With Mayor Sheila Dixon at his side and members of her cabinet flanking them, Nutter looked on as an analyst projected various pieces of data onto two giant screens, summoned nervous bureaucrats to the lectern, asked questions, and demanded answers.
Why, the analyst asked, are drug arrests up in the city's public housing? Why aren't trash-strewn lots being cleaned up more quickly? How come fewer Baltimoreans are receiving energy assistance?
"I liked it. You know I liked it," Nutter, Philadelphia's Democratic mayoral nominee, said after he left the room. "We will have something like that. It may take some time, but it's an incredibly powerful tool to make sure you're providing services and guaranteeing accountability."
For the former city councilman, now almost six weeks into the six-month gap between the primary and general elections, this was a day back in the world he likes best - the world of governing, a world to which, he knows, he will almost surely return as mayor come January. Democrats enjoy a 5-1 registration advantage over the GOP in Philadelphia, and Republicans haven't won a mayoral election in 60 years.
But as Nutter waits and works and plans, he's trying to be cautious, aware as he is that there are no rules about how presumptive a presumptive mayor can be without seeming overly so.
Indeed, other Philadelphia politicians who were in his position before reached wildly different conclusions as to what was appropriate.
Consider W. Wilson Goode, the Democratic mayoral nominee in 1983. In mid-June of that year, Goode appointed a 200-member search committee to recommend appointees for his administration.
At the time, Goode said no one should think he considered victory in the fall a sure thing. It was just that the period between November and January, he said, wasn't long enough to find the best people.
In 1991, Edward G. Rendell took very much the opposite approach.
