The more I think about it, the more unhinged Thao’s Monday performance seems. She was insane during those moments—let us hope, only temporarily deranged, for she’s still mayor and has a lot on her plate. But her paranoia, self-pity, hysteria and vengeful anger were really unseemly, and more: frightening. This is the leader of Oakland?
We’ve been saying all along that Thao is in over her head. It’s never polite to accuse someone of being stupid, but when Thao decided to be a politician, she had to expect criticism. Thao clearly is incompetent to lead a city with so many problems; nobody trusts her, nobody much likes her, she’s been unable to form the kinds of bonds and relationships with other city leaders that are necessary for government to function. She’s never been good at reading the room: she really blew it when she fired Armstrong, the most popular police chief in decades, and she never realized how upset Black people were. Nor did she even come close to apologizing. She also blew it when she missed out on those millions of dollars the State was offering Oakland to help fight crime. Oops! But again, no apology. And as crime escalated and became the overriding concern of everyone in Oakland, private citizens as well as businesses, Thao once again failed to reassure the public. Instead, she went to the opening of every new falafel restaurant and made regurgitative gurgles about “diversity” to the point where you just wanted to scream at the T.V., “Oh, shut up!”
That inability to feel empathy with normal Oaklanders lies at the root of Thao’s problems. We’ve now had 18 months of her “leadership,” and what an 18 months it’s been. If Sheng Thao had greater intelligence—intellectual, emotional, social and political intelligence—Oakland would be a better place. The police department would still be led by Armstrong. The greedy and malign federal monitor, Warshaw—who hangs on to his $1 million-a-year job by constantly moving the compliance goalpost—would be gone. And crime in Oakland wouldn’t be as rampant as it’s been under Thao’s failed leadership.
It’s odd that the media has had so much difficulty reporting on why the public has soured on Thao. When Thao fired Chief Armstrong, she said, “I am no longer confident that Chief Armstrong can do the work needed to achieve the vision.” Many of us didn’t believe that when she said it, more than a year ago. The irony is that today, the public has lost confidence that Thao can achieve any vision, aside from rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. And every time Thao opens her mouth, that absence of confidence is reinforced.
Incidentally, if you saw the City Council’s meeting on Thao’s budget yesterday, you will have seen one side effect of progressivism that’s seldom mentioned: its propensity to spend money mindlessly, whether it’s there or not, whether it accomplishes anything or not. To pols like Sheng Thao, Carroll Fife, Nikki Bas and Rebecca Kaplan, who cares? The people can always be more heavily taxed. To these wokes, the most important thing for government is to spend, in order to create gigantic bureaucracies where their friends can work and their constituents can benefit from city services. We now see the result of this progressive dementia: Oakland teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Nobody will listen to me, but I’ll say it anyway: Stop spending like drunken sailors, City Council. Just because you conjure up some “equity” fantasy when you’re stoned doesn’t mean it should become law. You want to save money? Get rid of every damned “equity” provision and department, and then quit so we don’t have to pay your salaries and benefits anymore.
Steve Heimoff