Posted on 09/19/2001 8:12:29 AM PDT by LibertarianLiz
Paul Schell is a man of unquestioned intelligence, vision, compassion and idealism. But friends and critics alike say those qualities alone aren't enough to make a successful political leader, as he proved by apparently losing yesterday's primary election.
What Seattle's one-term mayor needed but didn't have, they say, are the political skills to carry out his vision.
"Despite his compassion and his vision, he lacked those political skills that you need to govern," said state Rep. Ed Murray, a Schell supporter and former City Council staffer. "You need political skills to get things done and to get people behind you."
Walt Crowley, a Seattle historian and longtime observer of city politics, likewise termed Schell "a good public servant but a lousy politician. And there is a difference."
Schell, 63, came into the office as sort of a Renaissance man, the most broadly credentialed mayor in decades. The Iowa native had been a Wall Street lawyer, Seattle's director of community development, dean of architecture at the University of Washington, a downtown developer, hotel builder and port commissioner.
During the 1997 mayoral campaign that led to Schell's election, Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman recalled in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial column the vision his longtime friend Schell had for Seattle even back in the late 1960s.
"He was a visionary," Chapman wrote, "the kind of person who is impatient because he sees what might be and still is not; the person whose mind casts far back into history for lessons and far forward to the image of a better future. Even then he saw Seattle as both more livable for its residents and more pleasing to behold."
Having that vision, observers say, did him little good without the ability to steer it to fruition.
"Paul is driven by vision and by big pictures and big plans and by overarching concepts, various intellectual constructs that I don't think he has done a very good job of bringing down to earth and to the day-to-day experience of the people of this city," said Crowley, who has endorsed no one in the mayor's race.
As an example of a Schell vision that remained largely conceptual, Crowley cited Schell's advocacy of "Cascadia," a world straddling the U.S.-Canada border, built on open borders, free trade and regional cooperation. It led to the forming of a Cascadia organization of mayors from Washington, Oregon and British Columbia, but it never floated down to voter level.
Crowley, Murray and others said Schell compounded his lack of political skills by filling the top echelons of his administration with people who shared his shortcomings.
"On a tactical level, I don't think he has been well-served by his staff," Crowley said. "but I don't blame them. I blame him because he did not hire people with the skills that would compensate and balance for his deficiencies."
Murray added, "I can't imagine an Ann Levinson or a Bob Watt, who were deputy mayors to (former mayor) Norm Rice, ever letting Norm Rice hang out on some of the issues that Paul has been left hanging out in the media on. I think WTO and Mardi Gras are examples."
In the minds of many observers, those two ugly, heavily televised episodes -- the 1999 World Trade Organization riots in downtown Seattle and this year's Mardi Gras violence in Pioneer Square -- doomed Schell politically, inflicting mortal wounds from which he never figured out how to recover.
"I think it started with WTO, but I think Mardi Gras sealed his fate to the point that it was no longer retrievable for him," said Don McDonough, a Seattle polling consultant who is the campaign pollster for King County Councilman Greg Nickels. Nickels and City Attorney Mark Sidran were the apparent survivors of the mayoral primary.
When during the Mardi Gras violence "the police stood by and watched the beatings, and of course the one young man who died -- and the mayor, it was revealed, was home asleep -- I think after that, there was no recovery for him," McDonough said.
"I think it was those two major events, coupled with a lot of interceding, smaller events, coupled with inattention to any kind of political operation in the Mayor's Office. And political enemies on the (city) council ... and over time, the list of people that he had offended, either unintentionally or intentionally, became so large that his allies became really few and far between."
Schell watchers cite small oversights that a seasoned politician wouldn't have let happen.
When it came time for district Democratic organizations to make political endorsements -- a big deal in Seattle election campaigns -- Schell's campaign aides didn't bother calling lists of party members in advance to line up support, said Murray, a Democratic legislator.
Schell "doesn't think about getting on people to get those lists called," Murray said. "So if he doesn't think about it, there needs to be people around him who do think of that. And there weren't those people around him." Despite Schell's incumbency, Nickels got nearly all the Democratic party endorsements.
"It's great to be a person of vision and it's great to be a person of compassion. But there has to be someone around him to take care of the details," Murray said.
McDonough, like others, said WTO and Mardi Gras created "a sense of nobody being in charge, that the city was kind of rudderless. 'The buck stops here' is a political euphemism, but I think nobody knew where the buck stopped.
"And instead of taking political responsibility, saying, 'I take my share of the blame' or 'I should have done it differently,' there was a bunch of finger pointing going on."
Observers said Schell lacked the temperament to be a successful politician. He was too impatient, they said, and sometimes too temperamental. He tended to think that if an idea was good enough, people would or should embrace it with no need to lay the political groundwork to build support.
After WTO, Schell angrily berated popular King County Sheriff Dave Reichert, reportedly threatening to "personally destroy" him. The mayor also had political fights with County Executive Ron Sims. After the two, for several years, maintained a public façade of being close political colleagues, Sims recently delivered a scorching criticism of the mayor in the process of endorsing Nickels' candidacy.
Schell "had a temper, and he was a little bit of a bully, I've heard from people on the inside (of City Hall)," McDonough said. "And he kind of had difficulty asking people for help, building coalitions, being somebody who was interested in consensus. He could have an idea, but he couldn't bring it along so that other people would come along. He couldn't convince them that it was a great idea or convince them that it was their idea."
McDonough said his polling for Nickels showed that Schell's popularity with the voters remained stuck in the low 20s "from the early part of this race," while Nickels and Sidran remained neck and neck in the middle to high 20s.
"His problem was almost like Jimmy Carter in 1980," McDonough said. "People don't want to vote for him, they don't want him to be mayor for the next four years, but they're not sure yet about the alternatives.
"He was not able to make his base grow. He did not achieve any kind of rehabilitation.
Stuart Elway, another Seattle pollster, who isn't involved in the mayoral race, thinks the voters' perception of a lack of mayoral control "might have manifested itself on several levels, the most visible being the problems on the street.
"But (it's) also at a more subterranean level, that (Schell) was not in control of city government, that the management of city government was sort of drifting."
Elway and others thought before the primary that last week's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., might give Schell a boost. The tragedy gave him an opportunity to present a steady, compassionate, comforting image -- frequently televised -- to Seattle citizens.
And Schell might have looked retroactively prescient to any voters who recalled the criticism he endured at the eve of the millennium when, amid fears of terrorist acts, he canceled a New Year's Eve celebration at the Space Needle. It was an unpopular decision.
"That doesn't look so bad now, does it?" Elway observed.
As yesterday's election returns showed, it wasn't enough to save him.
I was surprised by the results of the primary yesterday. I had no hope for Seattle voters and believed they would just put this incompetent boob back in the mayor's chair. Of course, having only other democrats running against him was probably why the socialist citizens of Seattle felt comfortable voting for someone else. Or, the trouble was we just didn't understand Schell's "vision".
When during the Mardi Gras violence "the police stood by and watched the beatings, and of course the one young man who died -- and the mayor, it was revealed, was home asleep -- I think after that, there was no recovery for him," McDonough said.
This pretty much says it all about this guy.
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I particularly admired the way he allowed the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, and the main source of revenue for the city, move out with thousands and thosands of employees. (To a dubious location like Chicago, no less!) He was quite a gifted man. So much accomplished in such a short period of time!!
Don't forget Paul Schell's immortal line: "I am not a wuss!"
If you have to say it, then you are.
What Seattle's one-term mayor needed but didn't have, they say, are the political skills to carry out his vision.Riiiiggghhhtttt. And communism is a great system (lots of that vision thing) that just hasn’t been tried by the right people yet.
yet.
yet.
yet.
yet.
Nope, still not the right people this time either. Not yet.
etc.
patent +AMDG
I don't know if you've heard, but yesterday Boeing announced it is going to be laying off around 30,000 employees --- mostly from the Seattle area.
When the announcement was made about the Chicago move, a lot of people opined that this was just the beginning and that Boeing would be getting rid of all of it's operations in the Seattle area. This may be the beginning of that move. The WTC event just made the layoffs much larger than anticipated.
And why do they think Chicago would be better? It's a heavily Union town. Nobody steps out of their slot to do one extra thing to help complete a job...Oh, yes. Stupid me. I forgot. We're talking about Boeing, and that's the way that corporation's workforce always operates. They'll love Chicago.
BOO HOO! Maybe Paul can become the King of Kascadia.
:-0
Actually, almost anywhere in the country would be better than Seattle. Lower taxes, less anti-business atmosphere, better local infrastructure for operations, etc
Seattle is a sh*thole for businessmen. However, if youre a trust funded hippee brick thrower.. it's great.
Yeah, but Boeing always had a sweetheart deal on B&O taxes.
To the Kirkland Reeducation and Political Indoctrination Center for you. What is your problem? Your Birkenstocks on too tight? Not enough Starbucks quasi-vanilla-mocha-cherry-smoked-salmon-non-fat-banana-decaf-latte (for coffee lovers only) in the blood stream? Been sucking on your yuppie plastic water bottle substitute tit too much? Seattle is the most beautiful city in the socialist world and you should be delighted to pay most of everything you have in taxes to the well run city government. Get with it.
I like Sidran's ads, too. Nickel's ads complaining about Sidran's "negative campaigning" sound very whiney. Sidran got a pretty good chunk of the vote yesterday, so I have to think that he may be the front-runner on this.
But Illinois met their bid and raised it.
Anyway, any city govt unwilling to deal with a bunch of spoiled rich kid leftwing agitators is not a gov't you necessarily want to spend the rest of your days dealing with.
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