Tough Enough and Other Stuff

Los Angeles got a new mayor last week. Richard Riordan took his oath on a hazy Thursday morning before a crowd that seemed small for the occasion. The spectators sat on chairs arranged beneath shade trees on the south side of City Hall, a green where transients usually can be found lounging on grubby blankets.

Riordan had promised a ceremony with few frills. He delivered. Entertainment was provided by a succession of volunteers, most of whom required introduction. Typical was a male combo in plaid jackets who bent Riordan’s campaign slogan into a catchy harmony, crooning: Our new mayor is tough enough, to turn L.A. around, and stuff. For eats, a bright red “mobile McDonald’s” was parked at First and Spring streets, a corner where on many days a bespectacled man stands with a paper cup balanced on his head, shouting Scripture.

The cup man, like the sleeping hobos, was absent Thursday, along with most of the rest of L.A. “He wanted a people’s inauguration,” an aide said of Riordan. “He wanted to invite the city of Los Angeles to join him in this.” The city declined. Those who did attend mostly were insiders--lobbyists and bureaucrats and other City Hall lifers. They would have been there no matter who was being sworn into office. And most will be there again, the next time the city gets a new mayor. Count on it.

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In sum, the feel of the festivities was less that of history than of obligation, a tired ritual understood by all to lack any real purpose. In that way, the inauguration reflected the mayoral campaign itself. After 20 years of Tom Bradley, the certainty of selecting a fresh, new figurehead for the city initially created excitement. Strangely, though, no bona fide high-voltage candidate entered the contest and L.A. was left to choose among a field of overly familiar hacks, less familiar overreachers and assorted nonentities.

Even the runoff between Riordan, a businessman worth many, many millions, and Michael Woo, a veteran city councilman, never seemed to fully engage. Both candidates could be said to be part of the city’s governing elite. Riordan’s participation in city politics, however, had consisted mainly of financial contributions, and this allowed him to seize the fashionable high ground of “outsider.” You know the rest.

Unfortunately for Riordan--and the sparse crowd at his inaugural underscored this--he cannot claim to have been carried into office on the shoulders of some deep and powerful movement. He is not an “agent of change.” He simply is the next mayor, No. 39, elected in large measure because he had more money and less baggage than the other candidates, and also because voters felt an urge to thumb noses at City Hall. Nose-thumbing accomplished, the question becomes: What now?

Riordan likes to call himself a “problem solver.” The main premise of his campaign was that Los Angeles was a plague of problems--crime, schools, you know the list--awaiting his solutions. A problem defined, however, is not a problem solved, and good luck figuring out just what mandate Riordan carries into office--other than not being Tom Bradley.

“My fellow Angelenos,” he intoned, reading from an inaugural address that will not make Safire’s next anthology of great oratory, “the time has come for all of us to take part in the healing of our great city.”

“We need to become neighbors again,” he shouted.

“I will be mayor for the whole city,” he vowed.

And so it went. The applause was polite, and sales at the mobile McDonald’s remained brisk throughout.

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Riordan, to be fair, did offer a few specifics. For instance, he pledged again to put 3,000 additional cops on the street--roughly one officer for every 10,000 residents. He spoke, too, of making city government “a partner with business”--an almost comic notion, given the cozy relations with City Hall that developers have enjoyed through most of L.A.’s history. He also accomplished one fairly deft turn: After plastering L.A. with campaign placards proclaiming that he, Richard Riordan, was the candidate “tough enough” to save the city, he told the city on Thursday that in truth it must save itself.

“In the end,” he said, “it will be you who will turn L.A. around.”

Although this acknowledgment came a little late in the game, it at least was realistic. For Los Angeles exists quite apart from City Hall. The city rises or it falls on tides far beyond the control of anyone who toils at First and Spring. Politicians who can reverse this timeless equation are extremely rare. Most people seem to understand this. The rest could be found Thursday under the trees where the bums usually sleep.