Cleveland is such a joke they should turn the entire city over to comedian Drew Carey.
The Dilbert-esque host of CBS game show “The Price Is Right” strutted into city hall last week to offer his thoughts on how to stop the rusting of the ever-rusting, rust-belt rust hole.
He’s also hawking his suggestions for Cleveland in a six-part series of online videos produced by the “free minds and free markets” Reason Foundation.
“My only experience in running a city is Sim City, the computer game,” Carey acknowledged in one of his videos at . “I know that when you raise taxes, all the Sims leave the city.”
He rips the rest of his advice from the Libertarian playbook: Get crushing city bureaucracy off the backs of entrepreneurs. Turn failing schools into charter schools. Screw the unions. Privatize. Cut taxes. And love that Wal-Mart.
“All I know is that every time they open up a Wal-Mart, there’s an Applebee’s right around the corner,” the beefy Carey says, rubbing his hands together as if preparing for another $10 platter. “That’s OK with Drew Carey.”
Free markets are great while they last. But I was looking for some actual creativity from one of Cleveland’s most notable former residents. Not cliches like: “It will work out on its own, I’m telling you. That Adam Smith invisible hand is a really good thing.”
A better idea would be to play “The Price is Right” with Cleveland real estate: So how much do you think this slightly dilapidated, formerly middle-class home is worth? Would you believe it is only $8,500?
What Carey seems to miss is that Cleveland isn’t a town of stifling bureaucracy, high taxes, bad schools and shrinking population because corrupt political leaders took it over and ruined business.
It was the other way around. Cleveland’s steel industry could no longer compete in the free-market. It was, in fact, crushed by the invisible hand on a global scale. And as big steel pulled away, it left Cleveland a nearly ungovernable cauldron of race riots and toxic waste spills. No one wanted to go there anymore after learning that its river was so polluted that it actually caught fire.
Cleveland today has half the population it had in the 1950s. Government bureaucrats were about the only ones left hold it together. All they could think to do was raise taxes to build a new football stadium and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as if a decaying steel town could become a tourist destination.
At one point in the early 1990s, amid optimism for the taxpayer-funded turnaround, people from Cleveland would often tell me, “We’re not the mistake by the lake, anymore.” I heard this so often, I wondered if it was going on the Ohio license plate.
Carey’s plan, although trite, is just what the city needs: A more business friendly environment so that entrepreneurs can regrow the economic base from the rubble. But Carey’s rhetoric is unlikely to cut through decades of entrenched politics in a shrinking city.
At least, however, his ambitions are bold:
“I would like everybody in Cleveland to have, like, rich-kid syndrome, where they feel guilty, you know, that they had all these opportunities and they have to go to Nicaragua now to do something…to make up for it.”
You go, Drew! It’s probably better to put comedians in charge than some of the jokers who are running things now.
Give Jay Leno Detroit. He likes old cars.
Send Weird Al Yankovic to Greece. He could make “Eat it” their new national anthem.
Stick David Letterman in Washington, D.C. He knows how to manage extortion.
Give Larry the Cable Guy The Gulf of Mexico. “Git-R-Done.”
And let’s hand the red-ink of California to that red-headed Carrot Top guy. Oh, wait, that’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s job.
Al Lewis: 212-416-2617, al.lewis@dowjones.com or
