Reading about Mike Duggan’s opposition to the Belle Isle state park plan leads me to wonder if, as with Mitt Romney, Duggan’s inner circle has a deep and abiding antipathy for the tv show “Married With Children.”
If you don’t understand the reference, it would take too long to explain but know this: Duggan’s Belle Isle stance has the stink of Romney-like expediency.
What is really in Duggan’s heart, no one but Mike Duggan can say. However, the prevailing opinion, at least anecdotally amongst politically aware Detroiters that I’ve talked with, suggests two possible explanations for Duggan’s Belle Isle stance: Either this is shameless pander or this is a politically shrewd pander. What I can’t seem to find is anyone who sincerely believes Duggan sincerely believes that turning Belle Isle into a state park is a bad idea.
Duggan’s promise and potential as a candidate is as an experienced “turnaround guy” with real, pragmatic solutions to Detroit’s many problems. When he talks about fixing DDOT, that attitude shines through. When he opposes the Belle Isle plan, not so much. It may play well among the vocal minority of voters who once backed Sharon McPhail’s many mayoral runs, granted, but it isn’t problem solving.
If Duggan thinks this Belle Isle stance is what Detroit voters want from him, he should think again. If this is what his advisors are telling him Detroiters want or need, he should probably dump his inner circle and seek better advice.
The plan would remove a $5.5 million annual liability for park maintenance from the city budget and allow for a massive improvement of the island, funded by a state bond issue. Improved management, as Duggan promises his administration will deliver, can’t eliminate the city’s costs, nor can it raise the capital necessary to improve Detroit's signature public park. Even if Detroit wanted to issue bonds to fund a massive improvement project, given the city’s credit rating, who would buy them? That guy on the Western Sky commercial?
Let’s reject the “politically shrewd pander” theory right away. There’s nothing politically shrewd about saying something no one thinks you believe, nor is it shrewd to oppose a sound idea that has the support (according to a Detroit News poll) of 2/3 of Detroit voters.
Seriously, why would a mayoral candidate offering himself as the ultimate turnaround guy speak against what amounts to an easy lay-up for any fiscal turnaround plan?
One can’t help but wonder if Duggan, sheepish about being the first viable white candidate for mayor in 40 years, is taking a position solely to appease the vocal minority opposed to anything that threatens “local control” of Detroit institutions.
The problem is, as Mitt Romney and the 2012 election proved, naked pandering doesn’t work in the long run. We are nation practically subsisting on spray tans, credit card debt, and reality shows. People who know how to sling bullshit will instinctively recognize someone starts tossing cow pies in their general direction.
If Duggan’s Belle Isle stance is a sign, rather than an aberration, of the type of campaign he plans to run and the type of mayor he hopes to be, it’s hard to see him earning that office on the 11th floor of the Coleman Young Building. Or the opportunity to fix this city.
To put it another way, as Garry Wills said about Romney: “What can be worse than to sell your soul and find it not valuable enough to get anything for it?”
