Moving Philadelphia forward

Sept. 16, 2007
By Tom Ferrick Jr.
Inquirer columnist

Whatever difficulties he faces, Michael Nutter will have a huge advantage in when he takes office as mayor next January. He is not John Street.

After eight years, most Philadelphians (about 75 percent, according to the polls) have tired of Street's, um, leadership style. So Nutter will get a lot of credit just for showing up.

Obviously, though, people are hungry for more. They want a leader who will . . . well . . . lead. Someone with the means, the method and the message to unite the city, its neighborhoods, its diverse population, its business and political community and move Philadelphia forward.

By forward I mean (just to set the bar high) away from job and population loss, away from racial and ethnic divisions, away from the old politics and corruption and defeatist thinking of the past.

Now, that's forward.

For better or worse (often for worse) Philadelphians have looked to the mayor for this public leadership.

We want him not only to run the government wisely and well but also to lead the city - even personify the city, certainly to the outside world. As if the job weren't hard enough.

In Philadelphia, City Hall is the epicenter of civic pessimism (P) or optimism (O). It's always been that way.

Nutter knows this. He was born in Philadelphia when Richardson Dilworth (O) was mayor. He's been a player in the public arena since the 1980s, through the Goode administration (P), through Rendell (O) and Street (P).

The first issue he will face was nicely summarized by consultant Basil Whiting, who did a report on the state of the city for the Pew Trusts.

Philadelphia, he said, had a "bifurcated leadership" - two groups, headed in the same direction, but on opposite sides of the street, rarely talking to each other.

On one side there was the Street administration, which Whiting described as "African-American-led but diverse, feeling misunderstood and mistreated, unable to communicate effectively."

On the other side there was the "decentralized, often new, largely white business, civic and community leadership, positive and bustling with projects."

In a way, Nutter's victory in the May Democratic primary solved this problem.

He was the clear favorite of the new civic and community leadership. (The business community largely sat on the sidelines, hedging its bets.) These reformers - for want of a better tag - formed his base.

In the end, he was also the candidate of the city's African American voters. It didn't happen until late in the game, but he did win virtually all the black wards in the city.

Voilà! No more bifurcation.

If only it were that simple.

Feel-good rhetoric may fill the air in the coming months, but that shouldn't obscure the reality of the situation. Let me list the constituencies who were not in the Nutter camp - then or now. He was not the candidate of the Democratic political organization. He was not the candidate of the city's unions, which (de facto) run the party. He was not the candidate of the white or black working class.

I don't want to overstate the barriers he faces. Being mayor, and having the power that goes with that office, has a way of bringing people over to your side. An example: When Frank Rizzo was elected in 1971, after a divisive and racially charged race, the first group to make peace with him were the black Democratic ward leaders, despite the fact that black voters despised Rizzo.

Political expediency is a powerful motivator. But is it lasting and real? Despite his deal with black pols, Rizzo never got more than seven percent of the African American vote in his many runs for office.

It is far better to engage in what could be called entrepreneurial leadership: to create new coalitions united around powerful themes that energize people.

You must, as one civic leader put it, "appeal to their better angels" - rather than their self-interests, their prejudices, their fears.

I can think of two great entrepreneurial moments in Philadelphia politics in the last 60 years. One was in the late 1940s, when World War II vets, returning to the city, essentially took over a weak Democratic party and ousted a Republican machine that had been in power for 80 years. Joe Clark and Dick Dilworth were in their late 40s when they led that reform movement. Another was in the mid-1970s, when a group of young blacks decided to challenge not only Rizzo, but also the go-along-to-get-along black leadership as well. The engine of that movement was black political empowerment. The leaders - men like Bill Gray and H. John White, John Anderson and Dwight Evans - were in the 20s and 30s.

These movements weren't about deals, they were about ideas. They weren't about accommodating the existing power structure, they were about toppling it. Its leaders weren't unselfish, but their goals were altruistic. They were about a cause larger than themselves.

Those movements were born out of unhappiness with the way things were. But what gave them their propulsive force was the vision of a better future.

It was a form of alchemy: to take the pessimism of the times and turn it into optimism. But, since it was founded in the 17th century, every major advance in this city's history was made by leaders who created a spirit of optimism - even when the evidence seemed to demand otherwise.

Now, that is leadership. And that is what we need today.

Contact Tom Ferrick at 2150-854-2714 or tferrick@phillynews.com.