Waiting For Jackson 2.0

When Andrew Watterson’s job, sustainability director for the City of
Cleveland, was elevated to a cabinet-level post in September, I
e-mailed Mayor Frank Jackson’s press office to arrange an interview
with Watterson. Lots of people in Northeast Ohio care about
sustainability issues, and lots of people, for better or worse, do not
read the PD (which, unlike Scene, had been alerted in advance).
At the time, it never crossed my mind to add such obvious statements to
my request, but maybe I should have.

Nearly a month passed before I got any response — and that was
to ask if I could wait three more weeks. I declined. You gotta draw
lines somewhere. My intent, however, is not to complain but to make a
point. Media strategies come from the top. Deliberately or not, the
heads of governments set the tone for how their subordinates deal with
attention, starting with whom they hire and how close those aides are
to the inner circle. Some leaders love give and take, some consider
every question a hostile act.

And then there’s Frank Jackson.

The pejorative nickname “Inaction Jackson” is not fair, but it’s
hung around because it’s catchier than the more accurate “Excessively
Modest Jackson.” The man seems almost pathologically averse to
attention, whether positive or negative. When speaking publicly —
which he’s had to do more in recent months, while seeking re-election
— he often seems vaguely detached. Not aloof, exactly, but
resigned, as if anxious to get back to his desk and the real work of
being mayor.

He said as much in an interview on WCPN in September. When asked
about a criticism leveled against him, that he is not a vocal
cheerleader for his city, he replied, “If that’s all they have to
criticize … I can tell you that if I would be like other people want
me to be, Cleveland would be far worse off. … I will tell you that if
it’s a question of style or substance, I will always take
substance.”

But who says it’s an either-or, the interviewer asked. Look at
President Obama …

“Again, I don’t compare myself to anybody,” said Jackson. “I compare
myself to whether or not the job is being done, whether or not
Cleveland and the people of Cleveland are better off as a result of
what I do. And I will take criticism on style any day, and I will never
sacrifice substance.”

With all due respect, Mr. Mayor, you’re missing the point. The
voters didn’t elect you to manage the city. They elected you to
lead it. And leadership, like it or not, involves no small
amount of style.

There is no overstating just how screwed up Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania was in 1990, when I moved there. The mayor’s office was
still occupied by the lamest of lame ducks, Wilson Goode, to this day
remembered primarily for two disasters: approving the bombing (by
police helicopter) of a row home where an armed radical group was holed
up, resulting in a fire that took out an entire city block; and at the
end of his second term, allowing the city to come within mere weeks of
bankruptcy.

For years after taking office in ’92, Goode’s successor, Ed Rendell,
would often compare the city’s condition at the time to a cancer
patient with a gunshot wound to the chest. The latter represented the
fiscal crisis; the former, everything else — middle-class flight,
crime, joblessness, struggling schools, racial tension, etc. But
despite facing challenges of biblical proportions, Rendell — a
New Yorker by birth, it’s worth noting — appointed himself the
city’s chief ambassador, not just to the world, but to it its own
infamously cynical and self-loathing residents.

Rendell’s press secretary could be snide and unhelpful, but it
didn’t matter. Rendell was the type to show up for the opening of an
envelope, as the old joke goes. When you needed a comment, all you had
to do was check his daily public schedule (faxed to newspaper offices
every morning) and track him down. Rendell was on the go most of the
day, every day, cutting ribbons, shaking hands, taking questions and
talking up the city to anyone who would hold still long enough. He
loved the city and seemed to believe fervently that part of his job was
trying to convince everyone else to love it too.

And damned if it didn’t work. Through sheer force of will, Rendell
laid the groundwork and set the tone for a downtown renaissance that
was built by savvy developers, painted by poor artists and bought or
rented out by the first wave of a new type of resident, who valued
living in a place with an identity. Suddenly it was cool to live
in Philadelphia, and that coolness attracted filmmakers and TV
producers, and that exposure attracted still more residents, each
bringing something else to the party. Sure, there were still typical
urban problems, but they no longer chased away everyone with just
enough for a down payment on a house in the ‘burbs. When you walk the
crowded sidewalks of a vibrant downtown, anything seems possible.

Many factors, large and small, contributed to Philly’s resurgence in
the ’90s. But I’ve always believed that it all started with Mayor Ed
Rendell’s endless, passionate bragging.

In the same interview in which he dismissed style as the enemy of
substance, Jackson was asked about his accomplishments in his first
term. “Well, we balanced the budget. We’ve reduced crime. We’ve
identified all of our neighborhoods and positioned them in a way that
we invest in these neighborhoods based on what their assets are and
their challenges are. And there’s probably many other things that I
can’t think of right now.”

He devoted five words — one of them “well” — to his most
impressive accomplishment, managing this ailing city’s increasingly
desperate finances. Then he rambled for 28 words about positioning
neighborhoods or something; I follow the news pretty closely, and even
I had only a vague sense of what he was talking about.

Then the kicker: “Probably many other things that I can’t think of
right now.” What?

That’s what I said, out loud, in my car, listening to this. How does
the leader of a major American city leave his office — for an
interview, no less — unprepared to talk about his
accomplishments?

Modesty has its time and place. This isn’t one of them. Look at
cities that have weathered shifting demographics and declining
economies better than we have — are they modest about it? How
many Chicagoans have you met who’d trade their Magnificent Mile for our
demureness? When is the last time you heard anyone, from anywhere,
speak admiringly of Clevelanders’ constraint?

Jackson’s modesty is as much a part of him as his earnestness and
work ethic — I get that. But these are traits, not physical
characteristics, and traits can be modified when circumstances dictate.
One of the things I’ve learned in this very difficult year — the
first in my nearly two-decade career in which I saw colleagues laid off
— is that the price of keeping your job during a recession is
taking on new responsibilities and pushing yourself past the boundaries
of your comfort zone.

So I humbly submit to Mayor Jackson that it’s time to start
bragging. Loudly and in public, where everyone can hear you. It’s time
to become the unabashed cheerleader that your city desperately needs.
Delegate the day-to-day stuff and get out among the residents of your
city. Then visit other cities where the people have funny notions about
what goes on here and need to be assured that their cars and
investments are safe downtown. Teach the residents of the suburbs why
they need us as much as we need them.

Celebrate every small victory like it matters, because it does.
Demand accountability for every failure. Surround yourself with people
who ask “Why not?” Challenge them, and demand that they challenge you.
Develop a vision — not a plan, not a proposal, but an
honest-to-God vision — and challenge all of us to meet you
there.

Stop managing, Mayor Jackson, and lead.

flewis@clevescene.com

This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2009.