COMMUNITY
JEWFRO
Brooks Patterson Is
Our Coleman Young
akland County Executive
Brooks Patterson has provoked
headlines and headaches over
the past week with his comments
in the New Yorker disparaging
Detroit.
Pundits are neither
surprised at Patterson's
loose lips nor inclined to
give him a free pass on
some startling remarks
— among others, liken-
ing the city to an Indian
reservation.
With Patterson's last
sparring partner, Kwame
Kilpatrick, serving time in
federal prison, the profile
comes across less as real-
time rivals going toe-to-
toe than as the shadowboxing of a
pugilist past his prime.
And for all the noise, one thing is
increasingly clear: As much as we
may see them on the opposite sides
of any and every spectrum, L. Brooks
Patterson is our Coleman A. Young.
This is an observation, not an
indictment. Each had — for that
matter, both still have — fiercely
loyal supporters. Writings on both
refer to political gifts and what-ifs
(big ifs) that involve each occupy-
ing the Oval Office.
Patterson receives praise for
keeping Oakland County's financial
house in order while the hous-
ing market collapsed and Detroit
descended into Chapter 9 bank-
ruptcy. Young was, according to the
Free Press, "the most austere Detroit
mayor since World War II, reducing
the workforce, department bud-
gets and debt during a particularly
nasty national recession in the
early 1980s."
Patterson has now been in
office for two decades — as long as
Young was — and has positioned
himself, like Young, as the region's
electorally indomitable power
broker.
Both men's big mouths make it
difficult to separate their work from
their words. And it's reasonable
to suggest those words interfered
with that work. Young's tongue
("Swearing is an art form. You
can express yourself much more
exactly, much more succinctly,
with properly used curse words.")
provided pretext for people and
businesses that left the city.
Patterson told the New Yorker,
O
www.redthreadmagazine.com
"People are gonna forgive me my
peccadilloes because we're the
best-managed county in America,"
but Free Press columnist Stephen
Henderson speculates that his
statements could appreciably hurt
his county's position in
negotiating over the fu-
ture of the Detroit Water
and Sewerage Depart-
ment.
Patterson places him-
self at the center of Oak-
land County and Oakland
County at the economic
and political center of the
region, possibly as reac-
tion to the way Young did
in Detroit.
Both are wrong. And
their parochialism forced each to
push against the pendulum rather
than harness its momentum. Over
the course of Young's tenure, a
decades-old trend of suburban-
ization accelerated in Southeast
Michigan, as it did in many other
metropolitan areas. In the 20 years
that Patterson has been in power,
the nation — including Metro
Detroit — has experienced a re-
newed interest in urban centers as
hubs for creativity, innovation and
diversity.
Both men, in serving their con-
stituents with hubris rather than
humility, missed myriad opportuni-
ties to realize the region's interde-
pendence and mutual benefit.
And Patterson himself offered a
prime example of the tendency to
misattribute complex outcomes to
loud, long-serving leaders. In 1997,
after Young's death, Patterson said,
"He was singly responsible for the
demise of Detroit!'
I heard a state representative
say recently (referring to no one
in particular),"We just have to let
some of these old guys die off." I
wish Patterson a full recovery from
his 2012 car accident and hope, for
everyone's sake, that his political
career ends while he is still in his
70s. By then, Young will have been
out of office a quarter of a century
and will probably be as much the
lightning rod as he was ever was.
Being polarizing in posterity, no
less than while still in office, is like
cement shoes. Their legacies sink
not just the men and their minions,
but people who could otherwise
swim together.
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RED THREAD I February 2014 29