Mayor Jackson: 'I must be a new person, they tell me'

Frank Jackson has heard the talk that he's finally gone from caretaker mayor to visionary mayor. It bugs him.

“I’m no different today than I was then,” Jackson says. “It’s just that people see me different, because they’re looking at these things, and they say, ‘Oh, the mayor has come up with ideas!’ ”

He’s talking about his plans to develop the waterfront and close Public Square to traffic, creating a single park. They capped a good 2011 for Jackson, when a lot of people around town thought he stepped up more as a leader.

That helped make Jackson #4 on this year's Power 100 list, published by Cleveland Magazine's sister publication, Inside Business. That's up from #7 last year.

Some of the buzz about Jackson's vision is premature. His highly touted lakefront plan has very little money behind it and is best understood as a marketing move to try to attract private developers. But progress with the Rock Hall induction, sustainability, and downtown jobs have the mayor feeling confident.

“I know people have talked about, ‘Why doesn’t the mayor use the bully pulpit more?’ ” Those critics, Jackson says slyly, “were critical because they thought I ought to use it for them.

“But I do use it for the schools. I do use it for the lakefront, for the square. I do use it for sustainability. And I guess the bully pulpit of the mayor’s office in those areas wasn’t considered as relevant. But now it seems to be.

“Because I must be a new person, they tell me. I must be a new person.”

You can read my article about Jackson here and in the January-February issue of Inside Business. You can see who else made the Power 100 list here.

Ideastream picks up 'Quiet Mayor' theme

It is hard to write about Frank Jackson. Hard to even have an opinion about him sometimes. Cleveland's mayor defies our usual sense of how politicians act. So journalists, involved citizens, and politicians sputter and puzzle over him. When talk turns to leadership style, you can almost hear people goading him: For God's sake, man, have a personality!

Dan Bobkoff, reporter for Changing Gears, ideastream's Midwest project, is the latest to prod the inscrutable sphinx. "Some call him the Quiet Mayor," Bobkoff says in his report, broadcast on WCPN yesterday. (I smiled when I heard that -- I thought I was the first to dub Jackson the Quiet Mayor, though Google reminds me I may have picked it up from Bill Callahan.)

"Some Clevelanders are yearning for a big personality mayor, like Chicago’s Richard Daley, who can bulldoze his way to progress," Bobkoff says. (That's a clever nod to the ultimate triumph of the modern strongman mayor, Daley's 2003 destruction of Chicago's lakefront airport.) Cleveland Magazine columnist Mike Roberts, a frequent Jackson critic, echoes the lament: "Some days you get the feeling the town doesn't even have a mayor."

In the radio segment, Jackson once again bats away the cliché that he ought to be a "cheerleader" for Cleveland. (This is now his critics' most popular line. It's the new version of the idea that mayors should command the "bully pulpit.") Jackson says if people want that kind of mayor, they should vote for one. He knows city voters like having a no-drama leader.

The more interesting Jackson quotes come from Bobkoff's web-only audio clips. Interesting compared to most Jackson quotes, mind you -- this isn't Chairman Mao's little red book we're talking about, or even Coleman Young's. Still, here's a sampling of Jacksonian bons mots:

Paranoia is only wrong if it's not justified.

Everyone has an ego. When you're in positions like these, you can't survive without an ego. The question is whether or not it's healthy. I try to have a healthy sense of confidence that does not translate into arrogance.

I don't need the recognition.

The government closest to the people is the best government. Government, if left to its own accord, will always be abusive. Always.

The Flats East Bank is a project that we put a whole lot of public subsidy in, more than we should. Much more than we should. But we needed to do that because I had to put to rest the debate. The debate was whether there could be waterfront development in downtown Cleveland.

Those cities and urban centers that positioned themselves for the future survived [the '70s] pretty well. Those -- Cleveland being one of them -- who did not do that and were still trying to hold onto that old way of doing business, we declined. ... The corporate world and the political leadership made a decision to stay where they are or not invest in the emerging economy. As a result of that, they were left behind. My intent is not to have that done on my watch.

People always ask me if I'm running again for re-election. ... I'm not running for mayor to be mayor. ... My purpose is to accomplish my purpose. So my decision on whether or not I run or not is based on whether or not I'm effective. If I get to the point where I believe -- and hopefully I can see that -- that I'm not effective, [then] I've outlived my usefulness. ... I don't want to be an old fighter, not knowing when to retire.