Julian Bond: I want to begin with some questions about the Brown decision, 1954 and I know you were only three years old when it happened so you may not be able to answer the first question. We’ve asked everybody what did it mean to you at the time at the decision, I imagine it meant nothing.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Absolutely nothing.

Julian Bond: What did it turned out to mean for you as you became older? You are attending integrated Catholic schools in Los Angeles. What impact, if any, did it have on you as a young man, a high school kid?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: As a high schooler, I went to a Jesuit school. A very, very good Jesuit school in L.A. and my brother and I and our friends from our local parish were probably the only African-Americans in the school at the time, probably only about ten or twelve of us. So certainly as time went on, it had an impact on day-to-day life for us in Los Angeles. I look at Brown versus Board of Education as a statement of the American vision of equality so there was a first statement of equality that we really didn’t even do anything about or even talk about for about seventy years in the Declaration of Independence and then Abraham Lincoln came along with Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address that was a re-statement of the vision of equality. Then came along Brown versus Board of Education, the Supreme Court restated the vision so it was a statement of a vision and we as a society have struggled to try to achieve it.

Julian Bond: Looking back on it from your perspective today as the Mayor of the nation’s capital, what has it turned out to mean? What has Brown meant in public education? Looking at the district schools and schools around the country, you talk about the statement of equality, have we lived up to that?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Well it was a statement of a vision, but you know I was very fascinated at the anniversary of Brown versus Board of Education, read some of, he was my law professor, Charles Ogletree’s book and Derrick Bell has written about it and I wouldn’t go so far as for example, with Professor Bell and say there was a conscious decision of Brown versus Board to actually subvert integration. I am one of these believers that if there is a kind of innocent explanation or conspiracy explanation, it is probably more innocence and omission and negligence than actual conspiracy, but I do agree with him and I think most observers would have to agree that you actually look at the impact on our schools today, in many instances, it’s had a limited impact. Especially when you differentiate by class. So the higher your class, the more impact it’s had. It actually has resulted in integration. The lower you go down on the economic scale, the more segregated you remain after all these years so there are district schools right now, you know I have talked to you about this, we have the most educated population in the country, thirty-seven percent struggling with third grade literacy. The richest population in the country, the highest concentration or it used to be, may still be the highest concentration of poverty. Startling statistic, the white kids in the District of Columbia are some of the best scoring kids in the United States. African-American kids are some of the worse performers in the United States. So limited impact from the Brown versus Board of Education, right here on a day-to-day basis certainly. That’s why I call it a statement of a vision, but in terms of practical reality and impact, I haven’t seen it.

Julian Bond: What about that statement of a vision, its effect on you personally? How has it affected you personally? This grand statement in ’54 that schools would be open and integrated?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: I think that is has had an effect on me certainly personally in terms of the integration of schools and the ability to go to a school. I had opportunities when I was in the military that I probably wouldn’t have had if there hadn’t been this statement and this pronounced strategy of integration. I certainly wouldn’t have been at Harvard and Yale as a baby of affirmative action. There’s no question about it. I mean I got good grades, but I got there on the basis of affirmative action I’m sure and I am proud of it. So it certainly had an impact there. It’s had an impact on the broader integration of the marketplace and public accommodation and the places that I can go. But again, I think there is a big difference in terms of your acceptance of integration based on your class. Where I grew up in L.A., there are many neighborhoods now where nobody thinks anything about a wealthy African-American moving into a neighborhood, but God forbid somebody from South Central moved in as a low-income household in that same household.

Julian Bond: So it is sort of a half-full, half-empty picture?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Yeah.

Julian Bond: Let me move onto some personal things. Who are the people most significant in helping you develop your talents and your skills? How would you list the people who had the biggest influence on you?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Well I always say I am where I am because of progressive government that opened doors for me. For example, when I got out of the military, there was a G.I. Bill, scholarships from the government - that’s a great example. Civil Rights Movement and loving parents. If I had to list people who had an influence on me first and foremost, it would have to be my mother who really took a leadership role to adopt me when I was four or five years old. So she would have to be the most important influence of all influences and then it was my eighth grade teacher when I was in school. She was a white Catholic nun. She was probably very conservative, but it was the first statement I heard from any white person, up until eighth grade, that there were these issues that were boiling out there and they were important issues and one of the things she made us do was read Dr. King’s major speeches, read about the Leadership Conference, read about the Coordinating Committee. This is a nun in a Catholic grade school. Made me actually stand up in front of the class and read some of the speeches. I had to read Lyndon Johnson’s speech in 1965 after the beatings in Selma for the Voting Rights Act.

Julian Bond: Right. The great speech he ends with, we shall overcome.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Absolutely. She was a big, big influence on my sense of myself and my own potential and what I could do.

Julian Bond: What did religion have to do with your early upbringing? You mentioned attending a Catholic school. How did that impact you?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Oh Lord. Well you know the struggles I’ve had as an African-American leader and questions of my identity as an African-American and thoughtfully and as a friend and I’ll be forever grateful to you, you wrote an article to the Washington Post, the column when I was running for reelection. I appreciate that because you know I have had this issue with identity. And I look back at my Catholic upbringing and these schools that were overwhelmingly white and they were also exclusively male. In some ways, it was a great academic and intellectual upbringing so in terms of intellectual curiosity and intellectual competence and all that, I have a lot to show for it because of that background. But in terms of identity issues, it was kind of a mess. It really was and one day I will deal, I will try to think back and try to deal with it. It was not the best situation that way.

Julian Bond: Did the fact that it was a Catholic upbringing, how did that impact, if at all? Could this be school have been Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: That’s a great question. I think the Catholic Church has a very problematic history when it comes to human relations in general. Witnessing the Pope coming out years late apologizing for the accommodation of the Nazis basically. He really didn’t say anything. And really equating the treatments of Catholics who were dissonance with the treatment of anybody who was not like Mary and to make that kind of equation is pretty bad to me and there is a problem there. And where I grew up in Los Angeles and the head of the Archdiocese in Los Angeles was very, very hostile, and indifferent if not openly hostile to the aspirations of African-Americans. The traditional leadership of the Catholic Church was Irish-American, bedrock conservative, you know, very, very distant at least from the concerns being voiced by African-Americans at the time. I am sure they thought they were Communist, you know, part of some left-wing conspiracy. This and that. So that really didn’t help.

Julian Bond: But at the same time, had this education system, which had to be at least had to be on par with or superior to the public schools in Los Angeles and in most cities.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: A good part of it is that in a lot of these churches, the cardinal here, I have worked with him. I got into trouble supporting vouchers, but the reason why I supported vouchers is because of personal history because I think that for us, the best education choice was going to the school that we went to. I can’t speak for everybody, but for us, it was important for my mother to have that choice and I think it is important for parents to have that choice in other cities. And so even though, there is this troubled, kind of checkered history, nowadays, a lot of the church leaders have gone overboard to keep the schools, the Catholic schools open in the inner-city, knowing that it is a great avenue of upward mobility for kids so the old cardinal who died became a great friend of mine. Even though they were losing money left and right, they kept the schools open because of what they were doing.

Julian Bond: Back to influences, in what way is Steve Warrick your political father? You called him that in an interview or something you said once. Who is he?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Yeah you have done a lot of good research. Steve Warrick I would put up there in the top three or four influences on my life. When I was a student at Yale, I got involved in the student government and I basically got bored in the student government. I got bored in the fraternity situation. And so I ended up getting involved in local government and ended up representing constituency in New Haven, Connecticut as a member of the local city council. They called it Board of Alderman. And when I came onto the Board of Alderman, Steve Warrick was the Chair of the Board of Alderman and I got to know him through that. I worked on his campaign. He ran for Congress in 1982, didn’t really go anywhere, but I worked for him and got to know him even better and stayed in touch with him after I graduated and he was a close friend, supporter in every possible way. And what did I get from Steve? Steve was like me in a lot of ways. He wasn’t the most charismatic person. He wouldn’t have people lined up to hear a Steve Warrick speech, but in terms of his financial acumen, in terms of his understanding of management, organization and actually Steve was a big believer in a proverb I always say, “to plan is human, to implement is divine”. Anybody can plan something, but it takes a real leader to actually implement. If I am sitting in a hospital bed, you can come up to me and say, “Tony you have a tumor “ and talk sweet words to me and I may feel better while I am talking to you, but if you don’t have anything in your medicine bag or anything that you can do for my tumor, what good is that? Another guy or lady may come in and say you got a tumor and I may feel bad and not like you, but then she actually does something about it. So who am I better off with, you know?

Julian Bond: So Steve Warrick was the implementer guy? The guy who said…

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: You have a tumor. Well that wasn’t very nice. Yeah, well here’s how I am going to fix it. Then he fixes it.

Julian Bond: You mentioned a while ago, one of these criticisms for not being black enough, what does that say about your overall leadership style? Has that affected your leadership style, these comments?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: It says a lot about the state of our community I’ve come to believe after all of these years. That’s what I actually believe now. Why should I apologize for how I speak? Why should I apologize for where I went to school? That’s ridiculous! Why are we going to fight for everybody to be able to go to these schools and then when they go to these schools, gets good grades, speaks well and I know “well” is culturally biased and loaded, I understand all of that, but I shouldn’t have to apologize for it. What I would hope is that parents are saying to their children, you know what I am saying to my daughter, “You know, he was adopted, look where he is, you can do the same thing.” Instead of saying to my child, “You don’t like him because he doesn’t represent us.” You know it’s crazy.

Julian Bond: In 1988, you said that D.C. was moving from an old generation of black leadership to a new style. What did you mean by that? Does that have to do with, in part with, these depictions of who’s black and who isn’t?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: It’s related to that, I think, yeah. I used to believe that the new generation was replacing the old generation, but life is always more complicated than your abstract typologies so maybe there is a lot of overlap. But the old generation was served a hugely, critically valuable purpose. I never said they didn’t. Because of their advocacy, I am where I am. I always say that. But at a certain point, advocacy only gets you so far and you’ve go to be able to couple that advocacy or succeed that advocacy with real implementation and I would say that a leader like yours truly compared to my predecessor Marion Barry. Dennis Archer compared to Coleman Young. But then it gets complicated because I would say, like who I got to know and I really have tremendous respect for him, you know I think that Manor Jackson was a great implementer, but he was also a great leader.

Julian Bond: So it’s not black and white.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Exactly.

Julian Bond: Yeah. Exactly so. Now some biographical literature about you suggests that you enjoy making waves. Is that true?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: I do. One of the things I hope to do after my time as mayor is to run another troubled business or organization or something and get it back on its feet. I really find that thrilling. The sense of urgency is really energizing. One of the problems I am having now is that things are kind of running and you’ve created a staff that does things and you wonder what I am supposed to do? Well you are supposed to run it, but what does run mean? I kind of actually like being there when the plane is headed to the ground upside down with all the engines off and trying to get it rolling again. That, to me, is exciting.

Julian Bond: You enjoy that challenge?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: I enjoy that challenge, yeah.

Julian Bond: What made you chose your career? In high school you wanted to be a priest. I understand your father talked you out of that.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: That was earlier. In grade school, I wanted to be a priest. But I really idealized my father so I have always really admired people in uniform and what they stand for so I joined the military. And I think a lot of that is because my dad had been in the military. And you know to me, what I always wanted to do, in a subconscious way, is I wanted to redeem his sacrifice because he was in this generation where they gave everything they had for their children. They faced brutal discrimination. You know my dad, I always tell people this story. Here was a man, he had two bronze stars in World War II. He was a captain in World War II. He actually was in some combat situations in World War II. That’s very, very unusual. To be a captain and African-American in World War II, that was a really big deal. Now when he got out, what could he do? Well he got out, when he was leaving, the German prisoners of war were treated better than he and his men. The only job he could get was working in the post office. He worked thirty-eight years in the post office. He took like one or two days off sick leave. Imagine that. All of his children went to college so I said, you know what, I am going to do what he couldn’t do. I always told people this story. When we were growing up, he always took us out on these cheap excursions because we didn’t have a lot of money. So one of the things he would do is he would take us out to the airport and we would watch the stars. We would get out on the old propeller planes and we watched as the propeller planes turned into jets and had all that smoke. We watched this whole scene unfolding every other week or so and we would go out there and watch the planes. I kind of liked it you know because out of that I came to like airplanes. You couldn’t help it if you are spending like four hours a night watching all these airplanes. I felt like an air traffic controller, we were out there so much. But anyway, I always wondered why he took us out there and I was telling some people this story and about a year or a year and a half ago my wife and I were flying back here from visiting my family and the plane was turning around to take off and I almost, well I didn’t almost, I did, I started crying because I realized what he was saying was kids I am never going to be able to get on this plane because I can’t afford it. I am never going to be able to fly on it but I am showing you life in the promise land. You know what I mean? This is life across the river. I can’t cross the river, but you are going to be able to cross the river if you do all the things your mother and I tell you do, you are going to be on the plane one day. And here we were on the plane this day eating peanuts.

Julian Bond: Does this fascination with planes account for you having going into the Air Force? Thinking that you would actually fly these planes?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Yeah, but you know it was during the Vietnam War. It was a bad time to be in the military.
Julian Bond: How did you go from counseling draft resisters to going into the Air Force?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Well it’s kind of anti-war, I wouldn’t try to now organize my thinking in any kind of serious way because I don’t think it was serious. I was basically anti-Vietnam War, but not really anti-military. I was in the military and then I said, I really don’t want to make this a career and as a matter of a fact, I really don’t believe in violence period, but then I felt like the year that I could’ve been in but I wasn’t in because I got out early, well I should do some kind of community service to kind of finish out that commitment. It’s kind of a mess. I wouldn’t call myself doctrinaire, categorical, contentious objector now, but I think the basic approach and philosophy has a lot to be said for it.

Julian Bond: Now going back to leadership and your education. In high school, people think of you as a class leader, a smart kid with good grades who sometimes could drift away into his own thoughts. Outside of high school, you had various jobs. And that at Santa Clara you are a leader in the anti-Vietnam protests. Is that a moment or close to a moment when you say I am a leader, I am doing things and people are following me? I am setting the pace for others. When do you begin to think of yourself as a leadership figure?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Ever since I was in grade school, I was always elected class something or another. The grade school through when I was in the military, I was a flight leader and squad commander, and the student council leader at prep school. But I think them difference is that someone can be elected leader because you like them and my big thing was sense of humor. That is what carried me through. I always had a joke for every occasion, imitations of teachers and things so I always had a group that would hang out with me and I would do imitations of whatever, you know? So that was my big calling card. To me, that’s leading, but it’s not really leading. I don’t feel like I was leading in the sense of actually doing something until I was on the City Council on the local Board of Alderman in New Haven, I actually felt like I was accomplishing something there and not just being host with the most.

Julian Bond: I understand. That actually strikes me as one of the most unusual parts of your resume. That after a short time in New Haven, that you offer for the Board of Alderman and you get elected so surely you must’ve thought to yourself, I can do this job better than these other people who are doing it or the other people who are running for the job so you begin to think of yourself as a leadership figure at least by then?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Yeah I did by then I did. And I felt that I could make an impact. Not withstanding the fact that, whoever heard this before, I didn’t own a house in New Haven and I had been there a long time.

Julian Bond: You’re too new in town. You are a carpetbagger. But having had that experience, it must have made the Washington experience at least more understandable?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Well that’s why I never in my wildest dreams, people don’t believe this, if can ask Kevin Chavis he will, to this day, I am sure not believe me, God bless his heart. But in my wildest dreams, I never had any expectation or even conception that when I came here, I came here to work in President Clinton’s sub-cabinet. I had no expectation that I would be mayor of the city. I mean good Lord. The only reason I got into the city was because I was over at the Department of Agriculture. This massive organization at the time, we had a cash flow of around eighty billion dollars. That’s the kind of budget you manage there as a CFO. And meanwhile the city was tottering and Michael Rodgers who was a city administrator and Jeff Thompson who had become a friend through his work with Johnny Bookeroe, a lady, I am not sure if you have met her. She has did a lot of minority business development over with loans and savings when they failed and he did a lot of work with them. So I got to know him and he says, you really ought to come and work for the district as a CFO of the district. The control board is looking for a CFO and you ought to go over and talk to Mayor Marion Barry. And I said, are you crazy? Why would I want to go work for the district, a place that is like cratering? And then I said to myself, you know what, maybe I ought to go over there because it is exciting. There’s a sense of urgency. I am definitely broke. And if I go over there and I don’t succeed, everybody will say nobody could have succeeded, but if I go over there and if by small chance, I actually make it, who knows what will happen. So I went over and it was a good decision.

Julian Bond: Yes it turned out to be great decision and from that to mayor, how did that come about?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Well again, nobody would believe this that Jack Evans or Kevin Chavis or Harold Brazil, the guys that I was running against, but I actually was drafted. I am the only major elected official in the United States who was drafted and then also run re-election as a write-in so I definitely have pushed the envelope in terms of electoral politics. There was a group out in Ward 7 and for viewers, they would know Washington, D.C. is organized north, south; this would be in the southeastern, the far northeast part of the city. Some voters who were looking for something new and one of the things I did when I was CFO and again, I have been very apologetic and defensive about this because I didn’t do this because I was trying to run for mayor, I did this because I thought it was good business. When I was CFO, one of the things I did religiously is I went all over the city to every group over ten people and I gave my lecture. Oh, I said the same thing over and over was this lecture how the district got into this predicament and what we needed to do to get out of this predicament and what we needed to do from an overall, broader kind of strategy to rebuild the revenue base of the city because you can’t just fix the budget if you don’t have any revenue. So what do we actually do to rebuild the revenue base of the city and I went all around the city and I guess people liked what they were hearing.

Julian Bond: And responded to you when you ran for the office itself.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Oh yeah. I had huge momentum. I will give you a statistic. We took off poll-wise when the polls never really closed. It just widened. And then another more interesting thing is, well actually there was a big gap in the polls, but even then, there was a big gap in the African-American community -men as opposed to women, upper-income as opposed to lower income. So if you were a male upper income, you were more likely to support Tony Williams. If you were a female, lower income, less likely to support Tony Williams because I had built this image of being cruel and indifferent because one of the things I did when I was CFO and I believe it was justified. I would have done it in a different way and probably the language and the rhetoric I used certainly could have been more sensitive of a very difficult situation for the people involved. I am trying to butter it up, but anyway, I fired a lot of people.

Julian Bond: I mean everyone knows that the district’s payroll was jut over-stuffed with all kinds of people. I think at one time, one of every seven families in the district had an employee.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Yeah. Or another way of looking at it was there was one employee for every ten people. When I worked in the Department of Agriculture, we had a big problem with the size of the Department of Agriculture and there was this story in the Department of Agriculture where a farm agent out in Nebraska was crying and they said why are you crying and he said my farmer died. It was like one employee for every farmer in the country so we kind of had one employee for every ten people. Well anyway, that built up a lot of animosity. I was going to say that an interesting thing was that up until September, we had raised almost a million dollars in small contributions. Can you imagine that? Of contributions of five hundred dollars or less?

Julian Bond: Yeah, it was amazing. I was here. I lived through that. Was glad you did it. Happy to see you. Sorry to see you go. But anyway, talk about civic leadership. What is civic leadership? Civic leadership has got to be different. Take your predecessor, Marion Barry, he’s one thing in this period before he becomes a public official. He’s another thing when he becomes the mayor, he’s a civic leader. What are the differences between these different kinds of leadership not tied to personalities, but are there differences?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Well you know what I have studied a lot about cities. Even before I became mayor, but certainly after I become mayor. And since ancient times, cities were very, very important. If you think about it, government and cities, even democracy and cities have gone hand and hand. You can go to ancient cities on any continent and they have had some kind of city government, roughly of the same kind, forever. It hasn’t really changed. The provincial government may have changed. State governments may have changed. National governments may have changed. Parties and ideologies may have changed, but cities are just shucking along. Think of that. Accra, Ghana. Ancient Indian cities in South America. You can go all over the country, you know Athens, Alexandria and there was always somebody running the city and this person who ran the city, we all learn in civics that there is an executive function, state function. So your executive function, you are meeting with the Public Works team and you are talking about picking up the trash. And that state function, I am going over to visit with Prince Charles and Camilla because they are visiting a school because I represent the city. But I think that is too easy a separation. Actually I believe when you talk about civic leadership, the roles are actually fused because you actually realize your executive potential by acting in a kind of like, greater role. This kind of urbo-role. You know what I mean? In other words, you are kind of a facilitator and coordinator of the city as a leader of the city because you have this state function. You actually have this indirect super-advisory power, which is not really explicit. It is kind of latent and implicit over the non-profits in the city and the business people in the city. If you look at government at the level we commonly analyze, the president. Is the president leading or are his constituency and his backers leading? Well who’s really leading? Well you never really know because there is always this kind of tension. It’s the same thing with the mayor. Am I leading or am I just following the business people? Are the business people following me or who’s following whom? Because there is this tension, but your job as the mayor is to coalesce all these groups around a common goal. That’s what I try to do, for example, with the Anacostia River working with Eleanor, is to get all these groups together and between the two of us using this super leadership role, convene all these people together although we have no direct managerial authority over them.

Julian Bond: But as a civic leader in the sense of the nation’s capital city, how do you get this citizenry, both in these organized groups, the business community, whatever, how do you get them to buy into what your vision is of where the city ought to be, what it ought to do?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: I always call it super common denominator. The easy thing would to be to figure out everybody, figure out what they all want, figure out the lowest common denominator and do that. What I always say is try to do the super common denominator. The super common denominator is you want to go here, you want to go here, you want to go here, you want to go here and figure out what is common to all of them, but at the highest level of attainment and realization and try to get all of you moving in that agenda. And the good thing is because is has enough of what each and every one of you want jointly, you are more likely to get it. But the difficulty of it is that it is like in science. There is a stable equilibrium and an unstable equilibrium. The lowest common denominator is a stable equilibrium. It takes a massive, almost nuclear jolt to knock something out of a stable equilibrium right, because it is stable. You can have an unstable equilibrium, right, but a slight little jolt can knock it off. So for example if you analyze a species in biology, a species population level can hit a stable equilibrium, it takes an enormous ecological shock to knock it off that. Or it can be an unstable equilibrium where the slightest change can knock that species and send it downward or upward.

Julian Bond: Baseball wants to come to the city and requires the city to make some accommodations. How do you find that super-level for all the different people? The fans, the business industry. that super level on baseball or anything?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: The lowest common denominator to me is to bring baseball, add some jobs, add some entertainment value, add some luster to the city because baseball is there even though it is arguable whether it is bringing economic benefit to me, super common denominator is to say, yes we want to bring baseball. We are even willing to invest in baseball - remember in order to achieve, you can knock it off balance- if we know it is actually going to bring huge numbers of jobs to people who live in the city, business opportunities for people who live in the city, expanded tax base for people who live in the city. Multiplier effect and this has been proven true, so far, so good, with the investment we’ve made. It’s going to have a huge economic effect on the city because we are not like every other city. All these economists say things, but I can’t speak on it. I am not running Seattle or Pittsburg. I am running Washington D.C. and I know Washington D.C. we have such a limited tax jurisdiction. What does that mean? That means anything you bring in here is going to take that spending power, not from your jurisdiction most likely just because of its very nature, but from the surrounding area. Now I don’t know whether baseball here has taken money from pursuits people would have realized somewhere else in the region. I actually think it is additional spending money. I don’t think it is zero-sum, but in any event, even if it is zero-sum, it is zero-sum on a regional basis, not a district basis.

Julian Bond: Okay. Let me move onto leadership. What do you see as a difference between vision, philosophy, and style? How do these, if they do, interact for you? Vision, philosophy, and style.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: I think that a great example of style, I don’t begrudge style. I don’t denigrate it as a political aspect. I mean I have a lot of it. I’ll put it this way, it’s not a question of volume. It’s a question of kind. I mean I think I am where I am because somehow or another, I have a style that somebody beyond my mother and me and my wife likes. I mean whatever it is, it is a unique, weird style, but people like it or I wouldn’t be where I am. So the style comes in different kinds. And I have never criticized it. For example, people say, there is a guy here running for office, Adrian Fenton. A good looking guy. Beautiful family. Has a wonderful political style and people are saying you are criticizing Adrian because of political style. No. I think political style is great. That is a part of your arsenal. A great example of political style, where someone had a wonderfully defined political style, but I think also did a good job as mayor and was not given enough credit was Willie Brown of San Francisco. Willie – incredible political strategist, probably the best political strategist in California. Definitely has a unique political style all of his own and is proud of it and did a great job running the city. He told me a story. Have you interviewed him in your series?

Julian Bond: No.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Are you going to interview him in your series?

Julian Bond: I don’t know if we can get him to come this way?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Oh you have got to talk to Willie. He has this great story where this woman called him up at three o’clock in the morning and she says, “I need a new trashcan.” He goes, “It’s three o’clock in the morning, what are you doing calling me at three o’clock in the morning?” She says, “Because it is my house, my can, I need a new one.” He says, “Okay. yes ma’am.” He took her number and all this. Two weeks later –only Willie would do this - three o’clock in the morning and he calls her. And he goes, “I got you a new trashcan” and she says, “What are you calling me at three o’clock in the morning for?” and he says, ”It’s my government and it’s now your can and I wanted you to know it.”

Julian Bond: Well take style, what about philosophy and vision – how do these things balance with you?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: To me, philosophy and vision come together in the following way. Another thing is, I was at a conference. A mayor at the conference was saying. It’s referring to people like me. He says all they talk about is management, management, management. We need a vision. We need real leadership and I am saying, it’s not an either or thing. The old Japanese proverb, “Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” It’s not an either or thing. It’s not like we are going to have a vision, but who cares about action? Or who doesn’t run around doing things without any real strategy. You need both. And the vision and the philosophy come together in this way. Your philosophy informs your vision. Your philosophy as a leader informs your vision, but it also has to be informed by your constituents. I would say if your vision for the city probably about fifty, sixty percent of it is going to be you and forty percent of it is going to be your kind of philosophy balanced by, tempered by, interacting with, all the input you get from your constituents, all these take holder groups. And that’s informing your vision. The same way it informs what you do. What you do as a leader. I always use the 60/40, 70/30 rule and what I mean by that is that sixty, seventy percent of the time, you are basically taking dinner orders. You are a public servant and you know people when they get money, they have to be sometimes told how to treat their help in a sensitive, mature way. The public sometimes gets spoiled and they are brutal to their public servants. They treat their public servants in a way they would never treat someone working in their home or mowing their lawn or something. They treat us like dirt. They treat us as if we are presumed guilty. We are idiots. We are thieves. And this is fed by the media, which creates this vicious cycle, you know. So thirty percent of the time you are basically taking dinner orders from your public and you got to throw red meat out to the public, just like your shareholders, to keep them happy on a short-term basis. But if you are a good leader and whatever you would say about him, I would put for example, Abraham Lincoln in this one. A lot of the public did not want to be in the Civil War. They were rioting to get out of the Civil War. Whatever motivation you give him, he said, you know, we got to stay in this thing and realize it to the end and he pulled his electorate along. I would like to think that in some ways, I have pulled my electorate along and a good leader is always going to keep that thirty percent or forty percent that he or she is doing, there are two or three things that are important to them. Maybe the public doesn’t quite get it. Maybe there is tension with the public, but that tension with the public is part of good government and I like to think that over your time in office, if you start office and leave at eighty percent, you ought to look in the mirror and ask why. Because if you came in the office at eighty percent and you left at eighty percent, did you really invest your political capital? Better that you came in at eighty, maybe you went down to fifty, maybe you went down to forty-five, but then after you left, people say that person did a lot or I really appreciate what they did. I really believe that.

Julian Bond: Now does your vision change or do visions change over time?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Yeah they do. It’s your experience. It’s your reading. It’s your interaction with your family and with everybody else. A great example of somebody, I think if you read the biographies of Dr. King, he certainly went from the chosen prince, he was going to run a great church, he didn’t really think about all this political stuff. He grew. Bobby Kennedy is clearly a great example of somebody who grew through their experience from being just a little right wing hack to really being a real leader. Wouldn’t you agree?

Julian Bond: I agree. I agree. I was thinking about King. I just got to that last volume of that trilogy. Let me ask you. Some people categorize the making of leaders in three ways: number one – great people cause great events; number two – movements make leaders; number three – the confluence of unpredictable events creates leaders appropriate for the time. Which of these, if any, fits you? Great people cause great events. Movements make leaders. The confluence of unpredictable events creates leaders appropriate for the time.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Yeah. I like that and I have heard that classification. I like it more than the simple, is it society or the great person theory. And you know, with me, it really isn’t a combination. It clearly not one dominant person coming in influencing events. That’s not true. And it’s not a movement. A little bit of it is the movement offering up somewhere. There is a movement in the city for truth in lending, fiscal soundness, faith and credit, all these kind of terms of ours that I came to represent. So I little bit of it was that, but a lot of it was that, but a lot of it was, hopefully I wasn’t drunk like General Grant, but I was out at in right time and confluence of events, I was there at the moment.

Julian Bond: The government was broken. You demonstrated you can fix it and so this is in some ways, we couldn’t have predicted that the government would go broke. Maybe if we paid more attention. And we couldn’t predict that the control board would be set up and you would be its head. And we couldn’t predict that you would be the success that you were and so this is a confluence of unpredictable events. Creates a leadership figure appropriate for the times. Now, is your legitimacy as a leader tied to your ability to persuade people to follow your vision or your ability to articulate a vision and an agenda? These are sort of the same thing, but what makes you legitimate as a leader? You become the mayor. Here you are. How do you maintain legitimacy? It’s not a matter I don’t think of style because you brought the style with you. How do you maintain legitimacy?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Well your leadership well take on the form and function and characteristics of your circumstances. So if you are business, it will be one thing and a faith situation will be another. You know as mayor, you are the leader because you are demonstrating results in your different roles. And if you are not demonstrating results ultimately in your different roles, you represent that you are not going to be successful. So for me, one role as the mayor is that you are the steward of the city. So how are the resources of the city doing? Oh they are doing good. You are Chief Constable of the city. How is public safety doing? Generally, it’s doing pretty good. It’s going in the right direction. Crime is going down. You are the chief cheerleader for the city. How is investment going? Oh, thirty-five billion dollars in new investment. Definitely doing good there. You are the leader of getting the city rallied around big things, make the city feel better for itself. I mean there are a lot of things that have happened in that capacity and then ultimately, it’s can you get the city focused on some things that didn’t even think of before that comes to agree are good things. I would say, for example, the Anacostia Waterfront is an example of that.

Julian Bond: You said to someone in an answer to a question of how you would like to be remembered and you mentioned the Anacostia Project. Why is that so important?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Because I think that part of your job as mayor is that you are chief art director of your city. You are in all these different roles. You are also the art director. You also have to envision, what is the signature of your city. So for example of a signature of the city - as I look at the city, what am I looking at and how do I look at it okay? How do I appreciate the city? I appreciate the city in the neighborhoods. I appreciate the city, for example, downtown in the sense of how I feel in the downtown. I realize the city example would be if I drive down Market Street or Michigan Avenue in Chicago, that’s an example of a great street epitomizing the city. Waterfront is an example of something that epitomizes the city. In Washington D.C., Pennsylvania Avenue is an example of a street that epitomizes Washington D.C. The waterfront though, not so much because it is not that dynamic, active waterfront that you’d think of in a great city. You think of the Tims River. You think of if you come in on a plane in New York, they might have discontinued it, but you remember when La Guardia used to fly down the Hudson River and make that turn and come back into La Guardia. That was an incomparable signature view of a city and the waterfront of the city. So I am saying to myself, how do we create the same excitement and dynamic expression of a waterfront for Washington D.C., that is number one. And number two, how can we do this in a way that creates an economic engine that number three, spills over with benefit for what is actually some of the poorest parts of the city so that number, I don’t know where I am right now, four or five, we are actually using this initiative to unite the city. I actually think that this is a much better way, over time, to powerfully unite the city and having a big conference and everybody talk about how we are divided and we are going to have a task force and what are we going to do? We are going to have a task force that is actually going to do something. So why don’t we actually start doing it? That’s my attitude.

Julian Bond: Do you have a general philosophy that guides your life? A general set of beliefs that guide you and if you do and I am guessing you do, how has it sustained you at moments of crisis and challenge?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: I think that life is judgment, you know what I mean? If life were just a lot of bright lines, life would be just easy. You know, I think that there are judgments all the time in life. You know fish are caught bait. You do any fishing?

Julian Bond: Mmm hmmm.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: I mean that’s a cliché but it actually is a big issue if you are out there fishing. Do I want to hang in here? Do I want to cut and go somewhere else? If you are managing a situation, how much time are you spending on your long game as opposed to your short game is a big, big issue in this business, I think, and in life in general. Always keep your track record. Of that thirty-four percent on your long-term goal, make sure it is one or two or three things and then do all your dinner orders. That is how you are going to stay in business. That’s a big, big philosophy for me. And a number two big thing for me is that if you are in a bind or you know that you are going to get into a bind, it’s like if you’re riding a horse and you are coming to a jump, what you have got to do is communicate to that horse, I believe in you, we’re a team. You are going to make it over this jump. If you communicate to this horse, I am scared, I am not going to make it, you are going to crash or when you are taking off, you hit the petal to the metal all the way to the end. You don’t see the end of the runway coming up and say oh my God, we’re going to crash, then you pull the power - yeah you are going to crash. And I see people time and time again in this business where they have to make a critical decision. They know there is going to be some opposition to the decision. An analogy would be that you are sailing along and all of a sudden, you see this storm come up in front of you. Now what’s the best thing to do if you want to get to your destination? Turn and go the other way. Now that’s clearly not going to get you to your destination. Kind of cut your power and slow down? Why would you want to do that? That’s just going to extend the time that you are in the storm. The best thing to do is power to the medal and get through the storm as quickly as possible and I’ll give an example with this baseball decision. Concrete manifestation of this. So here we are. We all know we are going to make this baseball decision. The public at best is 50/50 divided. There is going to be a lot of decision. I say let’s just make this decision, get it through, get it over with, get the storm behind us. All of a sudden, we make the decision and the public and animosity brews up like a storm. All of sudden it’s starting to rain. All of a sudden, there is some lightening. All of a sudden some of the people in the decision-making ship go, “Oh my God, we are all going to die. Let’s cut the power.” No. Why would we want to do that? We cut the power and then we sit here in the storm for three, four weeks and the storm gets worse, the ship almost sinks. The moral of the story for me is that when you make a decision, it may turn out to be the wrong decision, it may turn out to be the right decision. Make your decision. Get through it and then suffer the consequences.

Julian Bond: Let me shift gears here.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: What’s the difference between – what I take through life and I am always sensitive, is that there is a fine, fine, razor thin line between dedication and perseverance and in-transcendence and stupidity and stubbornness. And a lot of times, it is the consequences of how it turned out. If it turned out well, oh that was a fearless leader, great perseverance. If it turned out bad, a stubborn idiot.

Julian Bond: Now let me talk to you about race consciousness. Does race consciousness affect the work you do? Do you see yourself as a leader advancing issues of race or issues of the larger society or both? Is there a difference between these things? And is there such a thing as a race-transcending leader, someone who transcends race?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Yeah I think that there is a such thing as a race-transcending leader. I think that in a lot of ways, I am a race-transcending leader. I think that there are other leaders who come to mind who are race-transcending leaders. I think a good example that is in the media is Oprah. I mean she is a super leader in the world. I mean she’s beyond race, but at the same time is conscious of her identity. One of the reasons why I take such strong exception to it and it bothers me so much is because I do feel that I do have a role as an African-American leader.

Julian Bond: Do you see a crisis in black leadership in communities today?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Yeah.

Julian Bond: What is the crisis?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Well I mean, as you deal with my issues here, I think that our leadership has to be more inwardly directed as opposed to just outwardly directed and I think that in my own view, I think that Ivan, he really hasn’t expounded on this or elaborated on this, but I think you can take exception to individual things that Bill Cosby said and how he said it, but the general drift of how we need to take more responsibility in our own families and our communities I think is sound. That is my own view.

Julian Bond: Why do you think it raised such a fervor or became such a matter of controversy and debate? Was it solely the way in which he said it or was it that people reacted as if he were talking about family secrets?

Mayor Anthony A. Williams: Because I think in our history and tradition, you have had some Africans who have said we need more personal responsibility. We don’t need all of these government programs. We don’t need any government intervention. We don’t need any social net. We don’t need any remedial or affirmative action of any sort. All we need is self-responsibility. People on the other hand are saying everything that is a problem is a problem because of white America, the history of oppression. You have heard all these things and the government. I am one of these people who is kind of in the middle. The government clearly has a role and the government still has a dire need to intervene. Hello – look at Hurricane Katrina! But at the same time, we need to talk to our own people. lives.