The pertinent and furtive moment in the odyssey of the Willie Brown we
know occurred in medias res -- his Sacramento days. Brown's ascendancy
to the Speakership was a brokered compromise between both parties in an
effort to stave off the prospect of a coalescence around the left/liberal
Howard Berman/Tom Hayden axis. The price Brown paid for his compliance in
that preemptive putsch would remain shrouded for years.
Brandishing his metier in a backwater was crucial. Sacramento might
as well be a thousand miles away for all the scrutiny it receives, and Brown's
emerging neoliberal positions were consequently well-veiled. The sideshow
which is Assembly politics enhanced Brown's reputation by default; his calling
card soon became, in effect: Fools to the left of me, jokers to the right,
here I am, caught in the middle with you. It was a sensible persona, a strategic
fit for the 1980s and for the furtherance of his ambitions, and it was accessorized
by Brown's penchant for stylishness and his acquisition of a personal clothier
who steered his instincts beyond Nehru suits and plaid sports jackets. The
aura, such as it may be, of a professional fop-of-color, melded with increasing
legislative mastery, provided Brown a substantial scrim of Teflon, and in
the eyes of many hoisted him into the realm of legitimate stature. That
the results of Brown's daily gavelling seemed effortless is hardly surprising;
he had quickly assayed the terrain, carefully noting that alternately flanking
him were those toting the baggage of out-of-favor political notoriety, and
sundry hicks of the sort he had spent his Texas boyhood outsmarting. By
the mid-1980s his wizard rep was established, and he availed himself of
the broadest parameters of the law to avoid conflict-of-interest opprobrium,
quietly jaunting into San Francisco regularly to personally attend to the
legal interests of his adoring downtown corporate clientele.
This was a far cry from the Willie Brown who welcomed arrest at civil rights
demonstrations in the early 1960s, but the residual perceptions about that
idealism and his celebrated legislative adroitness combined to ensure his
mayoral election. Any suspicions that Brown was perhaps nothing more than
a mainstream Democratic Party functionary -- of the highest echelon, to
be sure -- were held in abeyance. The flash and the glitter, those consummately
wielded props, increased to chain mail strength as the already indolent
media savored each incident of WillieWear/WillieWheels.
The Brown we encounter a year into his tenure is someone whose ego and
notion of fulfillment are inseparably tied to his mayorship. This job, he
senses correctly, will constitute his footnote in history, and his honed
political antennae provide him sufficient insight to know it is not to be
regarded as a stepping-stone. Not surprisingly, Brown is foundering in the
attempt to move from capital ringmaster to the role of administering and
propounding urban policy. He mistakenly seems to think it's merely a matter
of fine-tuning the methodology he's always employed.
The assent to neoliberalism which has served Brown so well politically and
professionally ought by now to be giving him second thoughts. His increasingly
petulant reactions to the klieg-light heat generated by his inability to
apply vaunted Willie Brown fixes to the city's persistent problems indicates
as much. The blistering he received from departing Supervisor Alioto's final
salvo characterizing him as a "ceremonial conservative" was a
long time incubating and mirrored David Binder's latest poll which revealed
undercurrents of growing dismay at Brown's handling of major issues.
Brown, in throwing up his hands and frankly adjudging the most troublesome
issues as insolvable, confirms the perception that the public, surfacing
from previous mayors' diffidence and ineptness, was too eager to project
its sensibility as a humane and novel city-state onto the guy with the legendary
derring-do. Specific evidence that its faith has been misplaced in fitting
the man with the job has recent manifestations: Brown's frantic personnel
juggling is a throwback to his Sacramento days, where only 41 votes were
needed to win the day, and the correct committee appointments got you there.
Concurrently, Brown has avoided the problematic by indulging in corporate
liberalism's pulpy mania for chatfests, convoking banal summits and outreach
workshops which provide him runways to do his vogue-ing.
If Brown is holding a trump card, it is this: An underlying assumption about
his election was that he was the only Democrat in the country who could
thumb his nose at Clinton and make him like it. Brown hasn't disclosed if
his fealty has waned since Clinton destroyed the party with his welfare
reform bill. That bill, cojoined with chronic homelessness, represents Brown's
most fractious problem. To date, Brown has informed us that his heralded
poverty czar, Michael Wald, will be authorized to relay reports from Clinton's
and Pete Wilson's people about the abiding health of the safety net and
the latest news about when non-existent jobs should start arriving.
A crossroads looms ahead for our Willie Brown. And the first signpost
might well be the request by the homeless to be granted sweat-equity occupancy
of the Presidio's Wherry Housing complex. Last month Brown directed his
staff to investigate the legal and fiscal implications of the city's leasing
the properties from the Park Service.
Such negotiations will be singularly notable. Inasmuch as politicians are
now boosterist front office help for the overlords of commerce, the spectacle
of one bureaucracy making entreaties to another over property destined for
corporate subdivision, is a quintessential '90s tableau. The irony may be
lost on Brown at first, though an eventuality where some 600 buildings worth
$80 million are leveled while homeless corpses multiply in the streets will
doubtless get his attention. We can safely surmise that it would be impolitic
of him not to notice.
Brown can then actually lead the ensuing defiance and accompanying mass
civil disobedience, or he can stand back and can watch as his constituents
make plain that they are no longer interested in plumbing the intricacies
and depths of his reputation.
If it isn't the Presidio that starts it off, something else will. Historically
and by temperament San Francisco has always gone boldly into the breach.
The mayor is welcome to come along, or he can stick with the devil he knows.