This Day in Municipal History (Cleveland Defaults on Its Debts)

December 16, 1978—Weighed down by a population loss, mass auto-industry layoffs, and an abrasive, immature mayor, Cleveland woke up to find itself the first major American city to default on its debts since the 1930s.

Nothing like talk about municipal bonds to take the fizz out of a cocktail party. That’s why like most people, I’ve left city finance to the green-eyeshade types. Most of the time they know what they’re doing. But when they don’t…

…You get a situation like New York City in 1975, when the New York Daily News headline—“FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD”—described the situation succinctly (and also probably helped doom the GOP President who dragged his feet on the bailout).

…Or you get Cleveland. I’m still scratching my head how a city with an “A” rating from Moody’s Investor Service as the summer of ’78 began ended the year owing $15.5 million, mostly to six banks—and, of course, in fiscal free-fall.

A pivotal player in Cleveland’s woes was Dennis Kucinich. Now, surely nobody is 100% responsible for either success or defeat. By the same token, Cleveland faced major problems as the ‘70s wore on that could not be laid solely at the mayor’s door: a 25% population decline, a recession, and auto-industry layoffs. Like its big sister on the Hudson River, New York City, Cleveland was a Rust Belt city at a terrible moment in history.

And, like New York, it sailed into its worst fiscal squall led by a diminutive captain who, many people claimed, didn’t measure up to the job.

Pick your poison: A 69-year-old, 5-ft.-2-in. bean counter finally arrived, after decades of clubhouse fealty, at Gracie Mansion (New York’s Abraham Beame) or a 31-year-old, 5 ft.-7-in. walking blowtorch (Cleveland’s Kucinich) who alienated people right and left with his screeching self-righteousness (as he and Council President George Forbes engaged in their fatal brinksmanship on the eve of bankruptcy and he was urged to sell the city-owned Municipal Light Plant, or Muni, to the private Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co., Kucinich declared histrionically: "I will not be blackmailed. When Jesus Christ went to the mountaintop and was tempted by Satan, he said, 'Begone Satan.' I say the same thing to CEI.")

For his youthful inexperience and the massive damage he caused, Kucinich was labeled “Dennis the Menace” by the city’s press. (I can’t think of a better name for a government official, except for Johnny Carson’s label for Jerry Brown: “Governor Moonbeam.”)

American politics features leaders aplenty who make comebacks. (In fact, Richard Nixon probably made more than John Travolta.) But Kucinich is unique in that he failed upward. Nearly a quarter century after he was repudiated by the voters of the city (or, put another way, he was so unpopular that when he threw out the first patch at an Indians baseball game, he wore a bullet-proof vest), Kucinich was elected to the House of Representatives. His point of pride: he refused to sell Muni.

Now comes the interesting part: With that post won, he decided to run for President. The ex-Boy Blunder had no obvious qualifications for the job; it was as if he shortened Jimmy Carter’s slogan, “Why not the best?”, to a less-demanding age: “Why not?” The guy had so much chutzpah that I don’t understand why he didn’t try this slogan out on the electorate: “He’ll do for the country what he did for Cleveland.”

On second thought, maybe the former enfant terrible wasn’t quite so guileless about running. Maybe he had a plan all along.

Consider this: the twice-divorced candidate, a bachelor at the start of his Presidential run, announced at one point that he could use not merely a running mate, but a real mate—a wife. He even specified the qualifications of the future Mrs. K: “a dynamic, outspoken woman who was fearless in her desire for peace in the world and for universal single-payer health care and a full employment economy.”

Why didn’t we see the peculiar genius of this maneuver? Kucinich was taking the plot of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gershwin brothers musical, Of Thee I Sing, and standing it on its head!

You might recall that the scenario concocted by the musical’s librettists, George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, was that their character, John P. Wintergreen, would, in order to secure the Oval Office, hold a ontest for his would-be First Lady. His platform: love.

Without even a prayer of gaining the White House, Kucinich stumbled upon a winning variation on this theme: he would run for President in order to gain a woman. Better yet, he could do so with the help of public financing. “Love Is Sweeping the Country,” indeed!

Well, it took a little while, but he found the woman of his dreams: a redhaired lady from Britain 30 years his junior and a foot taller. Had he been a businessman rather than a pol, the current Mrs. Kucinich would have been labeled a trophy wife, but no matter. And she had a distinction that the politician never expected: in the extremely unlikely event that he had won, Mrs. Kucinich would have been the first First Lady ever to have her tongue pierced.

Thirty years after the fiasco that sent his city into bankruptcy court and him (temporarily) into the home of actress-new age maven Shirley MacLaine, Cleveland is having a renaissance of sorts, what with the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Indians’ Jacobs Field, and Kucinich has a new job, a new wife and a new life.

Now, do you still dispute the notion that all’s well that ends well?