Talk to Us, Mayor, From the Heart

One of my greatest critics is Mayor Richard Riordan, who, unlike most of of my readers, sees me often enough to do his venting face to face.

One day we were walking from The Times to City Hall when he turned to me and said, “You’re crazy.”

I asked him what aspect of my personality or literary output led him to that diagnosis.

It was nothing specific, he said. Nor did he go into detail like his predecessor, Tom Bradley, used to do. Bradley once called me into his office for a long critique of several of my stories, which he handed back with the objectionable passages highlighted in bright yellow. With Riordan, I got the impression that it was my whole body of work.

The problem is that the mayor and I have much different, and perhaps irreconcilable, views of leadership.

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Riordan is an inside kind of guy, working the phone, talking to CEOs and other people with power.

There isn’t anything wrong with Riordan doing business through private telephone calls. In fact, many of them do Los Angeles a lot of good. They sparked the redevelopment of the old General Motors plant property in Van Nuys and the agreement to build the DreamWorks facility near Marina del Rey.

The other day, he told me of an especially good idea that has come from those office phone calls.

We were chatting outside a new apartment house, built with city, federal and private funds in the San Fernando Valley’s Panorama City. Riordan had just toured the place and was musing about ways of improving the quality of life in places like Panorama City, whose residents have waged a long, tough war against drugs, gangs and the decay of poorly maintained apartment houses.

He said he was raising money to beef up programs run by the Los Angeles Police Department for young men and women--athletic leagues, Explorer Scouts and others.

These programs have been around a long time, he said, but they are uncoordinated and often lack support from the top brass. Usually, they originate with street cops who realize that there are many kids out there who, with a little help, could survive the gantlet of gangs and drugs.

His idea rang a bell with me. A few years ago, I wrote about such a program at the Central Area police station on skid row, where Officer Frank DiPaola, supported by his boss, Capt. Dick Bonneau, took actual and potential gang members and plunged them into a stiff regime of counseling and community service.

Riordan told me that he was raising $1 million from businesses and other sources to expand such programs. And with the mayor on their case, the Parker Center police brass will undoubtedly show more interest in the efforts of the cops out in the stations.

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It’s a great idea, typically Riordan. Raise the money from public-spirited private enterprisers. Cut through the government red tape. Kick the behinds of the Parker Center bureaucrats. Help the working cops help the kids.

It also gets to the very heart of my disagreement with Riordan over leadership.

To Riordan, this sort of operation is what it’s all about. But there’s more to the job of a political leader than working behind the scenes. A leader has to speak out about the city’s problems. He has to find the words and take action to demonstrate to the public that City Hall is doing something.

When Riordan ducked the press after formally beginning his reelection campaign last month, he missed an opportunity to expand upon his vision of improving the Police Department. It’s the same thing when he fails to have regular City Hall press conferences.

Public words and public actions--call it statesmanship if you want--really are important. Lincoln, Kennedy, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Churchill defined themselves by what they said as well as what they did.

That’s not the way the Riordan sees it. Although he is an omnivorous reader, he’s suspicious of the spoken word. Fancy speeches are a sign of weakness. He equates eloquent talk with do-nothing politicians and flim-flam artists. Real guys do their deals in private.

Riordan is a stiff and awkward public speaker. He knows he’ll never be a Ronald Reagan or a Bill Clinton. But if he does win reelection in April, as expected, he has a great opportunity to build on those skills and grow into someone who can truly lead L.A. Just talk to us, often, and from the heart.