Depressing, no?
Yet Nutter, for many, offers a chance for change and comes to office with extremely high expectations. And he says that's fine.
"If I have to choose between a depressingly low sense of antipathy versus unrealistically high expectations, I'll take the high expectations every time," he tells me at the start of a sit-down interview.
To say his hopes are lofty is understatement: "I'm talking about the rebirth of a great American city; 25 years from now I want grandkids to ask, 'When the renaissance started, where were you?' "
This hoped-for renaissance (we're talking more than an ethics law and a smoking ban here) is based on Nutter's belief that "there is something about this point in time" and the value to the city of others in office.
Former Mayor Ed Rendell is governor for three more years. Former mayoral rivals Dwight Evans, Chaka Fattah and Bob Brady hold majority seats on key committees in the state House and in Congress.
"There's a sense of political maturity that has not existed in the past," says Nutter, "and we all know each other and get along."
Possibilities loom, he says. We'll see.
His priorities are obvious.
He'll issue a "crime emergency" upon taking office in January: "I'm not playing. I mean this in the most serious way. When you have one dead, five shot every day, I think that tells you we have a crime crisis."
He'll offer "immediate, visible change in our policing strategy," a new commissioner, a more visible mayor and, somehow, someday, 500 more cops.
Right after swearing-in, he wants a citywide cleanup, "hundreds of thousands of people," because filth and litter is a mindset of hopelessness and because it's tied to his "Clean Up City Hall" theme.
