I'm Not Bitter... and Neither Are Most of Ravenstahl's Critics

I had waited for so very long. I knew my time was coming, but it seemed like it was always the rest of the Burghosphere which kept getting them. And then, at long last, I finally received my first comment from that famed commenter (anonymous in my case), who said what he (or she) has said in numerous other comments in about eight or nine other blogs. In response to my latest post about Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's use of taxpayer dollars to fund the printing and distribution of his own campaign liteature (Ravenstahl-Pollooza Arrives!), Anonymous wrote the following comment:

Why are you people so bitter? It's unhealthy, really.

You can find similar comments attached to recent posts in The Burgh Report ("give the guy a break...", "I agree. This post is complete rubbish.", "Some of you people have totally lost your minds. You are obsessed with trying to bring down the Ravenstahl administration."), 2PJs ("You people over here are so damn obsessed.", "I can see all of Bill Peduto's lemmings are on here ripping Mayor Luke.", "It's really a non-issue but since this blog is obsessed with Mayor Luke it's an issue here."), along with a number of other Burgh-based blogs.

I am honored to see that I am -- finally -- in such good company. But still, some kind of clarification on my part becomes necessary at this point.

I could, of course, attempt to refute these kinds of comments on their merits. But the thing is that these kinds of comments, as posted both here and elsewhere, seldom make any attempt to argue the merits of the pro-Ravenstahl position. They are rarely more than a sentence or two in length, and usually amount to nothing more substantive than a plea to give the young man a "fair go" (as they would say in Australia).

So the only thing that I can say is that I am not bitter. I don't hate Luke Ravenstahl. I feel that, during the past six months, I gave him far more than a "fair go". From the very moment that former Mayor Bob O'Connor got sick and Master Ravenstahl's elevation to mayor became a real possibility, I was honestly excited by the prospect. I was enormously hopeful that this young mayor could provide the much-needed kick in the pants that could propel our city into at least the 20th century, if not the 21st.

To really understand the story of my feelings about Mayor Ravenstahl, I probably need to take you all the way back to the 2001 mayoral election. I was disgusted with Tom Murphy's tactics in that election, especially his outright bribing of the firefighter's union to win the primary by a whisker. Like hordes of other people, I was not pleased.

But at the same time, I did develop an appreciation for Mayor Murphy -- especially once he decided not to seek another term in office -- because he was clearly separated from the disastrous Democratic party machine that has done so much harm around here. I know that there are many who would argue that he wasn't all that separate from the party machine, and I will agree that he wasn't totally disconnected from it. But at the same time, he allowed himself to say and do things that he believed were in the city's best interests, even if they conflicted with the best interest of the party's political elite.

Despite some degree of grudging admiration for Mayor Murphy, I was happy to see him go. I was happy to see Bob O'Connor take office. I was a tiny bit skeptical, since Mayor O'Connor had been so thoroughly invested in local party politics for so long, but I thought he would bring a breath of fresh air into things.

My happiness did not last long. In fact, the appointment of Dominic Costa as police chief completely erased any goodwill that I had towards the O'Connor administration. After seeing Pittsburgh get largely bypassed by the nationwide reduction in crime which took place in the 1990s, I had truly hoped that we could bring in a chief from elsewhere who would employ some of the tactics that had been so useful in other cities across the nation. By looking no further than Penn Hills, Mayor O'Connor instantly showed that things weren't going to change with him at the helm.

So when Mayor Ravenstahl took the oath of office, I was just so enormously hopeful. Even though his father held a relatively minor public office, I believed that nobody in their mid-20's could be all that invested in local Democratic party machine politics. How many political debts could he have possibly accrued such a short career in office? Perhaps, as a young person like myself, he could see the city's problems in a new light, without continual harping about the way things used to be.

What is truly astonishing is that Mayor Ravenstahl has been able, in just five or six short months, to eat through all of my initial goodwill and turn me into a fierce antagonist. I kept my mind open through the Regan appointment. I began to lose some faith, but was still hopeful when the Mayor's bogus investigation found no wrongdoing on Regan's part. At least Regan was gone from city government, and that was good enough for me.

Luke Ravenstahl could have kept me in his corner, at least for a little while longer, if he had just granted whistle-blower status to Catherine McNeilly. As soon as Ms. McNeilly was punished, however, I was done. Regardless of her family's ties to Tom Murphy, and regardless of her own political motivations for attacking the Ravenstahl administration, the simply reality is that she had (and still has) the facts on her side. She herself seems to be willing admit that she broke some internal regulations in sending some of these facts to City Council. But these facts needed to get out, and not a single one of these facts seem to be in dispute by anyone at all.

Dennis Regan never had any business whatsoever being involved in City government. Bob O'Connor made an enormous mistake by employing him in that manner. Luke Ravenstahl made it worse by latching onto Mr. Regan and attempting to increase Mr. Regan's power even further. But in the end, Catherine McNeilly showed everyone -- apparently including Mr. Ravenstahl -- that Mr. Regan was an inappropriate choice to work in city hall. Any rational politician could have seen that granting her whistle-blower status in the wake of Mr. Regan's resignation would have made the story go away, minimized the political damage of the whole situation, and led to best result for everyone concerned.

Why Mr. Ravenstahl jumped the wrong way on this one is beyond me. He clearly used very bad judgement. Either he honestly believes the preposterous notion that Ms. McNeilly's actions are somehow worse than those of Dennis Regan, or he has erred in listening to other people who have their own reasons for seeing Ms. McNeilly and her family punished. Either way, it's bad judgement.

I'm not the only one to sour on Mr. Ravenstahl in the last month or so. While one could easily anticipate attacks on his adminstration from the Tribune-Review, we are also beginning to see some signs of concern being expressed by the Post-Gazette, which had been doing little more than reprinting Mr. Ravenstahl's press releases while throwing in a bit of supportive fluff to buttress him even further.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If Luke Ravenstahl wants to win me -- and other voters like me -- back into his fold, then he needs to be his own man. He needs to shed his office of all of the hangers-on from the O'Connor administration. He needs to come up with his own plans and original ideas, instead of just rehashing things that the previous adminstration had already accomplished.

It would be nice to be able to examine Mr. Ravenstahl's ideas and policies. It would be nice to be able to decide whether I agree with his vision on the future of our city. But at the moment, neither I nor anybody else seems to have any idea of what this vision really entails. Like those who leave comments in support of his administration, he seems to be saying nothing more than, "support me just 'cause...". Most of us need a better reason than that, especially after seeing such an amazing sequence of bad decisions in the past few months.