L.A.’s big three: Size matters

A REAL CITY = big problems + big prizes + big ambitions + big men.

Faint-of-heart progressives might not like the political incorrectness in this formula. But a real city -- a city that appears to its residents to add up to something -- always manages to fuse these elements into a serviceable image of the future. It’s not just New York or Chicago that has broad shoulders. All iconic U.S. cities, even in bad times, appear to hopeful citizens to command their destiny.

In the last 100 years in Los Angeles too, big ambitions, and the prizes to be gained from realizing them, connected with men who measured up to the city’s problems. The obvious example is William Mulholland, who calculated the thirst of the city at the turn of the 20th century and saw a way to slake it with an outsized gesture of engineering that erased distance and the restraints of nature.

As big as Mulholland was, his part in the story of the city should be a cautionary example to the ambitious new men of Los Angeles: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Police Chief William J. Bratton and the newest, L.A. Unified School District Supt. David L. Brewer. Mulholland’s ambition matched the size of the prize to be won -- water for millions -- but Mulholland was just a technician. His god was efficiency. And, as we’ve learned from decades of technically good government in L.A., efficiency isn’t enough to make a city real. The technicians who engineered the city’s infrastructure of water, power and transportation were big men. The public men they served weren’t.

That was by conscious choice. L.A. voters, led by the city’s elites, rewarded the ambitions of engineers, not the aspirations of political leaders. Few can recall anything about any 20th century mayor of Los Angeles (save, perhaps, Tom Bradley and Richard Riordan), although some of the 17 mayors from 1900 to 2000 were notably effective ... and many were scoundrels.

Not a real city but a phantom city was virtually handed to Riordan, the last mayor of 20th century L.A. In 1993, the prizes for leadership were so small -- a week mayoral office, little authority over city departments and subservience to City Council politics. Public ambitions had shrunk accordingly. The city’s problems, however, were getting bigger. The biggest -- framed by the vigor of the secession movement to break up Los Angeles -- was the problem of governing the city. Discarded Mayor James K. Hahn, trained to manage a government of managers, never figured it out.

It’s still a question if Villaraigosa has the winning formula for governing L.A., or if his big ambitions for other elected offices will leave him time to learn. But he already has something more than his recent predecessors. His city is more real.

Partly, it’s because the prizes -- power and prestige -- are more real. A vacuum among waning Anglo elites, in good Darwinian fashion, is opening opportunities to new competitors. At the neighborhood level, mostly middle-class Latinos, Koreans, Armenians and Filipinos are the new powers. Because of them, civic institutions are broadening access and redistributing power, with the new neighborhood councils only one example.

These new stakeholders want city government to be real too, and have consistently chosen, when allowed, to reward at the polls those who share that ambition. To get the real L.A., they fundamentally changed the calculation of political power at City Hall, using charter reform to tilt the balance toward the mayor’s office, a tilt that Villaraigosa accelerated by first shaking up the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board and then by asserting unprecedented authority to run the school district. It was an ambiguous assertion and has been compromised, but it certainly reads big.

Amazingly, the city’s new political and status prizes are drawing real ambitions just because the prizes are won in Los Angeles. Power is up for grabs (although effective power remains elusive), and some new and interesting men and women are grabbing. If your ambitions are in politics or even fashion, being in L.A. means something. And that’s what a real city does. It puts some mark of itself -- not always gently -- on what you imagine is possible.

Bratton, who had experience with how New York alternately bruises and rewards big egos, must have imagined that the size of the problems in the Los Angeles Police Department would proportionately reward any success in making the relationship between the city and its police less antagonistic. Something similar might have motivated Brewer to step into the line of fire between Villaraigosa and school board members who picked an inexperienced former Navy vice admiral to run the district partly because an eloquent African American denied Villaraigosa a good target.

Villaraigosa, Bratton and Brewer are very different big men in what has become a very different city. All three chose to match themselves and Los Angeles because being here -- and not in some other big city -- suited their ambition. They’ve congregated here, bound by extraordinary charisma (and fondness for sharp dressing) in a contest for renown, but for reasons they might not have fully worked out for themselves.

The city’s “big three” want their challenges to be big. Bratton, in an early interview, said that he was surprised to find that the Los Angeles Police Department was in much worse shape than he realized. Villaraigosa has made every hurt in this city his own, whether it be clumsy urban planning or failing public schools. Brewer has pinned a bull’s eye to his back; there are so many who want to take a shot when he finally announces his vision for turning the school district around.

The three intend to act big too. Villaraigosa and Bratton have an obvious thirst to lead and to be known for leading. Brewer’s military career offered the same reward and temptation. Villaraigosa is charismatic to a fault, making him a magnet for those who want to be where the charismatic gather to display, to contend for fame and to get some rubbed off on them.

The ultimate effect on Los Angeles of the “big three” can’t be figured now. But as symbols, Villaraigosa, Bratton and Brewer (along with aides and deputies whose junior ambitions can be expected to grow) are important for realizing the kind of Los Angeles its residents want and need. Big personalities in a position to effect big changes are potent symbols that stand in opposition to cliched and apocalyptic images of the city.

In the evolving political culture of Los Angeles, it’s suddenly the size of the egos, the issues and the rewards that really matter.