Vol. 80: Trump’s future, Rizzo’s past

Worried about 2024? How about 2028?

         “I don’t believe that Trump means the end of democracy or civilization or life on Earth,” the New York Times columnist Bret Stephens declared last week (July 21). “We lived through four bumpy Trump years before, and I’m pretty sure we can survive another four.”

         He has a point, you know. Germany and Japan, once the world’s most militaristic societies, both survived World War II to become two of the world’s most pacifist societies. Of course, some 53 million people died in the process. But you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, right?

         Three days earlier, while moderating a round table discussion published in the July 18 Times, the paper’s deputy opinion editor Patrick Healy remarked, “Should he win, Trump will automatically be a lame duck president, and his vice president will be as close to an heir apparent as American politics usually get.”

         Like Bret Stephens, no one on that Times panel questioned Healy’s basic assumption that another Trump presidency would be a four-and-out, as required by the Constitution’s two-term limit for individual humans. These pundits join a long line of seasoned Washington journalists who assume that the customary rules of American politics apply to Donald Trump. It’s a line that began in 2016 when John Harwood of CNBC dismissed Trump as a “comic book candidate” and the Huffington Post relegated Trump’s candidacy to its Entertainment section. It stretches right up to the aforementioned Bret Stephens, who, following the Republicans’ lackluster performance in the 2022 mid-term elections, pronounced Trump “finished as a serious contender for high office.”

Bull in a china shop

         These analysts are not stupid. Their problem is that they’re veteran political journalists in a situation that calls for a good shrink. Had they lived in Philadelphia through the tumultuous 1970s mayoralty of Frank Rizzo and its chaotic aftermath, as I have, they might perceive Trump very differently.

         Rizzo and Trump shared several key characteristics:

— Both had insatiable appetites for public attention.
— Both possessed inflated notions of their own abilities.
— Both appealed to the same constituency: blue-collar whites, resentful and fearful of being displaced by minorities.
— Both struck a single public pose: defiance, regardless of the issue at hand.
— Each instinctively tended to reduce every issue to a personal battle between himself and some designated villain.

If you weren’t there, you may have difficulty imagining just how downright nasty Philadelphia became during Rizzo’s two mayoral terms, when Rizzo operated as a bull in a china shop and his supporting cast— consisting largely of sycophants drawn to him as a surrogate father-figure— loyally shielded him from any suggestion that he might be in over his head.

When he left office in 1980, Rizzo bequeathed to his city racial animosity, a decaying transportation system, a politicized school board, spiraling property taxes, reduced city services, an annual homicide rate that was 65% higher than when he became police commissioner in 1967, more than 100,000 lost jobs, and nearly 250,000 lost population. Not all of that was Rizzo’s fault, to be sure. But the fact remains that this master of the illusion of control was helpless to stem the city's decline and did much to exacerbate it.

If God himself were mayor….

         Then as now, Philadelphia’s city charter limited the mayor to two consecutive terms in office (although ex-mayors are free to seek re-election after sitting out one term). Yet in 1978, Rizzo sought to change the City Charter to permit him to seek a third consecutive term. When that effort failed spectacularly, Rizzo did not accept defeat graciously. Instead, he ran again and again, unsuccessfully, in three subsequent mayoral elections. He’d still be running today if he hadn’t dropped dead of a heart attack during the 1991 campaign. One thing Rizzo hated more than losing was being ignored. Sound familiar?

         During a 20-year period between 1971 and 1991, Rizzo ran for mayor six times, if we include his disruptive attempt to change the City Charter so he could seek a third consecutive term. In between campaigns, he incited his followers by hosting a call-in talk radio show— the precursor of today’s social media. In the process, Rizzo forced his friends and foes alike to divert most of their civic energies to either supporting or resisting him. By 1991, when Rizzo died, Philadelphia’s municipal government had posted four consecutive deficits, was saddled with a $250 million cumulative deficit and a junk-bond credit rating and had lost 40% of its tax base within the previous ten years, 24% of its jobs within the previous 20 years, and 20% of its population within the previous 30 years. In 1990 William Donaldson, director of the Philadelphia Zoo and former city manager of Cincinnati, told a reporter: “If the Lord himself came to Philadelphia to be mayor, he’d have a lot of problems.”

         Yet two remarkable things happened in Philadelphia during the ’90s. First, Philadelphia's seemingly insoluble financial crises of the '70s and ‘80s suddenly evaporated. And second, Philadelphia's habitually negative residents started feeling good about themselves and their city. The 1990s triumvirate of Mayor Ed Rendell, his chief of staff David Cohen, and the City Council president, John Street, surely deserves some of the credit for that transformation. But an important factor, I would submit, was the removal, by death, of Rizzo's genuinely overwhelming and distracting presence.

Trump’s inadvertent blessing

         You could argue that those tempestuous Rizzo years were a blessing in disguise, forcing many traditionally reticent Philadelphians to discover strengths they hadn’t previously known they possessed. Rizzo’s inadvertent gift to Philadelphia, I have argued, was the anti-Rizzo coalition of liberals, Blacks, Latinos, LGBTQ+ people, feminists, and, yes, even white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who shared little in common other than the contempt in which Rizzo held them— that, plus their mutual if unspoken belief that Philadelphia was an urban experiment worth defending. The persistence of their unlikely alliance even to this day explains to some extent Philadelphia’s subsequent emergence as a world-class center of arts and culture, education, medical research, cuisine, upscale hotels, and gleaming high-rise buildings the likes of which were unknown to Philadelphia during any of the city’s so-called previous “golden ages.”

         I personally never resented Rizzo or his cronies. Their civic shenanigans during those 20 years forced their foes, myself included, to discover strengths we didn't previously know we possessed. The threat of Donald Trump has similarly energized previously submissive women, Blacks, minorities, and immigrants. Adversity is often a blessing to be welcomed.

         One benefit of Trump’s political adventures is the heightened political interest he has stimulated among Americans generally. My wife and I are good examples. Before Trump’s presidency, we never watched the news on TV, which mostly struck us as a shallow medium for conveying serious information. Instead, we relied on the next day’s New York Times or Philadelphia Inquirer or Wall Street Journal to learn what’s going on. After dinner, Barbara would play the piano while I read the papers. But once Trump took office, we seemed to be tuned to CNN all day long. I would come home from work, the TV would be playing, and my first words of greeting to Barbara would be: “What did the idiot do today?” And for better or worse, those habits have not receded since Trump left the White House.

Looking to 2028

         Ron Goldwyn, the longtime Philadelphia political journalist, once astutely remarked (although he never dared to say it in print), “Philadelphia’s problems won’t be solved until Frank Rizzo is six feet removed from the scene.” Much the same, I’m afraid, will apply to America and Trump. He will continue to run for president as long as he draws breath. He will continue to rally his angry base and intimidate Republicans who know deep down that he’s unstable. If he loses the presidential election this fall, he will run again in 2028, and every four years thereafter. He will continue to whip up his supporters on Twitter or X or Truth Social— whatever feeds his unquenchable appetite for attention.

         And if Trump wins the election this fall, he will seek to change the Constitution so he can seek a third term in 2028, just as Rizzo tried to change Philadelphia’s City Charter in 1978. Either way, we have not seen the last of Donald Trump, no matter how much turmoil he may cause.

         Let me add one further caveat. Frank Rizzo may well have been the worst mayor in Philadelphia’s long history. And I speak as an editor who successfully defended an $11 million libel suit that Rizzo filed in 1982 against my alternative weekly, the Welcomat. That said, I must concede that, next to Donald Trump, Frank Rizzo was a model of public service, self-sacrifice, maturity, and modesty.

When Trump departs

         The one ray of hope in this situation is Trump’s medical history. He turned 78 this year. Although he neither drinks nor smokes, he’s overweight and addicted to Whoppers and French fries. Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr., was diagnosed with dementia at 85 and apparently died of either dementia or Alzheimer’s eight years later, at 93. Trump has already exhibited some symptoms, like the time this year when he confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.

         And if the U.S. survives its Trump ordeal, at that point Americans will be the stronger for the experience, just as Philadelphians are stronger today for having survived Rizzo. Our political system will be better equipped to respond on that future day when, say, a Martian runs for president. Our legal system will be better prepared to react wisely when, say, an emotionally disturbed six-year-old grabs a woman customer by the crotch in the changing room at Bergdorf’s.

         This scenario assumes, of course, that Trump will indeed depart, just as Rizzo did. But past performance is not reassuring: When the Grim Reaper finally arrives, Trump will most likely hire somebody to die in his place.      

         Face it: He’s just too smart for us ordinary folks!

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s newest book, The Price We Paid: An Oral History of Penn’s Struggle to Join the Ivy League, 1950-55. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com.