Otis White

The skills and strategies of civic leadership

  • About
  • Archives

The Next Urban Comeback

October 29, 2019 By Otis White

I was fortunate to have a front-row seat for the greatest urban story of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the revival of America’s downtowns. A few scenes from that story:

  • When I started paying attention in the mid-1970s, downtowns were at their lowest point. With the rise of the automobile, families had started moving away from downtowns in the 1920s, followed by retail in the 1950s and offices in the 1960s.
  • By the 1970s, what was left in many downtowns was government, the courts, law offices, a few office towers, and a handful of once-grand churches struggling to hold on to their congregations. Some had a historic theater, a civic center, or a stadium that drew crowds a few nights a week. But main streets were pockmarked with empty storefronts, and on most evenings the sidewalks were deserted.
  • It wasn’t until the 1990s that downtowns found the keys to success: adaptive reuse of old buildings, housing, wider sidewalks, streetscaping, transit, density, waterfront access, mixed uses, business improvement districts, sidewalk dining, activities and concerts, and a dozen other New Urbanist-inspired strategies.
  • Today, downtowns are being revived everywhere in Georgia, from Savannah to Columbus, Augusta to Atlanta. And in new cities like Sandy Springs and Johns Creek, downtowns are being created where none existed before.

The comeback of downtowns isn’t complete but the goal line is in sight. So it’s time to consider: Where will the next great urban revival take place? My guess: in neighborhoods.

You can see neighborhood revival in some cities. In Atlanta, the Beltline is fueling a rush of development into nearby neighborhoods. In other cities, neighborhoods with historic homes and traditional street grids attract outsiders. As a result, you might think cities’ greatest problem is gentrification.

Gentrification is a serious issue, but decay and abandonment are even greater problems for most cities. So how do we turn around declining places and do so in ways that include those living there now?

It gets complicated because, when it comes to reversing neighborhood decline, we’re in the same place as downtowns in the 1970s. We don’t have a playbook. Parts of the downtown playbook might work in some neighborhoods: walkability, mixed uses, transit, and so on. But much of it won’t.

Even more complicating, we had help from big commercial interests in downtowns. We won’t have their help in neighborhoods. And taxpayers will be even less supportive of spending money in other people’s neighborhoods than they were of investing in downtowns. After all, downtowns are used by everyone. Neighborhoods are mostly for their residents.

So whom do we turn to in reviving neighborhoods? Who will write the playbook of neighborhood revitalization? And where do we get started?

My suggestion: Begin with the only genuine asset that neighborhoods have, their residents. Get them involved and organized, help them to learn about positive neighborhood change, then let them share in decision making and provide some of the effort. In other words, create partners so that the city government is no longer doing things FOR neighborhoods, but doing things WITH neighborhoods.

Where will these partners come from? From strong, representative neighborhood associations, along with crime-watch groups, friends of neighborhood parks, community-garden groups, PTAs, small-business associations. Really, any group focused on making a neighborhood—or even a single block—better.

In some neighborhoods, such groups do not exist. That’s why city governments from Riverside, Calif. to Longmont, Colo., Phoenix to Philadelphia are helping residents organize them. There’s no reason we couldn’t do the same in Georgia.

But for this to work, city leaders must practice restraint. In the case of neighborhoods, a wise approach is to help residents organize, learn, discuss, and come to consensus on a short list of achievable projects before the government makes its commitments. Oh, and be sure the neighbors contribute something to the effort, even if it’s just working alongside city crews or offering the proceeds from a bake sale.

After all, groups that have helped scrub graffiti from buildings, sold cakes to turn a vacant lot into a community garden, or worked with police to shut down a drug house won’t let the graffiti come back, the garden fall into disuse, or the drug dealers return. Not without a fight. And that is what cities need if we’re going to turn around troubled neighborhoods: committed, effective partners willing to fight for the places they live.

A version of this posting appeared on the Georgia Municipal Association website.

How Communities Can Thrive in a Post-Newspaper World

August 29, 2018 By Otis White

I understand why most local-government officials and many other civic leaders don’t like reporters. Some journalists can be uninformed, easily distracted by the sensational, or strangely uninterested in the bigger and better stories that are happening around them. But, man, are you going to miss these folks when they are gone.

That’s because the void left by the loss of independent, professional reporters will be filled by far less reliable sources of news and other information: rumor, gossip and particularly social media, which so often are dominated by angry or frightened people with little interest in facts. And this will be much, much worse.

This isn’t a warning about the future. It’s happening now as newspapers reduce coverage or simply close up shop, so that local governments that were once covered daily are left in silence. The situation is so dire in New Jersey that the state legislature recently put up $5 million to encourage somebody, anybody, to start covering these “news deserts.”

But assuming no one starts a professional news organization in your community, what can a local government do to connect with its citizens in a post-newspaper world?

I put this question to a former mayor of a city known for its tight bond with citizens. Decatur is a close-in suburb of Atlanta that’s beloved by urbanists for its walkable, transit-oriented downtown and pleasant neighborhoods. It has a well-run local government and was recently named an All-America City by the National Civic League.

Call a meeting in Decatur and the citizens will turn out. I know this because I was involved in a planning effort there in 2010 that began with a large-scale citizen engagement effort. Hundreds of people participated in long meetings about what the city could be. Many of their ideas are being realized today.

Not that you would know any of this if you lived elsewhere in the Atlanta area. That’s because the daily newspapers stopped covering Decatur’s city commission meetings long ago. The only time reporters show up at Decatur City Hall today is when something bad happens, which is blessedly infrequent.

So how has Decatur maintained such a tight bond with its citizens in a post-newspaper era? That’s what I wanted to know from Bill Floyd, who was a city commissioner for 22 years and mayor for most of that time.

I started by asking about a colorful monthly newsletter called Decatur Focus that the city mails to every household. Was this the way Decatur kept citizens informed, basically by starting its own publication?

Well, Floyd said in his polite way, Decatur Focus was useful for communicating the city’s plans. “You have to stay in touch with people,” he said. And he was amazed by how many people read the newsletter and commented on it.

But, no, it wasn’t the newsletter alone. In fact, Floyd went on, there is no single way cities can communicate in a social media world. Nor would a single communicator be effective, even one at city hall. Rather, he said, you need an army of communicators in the social media, most of them residents. And Decatur has built just such an army through its endless citizen-engagement efforts.

The bedrocks are Decatur 101 and the Citizens Police Academy. Decatur 101 is what it sounds like, two-hour classes on how the city works, delivered over a seven-week period. Other cities have programs like this; this one is simply done better. Started in 2000, Decatur 101 became so popular that in 2006 the city began running two classes, with morning and evening sessions. There’s a waiting list of citizens who want a spot. Later, Decatur 101 inspired the Citizens Police Academy, a 10-week course on the local police and criminal-justice systems. (There’s even a Junior Police Academy for 11-to-14-year-olds.)

The result of these and other city programs, Floyd said, is that there are hundreds of citizens who know how to get information from the city. So, if a rumor starts on a neighborhood website about, say, car break-ins, or if someone spreads falsehoods about a rezoning case, a citizen who has been through Decatur 101 or the Police Academy is bound to see it, call a city official and have the facts in short order. “And when somebody says, ‘Here’s what the city says,’ it just stops the rumors cold,” Floyd added.

Decatur did not create its citizen-engagement programs in response to social media. There were no social media in 2000. It started them because it believed that informed, involved citizens made it a better place. That the city discovered a way to thrive in a post-newspaper world was a happy, unintended benefit. Wouldn’t accomplishing the same thing be good news for your community?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Felix63 licensed under Creative Commons.

When Bad Things Happen to Good Governments

February 7, 2018 By Otis White

When we talk about good management, we’re really talking about two things: Doing the right things and doing them in the right way. The vast majority of management advice is about the second part, doing things in the right way.

But what about the first? How does a government know the right things to do? And what can you do if a government loses its way?

It isn’t a hypothetical question. I’ve seen governments that were lost. Many cities staggered through the 1960s and 1970s, attempting one half-hearted solution after another as their middle classes fled, downtowns declined, and businesses moved to the suburbs. It took decades to find a set of strategies for turning things around.

And today, it seems to me, it is states that are most at risk, due not so much to overwhelming problems as to divide-and-conquer politics and ideology. We’ve seen it recently in places like Kansas, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, where narrowly elected legislative majorities rammed through laws punishing labor unions or gay citizens, recklessly outsourcing public services, or cutting taxes to the point that education funding was in jeopardy.

I’ve detailed elsewhere why some states have lost their way. But a more interesting question is, what can we do now? How do you put a government back on track once its elected officials have jumped the track?

My answer: Take a page from what local governments learned about turning to the citizens. Starting in the 1980s, some cities started convening residents in open-ended discussions about what they needed and wanted, using a process known as “visioning.”

It was based on two principles. First, you ask citizens things they know from their own experiences, such as the kind of city or neighborhood they want to live in. Second, you let them talk about these things first in small groups, and then report out their ideas. The process tends to refine the ideas and ground them in reality.

Out of this process came demands for many of the things that make cities work today: walkable neighborhoods, lively downtowns, new investments in parks and trails, greater collaboration between schools and local government, transit improvements, and bike lanes. In recent years, these conversations have turned up a new concern, that urban success is depriving cities of the human diversity that fuels them.

Could such conversations be held across an entire state? And if so, who should hold them? State legislatures would hardly be the ones to ask citizens how to fix the problems they’ve played such a large role in creating.

The answer to the first question is yes, there’s no reason we can’t scale visioning to the size of a state. As for the second question, I would like to nominate a surprising convener: state political parties.

My reason is simple. Bad politics are at the heart of what ails state governments today. And the way to fix bad politics is with good politics. If one party (probably the minority party) listens to citizens in a systematic way, reports honestly what they say, and builds its legislative agenda around those desires, it will change politics for the better . . . and possibly make a majority out of the minority party. Warning: Running a dishonest visioning process, one in which you stack the meetings with partisans or report only the ideas you like, is worse than running no process at all. My advice: Trust the process.

But trust it to do what? What is it that citizens are likely to say in these meetings? Well, no one can know for sure until the meetings are held, but based on my experience at the local level, they’ll ask for things that can make their lives and communities better. Sensible things like better public schools, greater access to vocational and higher education, more transportation options, help with economic development, and amenities that might help their cities or towns hold on to their young people. For the most part, they won’t demand things that punish other citizens, satisfy extremist groups, or reward special interests.

In this way, citizens can help focus states once more on their serious work in human development, economic development, and infrastructure. This won’t thrill the ideologues. But it’ll delight the citizens.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Josh Graciano licensed under Creative Commons.

How Citizen Engagement Could Save State Politics

October 24, 2017 By Otis White

Until recent years, I did not pay much attention to state politics. My interests are local, with a particular interest in how people come together to solve problems in cities and regions.

But increasingly I’ve found myself worrying about state governments—and, in particular, their legislatures—because something troubling is happening there. The immediate problem is that we are seeing a wave of “preemption” legislation, laws aimed at forbidding cities from doing things state legislators don’t like.

Now, I am not opposed to all preemptions. If local governments habitually pass ordinances discriminating against minority groups, rewarding cronies, or favoring one form of real estate development over another, I think state governments ought to step in. (The courts usually do a good job of stopping isolated problems.) I also think state governments have a role in preventing cities, counties, school districts, and authorities from spending themselves into insolvency.

But this wave of preemptions has nothing to do with bias, corruption, favoritism, or profligacy. It’s about forbidding local governments from doing things that legislators oppose for political reasons—things like ordinances protecting gay citizens, enacting minimum wages, taxing sugary sodas, restricting fracking, or regulating the use of plastic shopping bags. The Texas legislature even considered several bills limiting cities’ ability to preserve their tree canopies.

You may or may not agree with these local decisions. But I see no reason for one level of government imposing its political judgments on another’s. Especially when the preempting government is the more distant one.

Still, if this were just about heavy-handed legislatures, I wouldn’t be as concerned as I am. We’ve had overbearing legislatures before. It’s how and why legislators are coming to these judgments that is new and ominous.

Many of the preemptions are driven by out-of-state corporations that don’t want to deal with these issues city by city. Having a state legislature ban all cities from taxing soft drinks, regulating plastic shopping bags, or imposing rules on Uber and Lyft saves lobbyists from fighting battles in dozens of city halls.

So the corporate interests are clear. Selfish, lazy, and damaging to good government, but clear.

But why would a legislature go along with these things? Why would legislators run roughshod over a sizable portion of their voters and pick a fight with a formidable group of local elected officials?

Well, in part because they can. In most cases, legislatures can extend or withdraw home rule as they wish. And in part because the benefits of doing so (contributions from out-of-state corporations) outweigh the risks (blowback from citizens, mayors, and the media). Again, the interests are clear. Venal but clear.

O.K., but why now? Why are we seeing this wave of special-interest preemptions today and not 20 years ago? And how are legislatures getting away with it? Three reasons, I think.

First is the decline of the mainstream news media, which kept a watchful eye on state legislatures in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. There simply aren’t as many reporters in statehouses today as 20 years ago. So when legislatures act in ways that benefit the few at the expense of the many, there’s a good chance no one will notice.

Second, we’ve seen the rise of organizations that marry ideology with self-interest and are aimed specifically at influencing legislatures. The most obvious is the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, the right-wing organization behind many of the preemption measures and a lot of other bad ideas that have spread from state to state. (For a glimpse of how ALEC works, read this New York Times editorial.) ALEC has little-brother organizations in nearly every state now, right-wing “think tanks” supported by big corporations and ideologists, churning out dubious research and “model legislation.” (Who are the people in your city writing op-ed articles that call public transit a boondoggle and promote private-school vouchers? It’s likely someone on the payroll of one of these state-level mini-ALECs .)

Finally, some state politicians have learned to use distraction and division as a strategy. That is, they use emotional but symbolic issues (in the 1990s these were called “wedge issues”) to create smokescreens for their real interest, which is passing laws that few would support—if they knew about them.

This explains the bathroom bills, which are unadulterated acts of demagoguery. You probably remember the one in North Carolina that set off a national firestorm of protests and boycotts, resulting in the legislature’s retreat. Surely, given that experience, no other state would go down the same road, right? On the contrary. Similar bills have been introduced (and passed) in other states.

Why? Because, in truth, the North Carolina bill accomplished what it set out to do: It divided voters over symbolism while distracting them from issues of substance. The odds of a North Carolinian sharing a public restroom with a transgender person were small to begin with. The chances that any harm would come if he did were . . . zero. And yet for a year this became the dominant political issue in North Carolina—more discussed than education, transportation, water, economic development, the environment, or any other issue that might actually affect the state’s citizens.

Over the years, ALEC and its allies have gotten good at driving wedges and laying down smokescreens with constitutional amendments forbidding gay marriage, crazy concealed-carry laws (and now, laws permitting silencers!), so-called religious liberty laws, elaborate voter-suppression efforts, and other legislation aimed at riling half the citizens of a state while rallying the other half. This is politics at its worst: distracting, destructive, and dangerous. And unless we figure a way to stop the demagoguery, things will grow only worse.

But how could we do that? I have a suggestion: Let a political party begin listening to the citizens. Not in a metaphorical sense, but literally. Start holding meetings around the state asking citizens what they need and want.

In doing so, we will quickly see that, given an opportunity to think about things, citizens aren’t interested in wedge issues; they’re interested in “web issues” (to use a Bill Clinton phrase). That is, issues that nearly everyone agrees are important, that unite us rather than divide us.

I’ve seen it over and over in years of citizen engagement work at the local level. With space to think about what they truly need and want, citizens don’t ask for voter-suppression laws, handgun silencers, privatized education, or the right to chop down trees. They ask for better public schools, more transportation options, new forms of economic development, greater access to broadband, and more ways of keeping young people in cities, towns, and rural areas.

But hold on. Meetings convened by a political party? Held across an entire state? Open to any citizen? Could anything good come from such an effort?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is . . . well, let me explain.

Why engaging citizens is right for today. The most obvious reason is because politics are so broken in our states. We need something to shock legislators back into focusing on what their citizens need and want, and not what out-of-state corporations and wealthy ideologues are willing to pay for.

And there is nothing more convincing to a politician than hearing citizen after citizen, from one end of the state to the other, asking for the same basic things from their government. Not in an angry protest or online petition. Not in a town-hall screaming match. But in calm, neutral discussions in small-town church basements, suburban school cafeterias, and neighborhood libraries.

Can it be done? And can it be done across an entire state? Yes. And yes. We do it at the local level all the time, so we don’t lack experience in holding civil, meaningful discussions about public policy or the ability to make sense of what the citizens are telling us. We lack a motivated sponsor. (If you’re interested in how to create civil conversations, start with this, then read this, then this. Oh, and know that we’ve held inclusive, polite, forward-looking, communitywide conversations for a long time . . . at least since the 1940s.)

O.K., but could we hold these discussions across an entire state? There’s no reason to think not. I’ve been involved over the years in visioning projects that convened a dozen or more meetings in different parts of a city or county. A state is larger, of course, but the principles are the same: to hear the voices of citizens, go to different parts of the state and ask essentially the same questions. (Here are some good ones: If your community could be everything you’d like it to be, what would it look like and how would it work? What would need to change? What needs to stay the same? Then ask: If the state government could help your community achieve these things, what are the most important two or three things it should do?)

But why ask a state political party to do it? Because it’s the surest way of repairing our broken state politics. Nothing focuses attention like serious competition. If one political party is convening meetings across the state asking citizens what they need while the other is cozying with special interests and engaging in demagoguery, citizens will notice. And eventually so will the leaders of both parties.

But why a political party? Why not a candidate? This gets us a little deeper in the thicket of state politics. State political parties are pretty feeble organizations. That’s because most of them don’t do much but carry out light-housekeeping election responsibilities and wait for candidates to emerge. They have neither the ambition nor the resources to do anything else.

Which strikes me as odd, given how important the labels “Democrat” and “Republican” have become in the past 30 years. Book after book and scholarly article after article have documented the rise of partisan identity in America. Some even see partisanship behind where people choose to live today. In many states, having an “R” or “D” next to your name is enough to ensure your re-election or doom you to defeat, depending on the district. No company in America has brand loyalty as great as America’s political parties.

So if you are the minority party in a one-party state, why not try to change your brand? Why not give those who would never consider voting for a Democrat a reason to see things differently? I believe having a state political party, year after year, holding civil, open, constructive conversations with voters—and publishing what it hears—could be just such a game changer.

But couldn’t a candidate do this kind of thing even better than a party? After all, plenty of politicians have begun their campaigns with “listening tours” in which they asked voters what’s on their minds. One candidate, Lawton Chiles of Florida, kept it up for his entire campaign. In 1990, Chiles asked people to tell him what was working in their communities all the way to election day. (The voters must have liked this unusual way of campaigning. They elected him governor.)

The problem is that most of the listening tours are just political tactics that are quickly dispensed with. Chiles’ efforts weren’t—he truly seemed to learn something by talking with voters—but he didn’t stick with it once he became governor. Candidate “listening tours,” then, aren’t sustainable. Nor are they systematic.

And that’s what we need: A new form of state politics based on listening to citizens in ways that are systematic and sustainable. And we can’t depend on candidates to do this. We need a permanent sponsor, an organization that sees value in engaging citizens year in and year out and is in a position to change politics.

And the only entity I can think of that fits this description is a political party.

So what would it take for a political party to take on a statewide citizen engagement process that continues indefinitely?

It takes a leader. Not a candidate or office holder (elected officials have their hands full with their own campaigns), but a donor, staff member, or party activist. Someone in a position to answer the three “P” questions of public policy: How do we manage the politics (inside the party)? How do we bring the public along (by positioning this new initiative)? And how do we pay for it (by finding donors willing to support such a bold new initiative)?

But what about publicizing and holding the meetings and making sense of what the citizens say? Isn’t this difficult? Well, it does require a talent for organization, a devotion to listening and reporting things accurately, and some skill with facilitation, but none of these is particularly hard to learn. (Trust me, I’ve learned all these things.) You can find consultants who can help, but if the party does it long enough, it will create these skill sets among its own staff.

So let me summarize: We have a way of changing the toxic nature of politics today. It has been thoroughly tested at the local level. It could change the way voters look at the two parties—to the benefit of the one bold enough to undertake such an initiative. It could bring purpose to one of our most underutilized political institution, state political parties. We need just one thing: a leader willing to fit the pieces together in her state and make it work.

This sounds good, but wait a minute. What would we do with the results of all this citizen engagement? If the Georgia Democratic Party or the California Republican Party went from city to suburb, town to country asking people what they wanted, if it made sense of what the citizens needed and wanted, if it created a report listing the top 10 (or 20) needs . . . then what?

In essence, nothing. Publish the results on a website (videos from the meetings would be nice) and send out a press release. (“Here is what the citizens of Georgia told us in 12 open-ended conversations across our state.”) Then repeat the following year.

After the first year, nothing will happen. Probably not much will happen after the second year. But about year three, the media, reformers, and your party’s leaders will start paying attention—and so will the opposition party’s leaders.

Among other things, they’ll notice that, in conversations across the state, in neighborhood libraries, suburban school cafeterias, and small-town church basements, citizens asked for the same things, over and over. They’ll also see that the citizens have big ambitions for their communities—a bigger vision than elected officials—but are realistic about the state’s role. And as these things sink in with legislators, the tide will turn.

As legislators and the news media see what the citizens really want, the demagogues will look foolish and those peddling special-interest legislation will be unmasked. Members of the party sponsoring the citizen meetings will rush in with bills responding to the citizen needs. Members of the other party will cast doubt on the meetings, but that won’t last long because the needs and wants will be so . . . obvious. And if they persist in denying the needs, that’s fine too. Because they won’t be the majority party for long.

My aim in putting this idea forward isn’t to elect more Democrats in Georgia or Republicans in California, but to change state politics. It probably would elect more Democrats to my state’s legislature because it would give voters a reason to reconsider the party. After all, it’s a great tactic. (“The Democrats listen to Georgia’s citizens, the other party listens to out-of-state interests.”)

But it’s more than that. It’s a way of reorienting politics to listening to citizens and treating them as equals in decision making. No government, state or local, should ever do things for citizens. It ought to do things with citizens. With, that is, the understanding that individuals, families, nonprofits, institutions, charities, religious organizations, and other governments have roles to play in making places better. All progress in complex societies is collaborative.

It begins with some simple questions: What do you need and want? What are you as citizens willing to do to achieve these things? What could others in your community do? And what could the state government help with?

And there’s only one group that can answer these questions: the citizens.

Postscript one: I’ve learned from long experience that one thing is essential in citizen engagement, and that is integrity. Manipulate the meetings by asking leading questions or packing the sessions with supporters, and you’ll be spotted as a fraud. You must make a sincere effort to get a cross-section of citizens to attend, and you must ask open-ended questions whose answers are recorded publicly and reported accurately.

Likewise, as you compile and analyze the comments and search for common themes, your methodology must be made clear. It has to answer this question: In combing through thousands of comments made by hundreds of citizens, how did you decide these were the things they wanted?

Trust me, the other party will criticize everything you did. So be prepared to defend everything you do. (Having videotape of the meetings will help.)

Postscript two: Small detail but big consideration. Should you let elected officials speak at these citizen meetings?

My answer: no. Elected officials (of either party) should be welcome to come, observe, and—if they wish—join the citizens as a citizen in talking about local needs. But allowing them to address the meeting would open the process to charges that the results were manipulated (see postscript one). These meetings should be about listening to the citizens. And that’s what elected officials should do in them: Stand to the side and listen attentively. They just might learn a thing or two.

How to Deal with a Demagogue

January 24, 2017 By Otis White

Civic leaders spend most of their time starting things like civic projects and nonprofit organizations. It’s absorbing, complex, difficult work that rewards the patient—and, for many, nourishes the soul.

But leadership is not always sunny. Sometimes responsible leaders are called on to stop things, from bad ideas to bad people. One type you’ll run across at some point in a long civic career is a demagogue, a person elected to office through skillful lying. The lies can be about imagined conspiracies holding back the city or promises that cannot conceivably be kept. Often, they’re both: Demagogues tell people that powerful forces are preventing them from getting unrealistic rewards, but electing them will put everything right.

I’ll let you figure out how to defeat such people at the polls. But the best way to defeat a demagogue is to undercut his effectiveness before he runs for office. Here are two thoughts:

  • Do not take these people lightly. If someone is flooding the community with fiction, respond with the truth. Do so in the same volume and with the same talent as the demagogue.
  • And practice prevention by praising leaders who do the right things, especially when it’s controversial. It is in these moments—when good leaders do good but difficult things and their supporters remain silent—that demagogues take over. So have your civic organization give the mayor a “courage award.” Write an op-ed article explaining why the mayor’s actions were needed and how they’ll make the city better. Attend city council meetings and speak up for the changes. In other words, preempt the demagogues and you won’t have to face them at city hall.

Let’s say none of that works, though. A demagogue runs and wins. What do you do the day after the election when you find that your mayor was elected on a platform of lies?

First, you can reach out to him, either on your own or as part of a small group. After all, talking is better than fighting. Elections tend to create hard feelings, of course, and you may have said things that make it difficult for him to answer your calls directly, so try reaching out to someone close to him. Let the intermediary suggest the meeting.

What do you say when you meet? You congratulate the mayor-elect on his victory and offer to work with him in any way you can on the issues facing the city. And then you stop and let him talk. You’re listening for hints that, once in office and facing reality, he may become more truthful and responsible. Or perhaps responsible in some areas, while continuing his antics in others.

If he offers those hints, breathe a small sigh of relief. It won’t be pleasant, but it’s possible that this may be someone you can work with in some areas . . . as you hope a better candidate emerges for the next election. (Keep in mind: This is a skillful liar. So, as Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify. And don’t be surprised if he says something different to the next group that walks in the door.)

There’s an equally good chance that he’ll use the meeting to threaten and rant. If so, listen without comment, thank the mayor-elect for his time, shake his hand, and leave as politely as possible. Or he may not meet with you at all. Then what?

You have to become part of his opposition. But here’s the problem: You want to stop the demagogue but do so in ways that do not harm the city. Otherwise, you’ve won a Pyrrhic victory. The demagogue is gone, but the citizens are so divided and cynical, progress on the real issues facing your city is impossible.

Here’s another problem: Demagogues rise because they have a talent for whipping up their followers with lies, prejudice, and a strong sense of victimhood. They are often good at innuendo and character assassination. If you fight on their terms, you will almost certainly lose.

The answer: You have to move the debate from terrain that favors demagogues (a clash of personalities) to that which favors you (the role of government in improving your city). As long as the narrative remains “the mayor vs. the Powers that Be”—which probably includes you—the mayor will win. But when it shifts to “the mayor vs. the job he can’t do,” you will win.

And this gets to the dirty little secret of demagogues: With few exceptions, they don’t have much interest in the job itself. They’re interested mostly in the position. Often, they don’t even understand the job.

I saw this up close in 1966 when I was in high school and my home state, Georgia, elected a demagogue as governor. Lester Maddox was a small man with large glasses and a gleaming bald head who ran a fried-chicken restaurant in Atlanta and bought ads in the local newspapers railing against federal civil rights laws. He more or less dared African Americans to integrate his joint.

When they did, Maddox made sure photographers were on hand to witness him and his associates, armed with guns and clubs, run them off. Incredibly, he wasn’t arrested for this, but he was forced either to integrate his restaurant or close it. He closed it. And then ran for office as a martyr for segregation.

Almost everyone in Georgia’s political, media, and business establishment considered Maddox a crackpot. But after a bizarre chain of circumstances—including finishing second in the election—Maddox was installed as governor in January 1967. And he was almost immediately paralyzed by the job, which involved appointing people to management positions, submitting a budget, announcing policy positions, and dealing with the legislature.

As his incompetence became apparent, he fell back on doing what had made him famous: stunts. He held “Little People Days” at the state capitol, where he invited people to show up and talk with him. He called photographers to the governor’s mansion to witness his talent at riding a bicycle backwards. (I’m not making this up.) He complained endlessly about news coverage. (When his official state portrait was painted, he insisted it include an image of a newspaper wrapped around a dead fish.) When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 and his funeral held in downtown Atlanta, Maddox ringed the capitol building with state troopers to prevent . . . whatever. (Nothing other than a solemn funeral and cortege took place, events attended by scores of national political leaders and thousands of citizens.)

In time, the voters had had enough of Maddox’s antics. When he ran for governor a second time, he was defeated by an earnest state representative whose campaign slogan was “A Workhorse, Not a Showhorse” and who promised . . . well, to do the job he was running for. The opponent won with nearly 60 percent of the vote.

Maddox was undone by his own shortcomings. But his downfall was aided by a set of leaders who figured out how to handle him. What did they learn, and what have others learned who’ve dealt successfully with demagogues?

Here are seven big lessons:

Don’t return fire when attacked. Demagogues are masters at name-calling, and you can’t win by trying to match them insult for insult. Remember: They aim to turn politics into a them-vs.-you battle. Don’t take the bait.

Don’t make fun of demagogues. The temptation will be strong to poke fun at their clownish behavior, but keep in mind that demagogues rise by telling people that powerful others are taking advantage of them. Treat them as clowns and it only bolsters their claims. Not only are people taking advantage of you, the demagogue will tell his followers, they’re laughing at you as well.

Treat the demagogue like a serious politician. When he promises fantastic things, analyze his promises the way you would a more serious leader’s. Tell the public what it would cost, what it would yield in benefits, who it would benefit, and who would pay. Don’t exaggerate. Don’t condemn. Just state the facts. But make sure your analysis is widely available and discussed.

Keep pointing out the issues not being addressed. Demagogues tend to have narrow bandwidths. They talk endlessly about their hobbyhorse issues but are easily bored by other, often more important matters. Use that boredom to emphasize the winning message: This mayor doesn’t want to do his job.

Praise responsible politicians. Find some “workhorses” and praise their efforts to take on the city’s neglected issues. (How about a “Workhorse Award?”) Let others draw the distinction between these workhorses and the showhorse in the mayor’s office.

Talk past the demagogue to his followers. Some unhappy citizens sent you a message in the election that they felt neglected. Find out what is bothering them and make their concerns part of your communications. You won’t win all of them over, but you may lessen the anger that is fueling the demagogue’s rise.

Beware of the manufactured crisis. As demagogues fail, they sometimes try to gin up support by creating crises—then demanding that others fall in line behind them. If this happens, start asking questions: Is this a genuine crisis or a problem the city has faced time and again? If it’s an old problem in a hyped-up guise, how has it been dealt with in the past? How did those solutions compare with what the mayor is suggesting now? If you can direct the debate along these lines, calmness will replace crisis. And there’s nothing less useful to a demagogue than a calm city.

Final thought: Hey, bad things happen to good cities. Don’t take it as an indictment if your city elects a demagogue who throws things into chaos for a while. Cities can learn from taking a wrong turn. It’s your job as a civic leader to gently steer yours in the right direction.

Photo by Robert Palmer licensed under Creative Commons.

Next Page »

Recent Posts

  • The Next Urban Comeback
  • A Reservoir for Civic Progress
  • How a Leader Assembles a Winning Team
  • What Smart Mayors Can Learn from the Turnaround of Central Park
  • How Communities Can Thrive in a Post-Newspaper World
  • Seven Habits of Highly Successful Civic Projects
  • When Bad Things Happen to Good Governments
  • How Citizen Engagement Could Save State Politics
  • How Odd Couples, Complementary Needs, and Chance Can Change Cities
  • A Better Way to Teach Civic Leadership
  • The Worst Management Idea of the 20th Century
  • How to Deal with a Demagogue
  • What Government Is Good At
  • Return to Sender
  • The Loneliness of the Courageous Leader
  • A Better Way of Judging Candidates
  • How to Build an Army of Supporters
  • A Beginner’s Guide to Facilitation
  • The Temperament of Great Leaders
  • Units of Civic Progress
  • Leadership as “a Kind of Genius”
  • How to Read a Flawed Book About Cities
  • A Mayor’s Test for Good Decisions
  • How to Manage a Crisis Before It Happens
  • Lesson Seven: Process and Results

Categories

About Otis White

Otis White is president of Civic Strategies, Inc., a collaborative and strategic planning firm for local governments and civic organizations. He has written about cities and their leaders for more than 30 years. For more information about Otis and his work, please visit www.civic-strategies.com.

The Great Project

Otis White's multimedia book, "The Great Project," is available on Apple iTunes for reading on an iPad. The book is about how a single civic project changed a city and offers important lessons for civic leaders considering their own "great projects" . . . and for students in college planning and political science programs.

For more information about the book, please visit the iTunes Great Project page.

Follow Us on Twitter and Facebook

You can find Otis White's urban issues updates by searching for @OtisWhite. And you can "like" us on Facebook.