Don’t Call it a Comeback
2008-09-08
By David Swerdlick
When Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick gets out of lock up a few months from now, I’m picturing a scene out of Ocean’s 11, with Brad Pitt standing outside the prison gates wolfing down a loaded-up Coney, waiting to greet just released George Clooney; or maybe Stringer and Shamrock from The Wire scooping up Avon in front of the state pen. Only this time I see Kilpatrick climbing into a waiting Hummer and tossing his state-issued denim out the window in favor of a tailored double-breasted jacket while he speeds away with former Cincinnati Mayor Jerry Springer and former Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, as the three cagy pols head to Oakland Hills to make their tee time with Bill Clinton for a round of 18 holes and Lord knows what else.
Under the general heading of, “the light skin and the long hair will get you every time,” Kilpatrick, the self-styled and so-called “ Hip Hop Mayor,” was finally undone last week via the chain of events set in motion by his now well-publicized affair with former chief of staff Christine Beatty, whose number one responsibility as a mayoral aide was to keep him away from people like herself.
During the first of what are sure to be multiple farewell press conferences, Kilpatrick spoke the words that will reverberate in the minds of Detroiters for all 100 days of Kilpatrick’s incarceration: “...you done set me up for a comeback.” What remains to be seen now is whether or not Kilpatrick can pull it off, especially considering that one of the terms of his plea deal is a five-year ban on running for elective office. The blueprint has already been laid out for Kilpatrick by his erstwhile mentors and predecessors in scandal: the shameless Springer, the defiant Barry, and the “complicated” Clinton.
Kilpatrick probably won’t be able to pull off a reset of Marion Barry’s 1995 comeback. It’s easier to be the first person to use the “too black, too strong” approach, but for the second guy it’s not always a good look. When Kilpatrick is released from prison next year, Detroit—the Chocolate-est City—won’t be necessarily be moved by the perpetually pin-striped Kilpatrick campaigning door-to-door wearing a kufi with a hand carved ankh around his neck. In a city besieged by staggering auto industry job losses, pervasive mortgage foreclosures, and a declining tax base, it would stretch credulity to see the former resident of Manoogian Mansion trying to recast himself as The People’s Champ.
Personally, I would have advised Kilpatrick to go the Jerry Springer route. When Springer lost faith with Cincinnati’s voters in the late ‘70s after taking the wrong approach to field testing legalized prostitution, Springer flipped the script on the scandal-mongers with his wildly popular “talk” show. All that Kilpatrick had to do once his risqué text messages went public was to lay low for a year or so and then cut a deal to avoid jail time. There would almost certainly have been a talk show—“All Nightline,” perhaps?—or at least a VH1-like reality series in his future—“Mayor of Love,” anyone?
And even though Wayne County prosecutors and Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm ultimately weren’t interested in Kilpatrick’s definition of “the meaning of ‘is’,” his downfall is strikingly similar to that of former President Clinton’s: the text messages vs. the blue dress, the Detroit City Council vs. a hostile Congress, and Kilpatrick’s “ You remind me of my jeep ” swagger that matches up with Clinton’s “ We could do this every weekend ” persona.
Like Clinton, who remains a national political icon, Kilpatrick is still popular with a lot of Detroiters, despite the fact that his lasting legislative accomplishments are mostly sops to the corporate community. And like Clinton, Kilpatrick is likely to face disbarment. He’ll surely have to write a bestselling memoir to pay down the million dollars in restitution that he’s sentenced to pay to the City of Detroit. The only question is whether it will be a Tavis Smiley-esque tome called “ Left Hard ” or a Russell Simmons-styled self-help treatise called, “ Do Me! ” For all we know, he’ll complete the Clinton trifecta and wind up stumping for his wife if she runs for Mayor herself. Mom Dukes is a Congresswoman, so why not get the Mrs. into the act? It worked for Hillary Clinton.
The real shame here (I mean, apart from the marital strife, of course...) is that in theory, Kilpatrick could have been something like a junior Barack Obama. When Kilpatrick first came on the scene, he was supposed to be one of the marquee names for the new black politics. But he started to smell his own musk just a little too much. It happens to the best of them, but here’s what’s baffling: Kilpatrick is the chief executive of a factory town even though he bears no resemblance to a hard luck Joe Six Pack. He’s been taken down a peg or two, and for months, he’s had the wherewithal to reinvent himself—if only he could have let go of trying to convince Detroiters that he was still who they thought he was. If Kilpatrick had displayed just a touch more contrition at an earlier stage, most of us would probably feel sorry for him at this point.
It’s the Achilles’ heel of 21st Century politics. For some reason, politicians don’t seem to understand until it’s too late that if they get caught stepping out, the only way for their political careers to survive is to act as if their political careers are over. But when they approach the situation as if they have a candidacy to salvage, it turns their constituents against them and their enemies into rabid dogs. Kilpatrick could have come clean a long time ago and by now the comeback would be in full swing. Instead, generations of Michigan school children will be reading about his horny text messages in their history books and writing essays about how he was hauled back across the Detroit River from nearby Windsor, Ontario, all the while claiming that he was just “ Follow the Drinking Gourd.”
Kilpatrick didn’t represent well for the Hip Hop generation. His tenure as Mayor will ultimately stand for the common sense proposition that you can’t be entrusted with the leadership of a big city if you can’t keep your personal business out of the street. But he didn’t create Detroit’s myriad problems, and now his successors—particularly those who stridently pushed for his ouster—have to be careful of what they wished for, because now they’re in charge of Detroit’s comeback, while Kilpatrick is free to plot out his own.
Kwame Kilpatrick
David Swerdlick is a contributor to PopMatters and a former contributor to Creative Loafing. His writing has appeared in The Root, AlterNet and The American Prospect.
