with—happily concluding, and touting, that he'southward been the best mayor since, well, e'er. This calendar week, the Mayor released a self-funded poll that plant Philadelphians were remarkably upbeat about his functioning. And in the pages of the Inquirer recently Nutter argued that, "in virtually every category, we are upwards where yous want to be going up and we are going down where want to be going downward," citing increases in population, employment and bail ratings and decreases in murder, crime and wage taxes.
Add together to that the cessation of the perp walk parade out of his predecessor'due south City Hall and it makes for a seemingly convincing case…so much so that it fabricated me recollect long and hard nigh my ain disappointment in Nutter. I'chiliad on tape as a one-time Nutter supporter who, like so many others, feels the mayor permit slip away opportunity after opportunity to remake the urban center.
In calorie-free of the record Nutter is highlighting, am I wrong to fee that, ultimately, we got a technocrat more inclined to kick pressing problems down the route, rather than a transformational figure willing to take on stubborn and systemic challenges?
Nutter makes the argument that old supporters similar me had outsized expectations in 2007. Perchance that's truthful. But I can't assistance feeling that Michael Nutter was an incrementalist when our situation called for more dire modify—which would accept required political skills he never possessed. It's an important word to accept now, because we're a little over 3 months (yikes) away from once again not asking the right questions of those seeking the same job.
When Michael Nutter became mayor, he inherited the highest big-city tax burden, poverty rate, and digital divide percentage in the nation—not to mention the most screwed upwardly schoolhouse system, too. When he leaves office,
he'll be leaving behind the highest big-city taxation brunt, poverty rate, and digital separate percentage in the nation—not to mention the most screwed upwards schoolhouse system, too. (And let's articulate up i convenient argument oft trotted out during the Nutter autopsy debate: the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression did not force Nutter to rethink his priorities and policies, as it occurred nine months into his administration, afterward he had already proposed an erstwhile-school, non-reformist budget that increased spending by three.2%).
Yes, Commissioner Ramsey was a helluva hire and Nutter'southward sustainability program is laudable and his government has been basically honest…but he didn't try to do the hard stuff, despite having the political capital to modify our city and our politics.
This dawned on me a couple of weeks ago. I'd read the Philly Mag piece and was wondering if I'd been too difficult on Nutter. But and so I watched Andrew Cuomo's eulogy of his father, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and—that aforementioned week—I watched Jerry Brownish'southward political jujitsu moves in California, and I realized that we don't have to look far for political leaders willing to have on seemingly intractable issues.
In his eulogy, Andrew Cuomo talked about the time he told his male parent he liked to expect at his audition while delivering a speech, the better to gauge reaction. "He said that was all unnecessary," Cuomo said. "He said, 'Who cares about what the audition wants to hear? It's not most what they want to hear, it's nigh what you lot need to say.' And that, my friends, is the essence of Mario Cuomo. He was not interested in pleasing the audition—not in a speech, not in life. He believed what he believed."
"When Michael Nutter became mayor, he inherited the highest big-city tax burden, poverty rate, and digital divide percentage in the nation—non to mention the most screwed up school system, too. When he leaves office, he'll be leaving behind the highest big-city tax burden, poverty rate, and digital split percentage in the nation—not to mention the most screwed upwardly school system, too."
Hearing this, I flashed dorsum on my time in grad school at NYU in the tardily eighties, during the senior Cuomo'south reign. Each year, public opinion polls would show that 70 per centum of the electorate favored reinstituting the death sentence. And every year Cuomo would go along a statewide campaign, arguing confronting bulk opinion.
I still remember the passionate example he made—and I wasn't fifty-fifty registered to vote in New York: He'd talk near how capital penalization was really "an didactics in killing," and he pointed out that the states that had it—similar Texas—were the ones leading the nation in murder. Each twelvemonth, he'd plough public opinion his style; each yr, the legislature would neglect in its attempt to bring back the death penalisation.
It was politics as the art of persuasion. It was the spending of political capital for a principle passionately held. And that was why—twenty years afterwards his public service—New Yorkers waited in the freezing rain to say goodbye to a governor they threw out of office in 1994: Because they knew that here was a man of conviction. Even if they disagreed with what he stood for.
Out on the left coast, Jerry Brown—at 76, merely six years Mario Cuomo's inferior—persuaded Californians to enhance taxes on themselves, with the proceeds dedicated to education. The one-time liberal has governed from the centre, but dynamically and passionately, committed to doing big things. A couple of weeks agone, he convened a photo-op in Fresno, the eventual site of his biggest gambit yet, a $67 billion bet on loftier-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco that has his opponents in an uproar.
Only, like Cuomo taking on the pro-death penalty crowd, he made the case. He argued that the California economic system generates over $ii trillion a year, making this investment a drop in the bucket. Plus, it's environmental—"y'all can only have and so many lanes; you can't keep paving over prime agricultural land"—and consumer-friendly: "There'southward no anti-texting rules on trains…you can use your iPhone and enjoy it. And you can accept a martini or whatever you people drinkable."
Brown took on what he called the "naysayers." "Critique is the engine of the academy, of the newspaper industry, and a lot of our American culture. We need to be critiqued. Whatsoever the hell that give-and-take means. I don't know why they don't just say criticized. It sounds better. Merely we listen, and we change, and we modify. But we still tin can build."
Then he got a sly smile on his face. "People do get pusillanimous," he said. "I wanted to utilize that discussion because that's the adjective I'yard going to affix to all the critics. You tin await information technology up on your cellphone right now. Pusillanimous. It means weak of spirit. The Gold Gate Bridge, that was attacked. BART (the Bay Area Rapid Transit system)—the mayor of Berkeley said this affair was a complete boondoggle."
And, lest y'all think I'm being partisan by property upward 2 D's every bit charter members of the anti-pusillanimous party, I'chiliad convinced it'southward why Americans loved Ronald Reagan so. Public opinion polls showed that the majority of Americans disagreed with his policies. But you lot never got the sense that Reagan's finger was ready to the air current. He had a philosophy that he'd make his case for, in that folksy way of his. He was seen equally an accurate leader with cadre convictions.
Hither'due south the critical caveat: Leaders like Cuomo, Brown and Reagan were practiced, pragmatic politicians. They knew how to manage and bend large bureaucracies and they made deals in service of their ideals. They were proof that being principled and political were not mutually exclusive traits.
So what does this accept to do with Michael Nutter, and the give-and-take we're having almost the next occupant of City Hall? In Nutter, nosotros got a mayor with no articulate, bedrock conviction—quick: What does Michael Nutter stand for?—and a political leader with a holier-than-thou disdain for practicing politics. To borrow the famous Cuomo phrase, Nutter was a primary of neither the poetry nor prose of politics.
I'g convinced it's why Americans loved Ronald Reagan so. Public stance polls showed that the majority of Americans disagreed with his policies. But you never got the sense that Reagan's finger was set to the air current. He had a philosophy that he'd brand his example for, in that folksy style of his.
Enough with the politicians who can't do politics. Nutter, Kathleen Kane, maybe Tom Wolf…if nosotros keep electing people who oasis't exhibited a talent for building coalitions and persuading others into activeness, we get the reactive, incremental leadership we deserve. (The same argument can be made on the national stage, where President Obama, some other pol who holds his nose when it comes to doing politics, seems able to only get things done by executive decree.)
We recall of ourselves as this tough-ass boondocks, but it's a self-aggrandizing myth. Pusillanimous leadership has actually been our bang-up expletive. A non-pusillanimous Michael Nutter might have said to the state, "Screw information technology. We'll solve our ain problems," and taken dorsum command of our schools.
Or he might have borrowed from the policies of his 2007 opponent Chaka Fattah, who wanted to sell off metropolis assets similar PGW and the aerodrome to combat our rising poverty rate. ("Right effect, wrong messenger," Nutter told me of his rival'south program after Nutter beat Fattah in the 2007 primary).
Or he might take waged a public campaign to convince us that our unfunded pension liability is a real crisis that requires some tough choices. Or, given that City Council fought him every step of the way from the beginning—despite the fact that he had served on that august body—he might take spent some political uppercase and real dollars from his war chest and ran a mayoral slate of Quango candidates in 2011.
He did none of that, at a time when he had every opportunity to rethink the nature of our policies and politics. That is why Michael Nutter was, at all-time, merely a serviceable mayor when nosotros needed a great one.
And what of the next mayor? Who among our electric current candidates can politically get stuff done? Who among them share the pusillanimous curse? Check back hither. We'll be evaluating each of the current crop in terms of their political skills with our (only partly) tongue-in-cheek Pusillanimous Meter—a wholly subjective feature that grades our candidates on the degree to which they lack backbone or determination.
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/wanted-a-less-pusillanimous-mayor-2/
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