Frank Jackson: Hitting His Stride

Over 50 years ago, our favorite question — designed to confound, confuse and catch the Sunday School teacher flatfooted — was, “Can God make a stone so heavy that He can’t lift it?” No matter the answer, our follow up was always “But I thought He could do anything!” Of course we weren’t seeking an answer... our goal was to embarrass.

While channel surfing the other night I saw a resident of Old Brooklyn attempting to put Frank Jackson into that same kind of trick bag (when is the last time you heard that expression?) at a Town Hall meeting held at a rec center in his community earlier this month. The elderly gent was obviously well prepared with an arsenal of budgetary statistics and cleverly crafted questions. If I had to guess, I would say that he’s a retired police officer publicly pushing the agenda of Cleveland’s Men in Blue. He was throwing his queries at the mayor’s head high and tight. And Jackson was leaning into the pitches and knocking them out of the park with the Louisville Slugger he carries around with him named “Truth.” He did it all evening.

Before I go any further I need to restate (I’ve written this before) that I am a friend and fan of Frank Jackson’s. I’m a friend because we grew up in the same neighborhood in the same era, and I’m a fan because he speaks the same way I try to write: With candor and honesty. The difference of course is, he runs for public office and I don’t. And he might be too honest for his own political good — voters being as uncomfortable with the truth as they usually are.

Remember the flick A Few Good Men? Jack Nicholson saying: “You want answers?” Tom Cruise responding “I want the truth!” Nicholson shouting “You can’t HANDLE the truth!”

Back to the antagonistic questioner. As with many other folks who attend these meetings, the man seemed more interested in venting his anger than having his question answered. His chief complaint happened to be about “those” kids from neighboring communities (read: Black and Hispanic) who were invading and picking on the kids in Old Brooklyn (read: White). He was outraged that Jackson, on his first day in office, didn’t immediately bring back the Gang Unit.

Frank Jackson — unlike most other politicians — is not a man who smiles a lot, but every now and then... especially when he’s thrown a question designed to make him duck for cover... he gets this wry smile on his face that says, “Oh man, I’m about to go downtown, I’m going to knock this one into the upper deck!” He started by rhetorically asking, “Did you really think that the problems of the inner-city were going to stay there and not seep into your communities? This is not just a Cleveland problem; this is a cancer that is infecting cities all over America. People in safe and secure neighborhoods, in communities like this one and in the suburbs, thought they could ignore the problems of the core city, and now they’re finding out they can’t.”

The man gave Jackson the opening he was looking for and he was off, expounding crime, public policy and potential solutions in a manner and with knowledge and fervor few elected officials can match. This was Jackson’s ballpark the questioner was playing in and Jackson is the expert on these matters simply because he has thought longer and harder (and probably with more brainpower) than anyone else in the room. Jackson broke complicated city finances down to the point where the densest person in the room could wrap their minds and understanding around the problem.

The man was allowed to reframe his question, to try again to play the game of “Gotcha!”

But, again, if this were a mental chess match Jackson was three or four moves ahead. “We all want more police on the streets,” Jackson said, “ but when I tried to move 45 officers from the airport to basic patrol I was taken to court by the police union.” Then he went on to warn everyone that we cannot simply “police” our way out of the problem, we have to address the failings of our political, educational and social service systems that leave too many families locked out of prosperity and locked permanently into poverty. “This is not a problem of Black versus White, of Eastside versus Westside, or suburban versus inner-city, this is a problem for all of us, all of us Americans to solve.”

Perhaps his most illustrative comments were personal ones dealing with his law school days. “I had to study hard 16 hours a day just to get a C, and some of the other students would come hung over most of the time and make A’s. It wasn’t that they were that much smarter than me, it was just that they had the advantage of being raised by lawyers ... law was the conversation around the dinner table, they were getting summer jobs working in law firms as far back as high school.” In other words, some members of society have advantages they take for granted... while others are still struggling to offer the same to their progeny.

However, what Jackson didn’t say was that police union officials are attempting to scare the public with the “terrorist bogeyman.” Their laughable notion is that without Cleveland police officers out there at the airport ticketing anyone who attempts to park long enough to help their grandmother check her bags in, Al Qaeda is going to launch an attack on Hopkins. Just what the hell are the terrorists going to do, commit the grievous felony of “double-parking with impunity”? Do we have to be protected from men with swarthy complexions cutting in front of us in the security screening line, or at the Starbucks? Next the union will try to convince us that only a Cleveland police officer can protect us from the likes of Utah Senator Larry Craig lurking about the airport’s men’s rooms.

Just about the only applause of the evening came when Jackson emphatically stated that he was going to fight the police union in court because it’s the right thing to do for the citizens of Cleveland. It was just about the only time he raised his voice in something approximating anger. The questioner then, sensing that he was out of his league and vastly overmatched, slumped down in his chair, defeated.

There’s a takeaway lesson for the mayor here: Voters tend to like “podium pounding” more than they like quiet truths. They mistake angry bombast for leadership, loud talking for logic, and speakers’ fingers jabbing metaphorical holes in the air with genuine, heartfelt emotion. But how can you fault them when they’ve been raised on a steady diet of political demagoguery... on the chicanery of false prophets who promise anything to win office... and then can’t deliver squat once they are elected.

Frank Jackson is not going to begin to play fast and loose with the truth just to win reelection — that simply is not who he is... not his style. He doesn’t want to keep the job that bad. But we — the residents of the City of Cleveland — need him a lot more than he needs us, and we should come to that realization sooner than later. There are no quick fixes, easy solutions or silver bullets... and Jackson isn’t about to offer up any. We’re dealing with the result of decades of benign neglect, and it’s going to take almost a decade for the changes he is making to bear fruit.

Nonetheless, to insure his reelection Frank needs to give the voters more of what they crave... he needs to become more theatrical, more animated, and at times more angry; less the studied and reasoned college professor type of policy maker and more like Barry Bonds swinging for the fence — but not aided by steroids, just the help of that Louisville Slugger he carries around with him with the word “Truth” written on it.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com
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