THE AMERICAN MAYOR

The Best & the Worst Big-City Leaders

By Melvin G. Holli

Illustrated

The Pennsylvania State University Press 

210 pages

 

 

There are few activities Americans enjoy more than rating things. The historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. realized this a half-century ago when he canvassed his fellow scholars to rank the nation’s Presidents. Schlesinger’s survey, with its divisions into the Great, Near-Great, Average and the like, spawned several imitators and his own follow-up in 1962.

Now Melvin G. Holli, the author of several books on urban politics, has set out to find the country’s 10 best and worst mayors. It is a worthwhile task, since the mayor’s office is where the political rubber meets the road. As Fiorello La Guardia noted, there is no Republican, no Democratic, no Socialist way to clean a street or build a sewer, but merely a right way and a wrong way. And yet, at the same time, no mayor is fully master of his fate (no matter what Rudolph Giuliani may think). Mayors must carefully navigate past potential rivals on the city council, and in the governors’ and President’s offices — one reason why precious few American mayors ever advance beyond city hall.

Holli polled some 160 historians, social scientists, journalists and other urbanologists in 1993. They were asked generally to restrict their choices to mayors of major cities after 1820, when most mayors were first elected by popular vote. The result is a 10-best list that includes the expected (Fiorello La Guardia), the unexpected (Detroit’s Frank Murphy), the controversial (Richard J. Daley) and the obscure (Josiah Quincy, Boston’s great mayor of the 1820’s). As for the 10 worst, well, New Yorkers won’t be surprised that their city headed the list with three different mayors — just that the most recent one served over 65 years ago.

Holli includes a short biography of each man in the top 10, and a description of his accomplishments, followed by several useful chapters on the nature of leadership in the mayor’s office. As he points out, there is no one set of characteristics that makes a great mayor, though it helps to be a determined individual, in office at a time of crisis and following the administration of a weak, corrupt or dastardly predecessor.

There are some things to quibble with here. Holli occasionally lurches into social science lingo, and one wishes that he had devoted more pages to his 10 worst list: train wrecks are always instructive. Like most of his correspondents, Holli tends to favor old-style, pragmatically liberal or progressive mayors. He likes tangible, brick-and-mortar accomplishments. In an age of empty political symbolism this is largely refreshing, though critics of the top 10 are too often dismissed with simplistic epithets. For example, Angelenos opposed to offshore oil drilling and runaway development are merely snobs from the ”fashionable west side.”

I would also question the inclusion of Richard J. Daley on any list of the nation’s 10 best mayors. Daley’s segregationist, exclusionary politics helped to polarize Chicago for decades, and his reckless, grotesque behavior during the 1968 Democratic National Convention is a permanent stain on American democracy. It is not erased by the fact that he made the buses run on time.

But then, that’s the attraction of top-10 lists: there’s always something to argue about. Big-city government has become a neglected subject in recent years. May Holli stir up interest again with this provocative, enjoyable work.

And now the winners and losers. The 10 best, in order, are: Fiorello La Guardia (New York, 1934-45); Tom L. Johnson (Cleveland, 1901-9); David Lawrence (Pittsburgh, 1946-59); Hazen S. Pingree (Detroit, 1890-97); Samuel M. Jones (Toledo, 1897-1904); Richard J. Daley (Chicago, 1955-76); Frank Murphy (Detroit, 1930-33); Daniel Hoan (Milwaukee, 1916-40); Tom Bradley (Los Angeles, 1973-93), and Josiah Quincy (Boston, 1823-28).

The 10 worst, in order, are: William H. Thompson (Chicago, 1915-23; 1927-31); Frank Hague (Jersey City, 1917-47); James Walker (New York, 1926-32); J. Michael Curley (Boston, 1914-17; 1922-25; 1930-33; 1946-49); Frank Rizzo (Philadelphia, 1972-80); A. Oakey Hall (New York, 1868-72); Dennis Kucinich (Cleveland, 1977-79); Fernando Wood (New York, 1855-58; 1860-62); Samuel Yorty (Los Angeles, 1961-73), and Jane Byrne (Chicago, 1979-83).