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Posted December 4, 2001
The King of the Mayors?
By Charles Mahtesian
Nearly a decade ago, a distinguished historian from the University of Illinois at Chicago named Melvin Holli did for City Hall what Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. had done for the Oval Office back in 1948. Like Schlesinger, the historian who first ranked American presidents in order from top to bottom, Holli painstakingly surveyed dozens of urban historians and scholars, recorded their responses and issued rankings of the best and worst mayors since 1820, roughly the start of the American mayoralty.
The greatest mayor of all-time? The hands-down winner was New York City’s Fiorello La Guardia. The worst? A closer call, with Chicago’s William “Big Bill” Thompson edging out Jersey City’s Frank “I am the law” Hague and New York’s Jimmy Walker, a Tammany Hall dandy.
The rankings didn’t pretend to be all-inclusive, that is, rating every mayor who had ever served in any city, but by reviewing more than 700 big-city mayors, the poll came as close to accuracy and comprehensiveness as any study of this kind is likely to get.
Yet just a few years after Holli finally published the results in an intriguing 1999 book called The American Mayor: The Best and the Worst Big-City Leaders, the rankings are beginning to look dated. Just as at the turn of the last century, the 1990s will be remembered for its coterie of reform-oriented mayors, most of whom were settling into office when the survey was conducted in 1993. Now, looking back at the decade, it’s not inconceivable that a few of them might warrant top-10 consideration. One mayor, New York City’s Rudy Giuliani, could arguably bump his political hero, La Guardia, out of the top slot.
The mere thought sounds crazy at first. Until the World Trade Center attacks, Giuliani was viewed by many in his hometown as an accomplished, if sometimes unhinged, despot. At best, his relations with the minority community were strained. But when you add his post-September 11 leadership to his substantive achievements — such as presiding over an economic boom and a spectacular crash in the crime rate — the Giuliani record undoubtedly merits top-10 ranking.
He took on, and reined in, a machine every bit as fierce as the Tammany Tiger tamed by La Guardia: the institutions and interest groups that comprise the Big Apple’s New Deal-era social services leviathan. Today, Giuliani’s urban blueprint is required reading for any mayor with a taste for reform. In city after city, you can find his ideas on public order, crime-fighting, social services delivery and education reform, either in practice or subject to debate. If big-city liberalism is indeed dead, it is Rudy who put the dagger in its heart.
While other gifted mayors of his generation shared a similar vision, none were forced to implement it in such hostile environs — or on such scale. Giuliani didn’t actually accomplish all he set out to do, but he got as much as could realistically be expected and far more than any of his recent predecessors.
Giuliani can also boast of a singular achievement that is unlikely ever to be duplicated. In the twilight of his tenure as mayor, he appeared in a television commercial endorsing the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Virginia. His favored candidate lost, but that misses the point. Who could have imagined a day when a conservative candidate from the capital of the Confederacy would look to the mayor of Gotham for his political imprimatur?
Despite all this, it’s quite possible Giuliani will be denied his place at the top the next time these rankings are compiled. Distance in time provides storied mayors such as Detroit’s Hazen S. Pingree, Toledo’s Samuel L. Jones or La Guardia a sheen that Giuliani won’t have until decades after his passing from the national scene. It may prove difficult to reconcile his estrangement from minority communities with best-ever status. And since Giuliani’s brand of urban reform is not especially popular in either media circles or in academia at this time, an objective accounting of his administration may not be attainable until a new generation of scholars emerges.
Until then, Giuliani should find comfort in the words of one chronicler of the LaGuardia era. “Every four years,” wrote August Heckscher in 1978, “when New Yorkers go to the polls to elect a mayor, someone is sure to say, ’What this city needs is another La Guardia.’ “
To Giuliani’s credit, New Yorkers are already saying that about him before he leaves office.
Charles Mahtesian is a former Governing staff writer.
Recently in View:
Gaming the Busted Budget: a dubious outcome of the new unity (posted November 27, 2001)
The Bad-News Machine: Michael Bloomberg’s biggest challenge (posted November 19, 2001)
Now It’s ‘Our’ Government: why the attacks didn’t — and did — matter (posted November 13, 2001)
Election Reform, Now or Never: will an opportunity be missed? (posted November 7, 2001)
Issues Unchanged: the post-September 11 electoral landscape (posted November 7, 2001)
Complete index of previous columns
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