Where is David Miller? The lack of good leaders may be a problem today. But Toronto Mayor David Miller shows there can be trouble even when you get a good leader. He was elected as a radical reformer, a Toronto tradition going back to its first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie. On election night two years ago, Mr. Miller swept in, sort of literally, hoisting a broom over his head, vowing to clean up City Hall and Toronto’s garbage-y streets.

Since then, he hasn’t been a disaster. He took his broom to the homeless in City Hall square, but we all make mistakes. He meets, he makes statements.

This week he went to a little conference on gun violence. I know it’s vague to accuse him of not being visible, or getting few results, but I think you can safely say that an underwhelmed sense of him is widespread in Toronto. He has convictions, loves the city, won’t sell out to wealth and power, or embarrass us as Mel Lastman did.

So what’s missing?

I’d say the problem here isn’t leadership; it’s followership.

Compare the last bout of reform in Toronto, 35 years ago. It began with citizen groups agitating to halt an expressway from ripping up their neighbourhoods. They felt an ardent sense of community. In 1971, Ontario’s government surrendered and killed the road. From that soil rose some politicians. By 1973, David Crombie was mayor. He was a Tory, not a street organizer like the then-popular councillor John Sewell. But the context anointed Mr. Crombie a reformer and, as mayor, he was judged by its standards.

Before long, the more radical Mr. Sewell was calling him a traitor. Everyone understood what that meant: He’d succumbed to the bad guys, who were developers, versus the people, or community, who were inherently the good guys. I’m not arguing sides here and I’m ignoring nuance. The point is there was a viewpoint and a vocabulary shared by many and understood by all. It’s not so, in the city’s Miller era.

To the extent Toronto’s citizens are organized now, it’s more to protect their property values than their city.

A lot of the Miller momentum came from high-profile leftists such as journalist Michele Landsberg, which, in my vulgar, populist view, does not substitute for what Maoists used to call a mass base. Some of his early support derived from establishment pillars such as financier Tom Kierans. That’s not a problem for leaders like Paul Martin or Ontario Conservative Leader John Tory — they come from power and represent it, though they also say, sincerely I think, they want to serve all society.

But the Miller position, not just because it’s NDP, is innately and instinctively at odds with entrenched social or economic power, even as it’s willing to work with it. It’s ready to challenge that power; in fact, its feistiness is the source of its energy and self-respect, as well as the respect it gets from the public and even from “bad guys” like developers or Bay St. But if combat is part of your nature, you tend to look around and say: Where the hell are the troops? That’s when you realize that getting elected before the movement has arrived may be tricky.

Two sycophants nuzzling: The Globe and Mail columnist, Margaret Wente and others have called Peter Newman sycophantic in dealing with Brian Mulroney. The reverse is as true.

Brian Mulroney courted Peter Newman as an uberjournalist with access to power and the power to make the Mulroney reputation historically. It’s the sight of two sycophants nuzzling, not necessarily a source of deep wisdom. So I’m happy to have just the raw tapes, instead of the intended volume of Newman “analysis.” A bit like those football games CBC broadcast at the start of their lockout, sans yappy commentary. It worked for me.

What’s striking, and a bit satisfying I’m afraid, is how unhappy the ex-PM sounds on the tapes, even at the height of his achievement. He had power, wealth, fame. He could hardly have risen higher, in anyone’s terms.

What on earth was missing? Did he want to be worshipped too? Or just respected? Or should that be: loved, not by his family, but by all of us, all the time?

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.