Mayor Brown: The Emperor Has Clothes

In his first two weeks in office, it at times has seemed that Willie Brown was elected to serve, not as mayor, but as chief mannequin. The intensity of civic interest in Brown’s wardrobe has bordered on bizarre. Each new day brings another fashion bulletin in the press:

It’s Brioni suits the new mayor favors, not Armani.

That snap-brim fedora he wore to his swearing-in ceremony was a $450 Borsalino.

His “fancy, feather-patterned” socks: Versace.

It’s been reported that Brown stirred a citywide run on men’s dress hats. A newspaper profile of a Fillmore Street merchant who outfitted Brown in his Borsalino received front-page display; subsequent biographies of Brown’s controversial appointments to lead the police and fire departments did not. Interestingly, Brown has not discouraged this focus on fashion. Indeed, he played along with a citywide guessing game over which suit he would wear to the inaugural, and he permitted cameras into his dressing room for “candid” shots of his honor tying his necktie. One of his first mayoral proclamations was: “No dress-down Friday anymore.”

No, this is one emperor who does have clothes, and he likes to show them off. Perhaps it’s vanity, pure and simple. At the same time, while everybody has been preoccupied with Brown’s one-man fashion show, the man inside the fine suits has been busy in other ways. . . .

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In 10 working days, Brown has replaced the police and fire chiefs, repopulated numerous municipal commissions, canceled a controversial police crackdown on homeless people, appointed a new supervisor, initiated or threatened shake-ups in several departments, invigorated efforts to build a baseball park downtown and proposed that teenage gang members be recruited to help patrol city bus lines. Fast work, yes, but hey, check out those Versace socks.

In any other time or place, any one of these moves could have created the sort of controversy that can paralyze a city for months. In Los Angeles, the replacement of a police chief seems to require full-blown riots and multiple blue-ribbon commissions. Brown got it done in a day, while everyone was admiring his threads and taste in restaurants.

Clearly, Brown has studied the CEO handbook, which preaches that the best time to get hard things done is in the earliest days, before opponents have an opportunity to dig in. This is his honeymoon. Every new mayor--and president, and pope and football coach--is allowed one. Most never last long or mean much, and in Brown’s case it would be premature to declare the marriage of man and city a complete success (by Friday, Brown’s political consultant was bickering with a key Chinatown backer, the first public spat in the happy family). Still, honeymoons can be, uh, interesting, and more than a little revealing.

One thing Brown’s has demonstrated is that, despite a career in legislative politics, he relishes the executive mode. Last Thursday he was describing himself to police officers as their “commander in chief.” To make it even more plain he added, joking, of course: “I am the boss.” The point was made. When the moment came to pin a badge on the new chief, Brown asked where it was supposed to go. “You can put it,” said Chief Fred Lau, “anywhere you want.”

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Brown also has quickly overturned a little-observed trend in politics--the era of Dull Mayors. Brown’s predecessor, Frank Jordan, Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson and even Richard Riordan all were graduates of this school. These were pluggers, studiously toned-down candidates who tended to come from outside government and exhibited absolutely no flair for the theater of politics. Nothing about Brown’s first two weeks in office suggests he intends to go the dull, low-profile--safe--route.

It is possible that Brown’s act could work only in San Francisco. This is a city that believes it once had a monopoly on municipal style. The city that knows how, as the slogan went. Brown has played to this waning self-love, seeking to position himself as the last, best chance to return The City--as the newspapers here still type it--to past glory. It also is a parochial town, small enough to be dominated by an individual with the right flair: someone, say, who is not afraid to fire and hire a chief in a day, and who also looks good in a $450 fedora.

Lastly, that Brown is enjoying himself is more than obvious. Over in Sacramento, where he toiled for so long, they sometimes talk with pity about the man who once described himself as the Ayatollah of the Assembly. How sad, they will say, that he must resign himself to dealing with the mundane mechanics of municipal government. Then they trudge off to chambers to fight over motorcycle helmets and spanking teenagers. While Willie Brown dresses up for another day on parade.