No, it was Mike Starr, a big Italian actor, who was in Goodfellas and Miller's Crossing and lots of other good stuff. He played a Philadelphia Senator who'd been beat in an election, Toby wanted to call a lame duck session so he could vote on a missile treaty or something he'd introduced, and Marino refused on principle, since the voters had elected someone else.

In other words, a well-meaning liberal fantasy, like every other episode of the West Wing. What a beautiful dream.

--Tim

You don't have any problems with patronage and campaign contributions coming from lawyers who do bond work with the state?

When I look at the world in terms of the political ideals I'd like to see realized in it in so far as that is possible, those things trouble me. I'd like to live in a world in which we are governed more by democratic debate over issues and good arguments than one in which one politician can develop a powerful political machine by the skillful use of campaign contributions and patronage. I recognize that the ideal is impossible to realize entirely and that patronage and contributions will always be with us. (And I point out in the longer essay from which I drew my post on Senator Fumo, there might actually be good theoretical reasons not to want a political community that totally fits the ideals.) But as progressive I'd like to see us tilt more to the ideal than we do now.

I am frankly much less troubled by the accusations against Senator Fumo--and for now, they are just accusations. When someone asked me during my campaign whether Senator Fumo deserves to be in jail I said, "He deserves a fair trial." and I still think that is the right answer.

What is interesting about these accusations is that they have had absolutely no relevevance Senator Fumo's political conduct. He has not been accused of taking money in order to change his vote or to arrange a political deal of some kind. All these accusations are about personal corruption not political corruption.

It is not that I think it is OK for a government official to use public funds for his own purposes. And it is certainly true that you can be a legislative genius without doing so. Using public funds for your own purposes is and should be illegal and someone who is convicted of such a crime in a fair trial deserves to be punished. It is the equivalent of corporate executives using their expense account for their own gain with, of course the different that the corporate executives rip off their stock holders and public officials rip us off. It is, as I said, deserving of punishment. But that sort of thing is much less of a threat to the integrity of our politics than many other things politicians do, including many things they do that are now but should not be legal.

I can't resist pointing out that if Senator Fumo had been successful last year in his effort to take away the city's right to zone the casinos, there would be no basis for his suit.

The legislative record clearly shows however, that under a great deal of pressure from citizens of Philadlephia, who faxed their legislators after receiving a massive email barrage sent out by Ed Goppelt, me and a bunch of other folks, that language was pulled from the bill.

and if I haven't made that clear, I'm sorry.

I spent five months of my life going around the city saying that politics is broken in Philadelphia and detailing on my blog and in my speeches just how politics as usual has, as you say, has pernicious long term effects on this city. In fact, I think I've spelled that out in as much detail as anyone in the progressive movement. Some other candidates running as progressives in fact criticized me for presenting too radical an analysis of our politics.

But the point I'm making in the post above is that we can't just criticize politics as it is today, we need to provide an alternative that can accomplish the substantive goals we seek.

We have two problems, as I see it,

The first, to which Ray Murphy and I have pointed many times, is that we simply don't have the organization on the ground we need to win elections. And it is very difficult to build organizations in many parts of the city, especially those that are ill-served by politics as usual

The second, is in some ways, even more difficult. We have to figure out a way to convert whatever organization we have into a force that can make public policy. We progressives are not united on all things, as anyone who reads YPP can see. Nor are we united in the candidates we support as anyone can see from the council at large race. How, then, do we turn, whatever organization we can develop into agreement on public policy? And while we are building our power, while we are just one faction among many in the city, how do we stay united enough to negotiate with the other factions, both to win elections and to change public policy. How, in other words, do we build power?

This is enormously difficult. One way to see the extent of the problem is to look at the best book I've ever read on American politics. James S. Young’s The Washington Community, 1800-1828. It explores the near collapse of the US government during the war of 1812 in the second administration of Madison. And it shows that the US government, which in many ways was quite a pure regime in which ideological and regional interests were primary and self-interested behavior by politicians relatively unimportant, almost collapsed because of those ideological and regional differences. And it was not as if those differences were really so great. The amount of heat and anger around the Bank of United States was far greater than any impact the Bank could have had. But in the absence of other disputes, relatively minor differences loomed larger and larger in the minds of politicians and ideologues. (Compare this to the kinds of disagreements we have here sometimes about, for example, whether to build a new university or expand Temple or about whether we should focus economic development policy on those who already live in Philadelphia or try to recruit new Philadelphians.) That is to say, a politics based on ideas tends to lead to all kinds of splitting and division. And that makes it very difficult to create the agreement necessary to make public policy

According to Young, what saved our political system and constitution was the election of Andrew Jackson. Jacksonian Democracy brought three things to our politics than united the Democratic Party and enabled it to rule successfully. The first was an expansion of presidential power that was based on Jackson's ability to claim a popular mandate and his charisma. The second was patronage, as Jacksonian Democracy was partly held together by the political machine created by Martin Van Buren in New York and elsewhere. And the third was money as the popular campaign Jackson ran required, for the first, time, substantial expenditures. The money came, in part from the state banks that were looking for Jackson to help them by doing away with the Bank of the United States.

So a fairly pure democracy in which the people’s body, the legislature, was dominant became a less pure democracy in which a strong individual set the direction of the country and did so by gaining support in congress not just on the basis of his ideas, but with his charisma, mandate, and control of patronage and money.

The kind of politics we both dislike in Philadelphia didn’t happen by accident. It developed because it was functional for at least some people. As I said, I don’t like the role that money and patronage plays in our system. And the long term consequences of this system is that, as I said in my campaign, our politicians do not focus on the common good and do not adopt innovative public policies. Instead they fight over the spoils. It is thus enormously difficult to change the political direction of the city. But when a brilliant legislator has some control over money and patronage, he can make good—and bad—things happen. We shall soon see whether a strong Mayor can make good things happen and how much distance he can put between himself and politics as usual while still remaining effective.

The question for progressives, then, is how to build an organization that not only has a mass base—which we are very far from right now—but that is also unified enough to actually rule—and we are a long way from that—without adopting the tools of patronage and money.

Those are the two challenges I see for the progressive movement.

As for Bob Brady, I consider him a friend but I didn’t endorse him or any other Mayoral candidate during the campaign. Like the rest of the progressive running for council I sought some help from all of the mayoral candidates and from one or another of the factions in the city and got some here or there but, clearly given the result, not as much as I had hoped for. I thought that progressive might have figured out a way to work between the factions to elect a few folks to Council. But that was very difficult, in no small part because in the at-large race many of us were running against each other and because candidates in the district races facved very different circumstances than candidates in the at-large races. I'm trying to think through what we can do to avoid these problems in the future, which is one reason I'm thinking so much now about how to build our base and how to create some unity within the progressive movement. Right now I have a lot more questions than answers.