GOP Bashes Detroit

The Republican party is making hay on something of a familiar note: hitting Detroit while its down. Several GOP leaders and conservative commentators, Newt Gingrich and Glenn Beck among them, are citing Detroit as exactly what happens when Democratic leadership rules for long periods of time.

Are such criticisms fair? When an area becomes so dependent on a single industry, as Detroit had been relying on the automotive industry for so long, then it is natural that when the one suffers the other must. Further, such things as the Interstate Highway System cut through many viable neighborhoods during the 1960s and led many to leave town. For these and other reasons, it arguably an overstatement to blame all the city's woes on its leadership.

Yet that cannot excuse areas where leadership has failed Detroit and Detroiters. Indeed it is rather simplistic to see an area suffer without consideration of how its politics may have contributed to the decline. Think what you want of him, but Coleman Young did not exactly help the situation. His bluster and confrontational style surely did not attract outside help. Kwame Kilpatrick, well, we know what being Mayor meant to him, and he is paying the price of his own arrogance. As a result, when we get decent Mayors such as Dennis Archer and Dave Bing, we ought not be surprised at the uphill battles they have faced.

Is it coincidental that our Mayors have been Democrats? That our Council has been ruled by Democrats for decades? Does anybody even know who was the last elected Republican to win a Detroit elective office? And would they have been swallowed by their loyal opposition regardless? That Detroit offices are held as nonpartisan matters not one whit. We know to whom they pledge their loyalty.

That the troubles with Detroit may ultimately have sprung from multiple reasons of varying effect is fair to consider. But while we cannot say that some of the city's problems were wholly of her own making, we cannot absolve Detroit leaders of the role they played. That they were overwhelmingly Democrats must mean something. It is pretty obvious that such meaning has not been lost on the rest of the state, nor the nation in general.