Free A Prayer for the City by Buzz Bissinger Page B

fail.
    The stakes are too high.
    The cost of our failing is unthinkable.
    Roughly twelve hours later, the pomp of the day finally tucked away, Ed Rendell appeared at an inauguration party at the city’s Reading Terminal Market. Amid the pungent smell of spices and fish from the rows of eclectic food stalls, he was greeted by a Chinese dragon spinning its papiermâché tail, then by the furry green fuzz of the Phillie Phanatic mascot. A crush of people surrounded him as if he were a boxer making his grand return to the ring, and his brown eyes were electric and lit with a little boy’s anticipation. Through perseverance and luck and the strength of his own confidence, he had made a startling comeback in a city that had given him up for dead. As he walked across the concrete floor, people reached out to grab his hand and touch him. For some, it was a matter of connecting with someone who was now important. For others, it was the simple act of reaching out to someone who, after all he had been through, was still the same old Ed.
    Rendell reacted to it all without a trace of self-importance. He blew kisses. He posed for pictures. He squeezed arms. He didn’t turn down a single request for attention, regardless of where it came from, but he also paid attention to his own needs. When a resplendent plate of pastries was brought his way by a waiter, his eyes turned almost moist. “I’ll take two!” he said, grabbing at them as if he had just heard a rumor that the caterer was about to leave the country. Music pulsated from a stage that had been set up in the center of the terminal, and Rendell joined in with relish. He clapped as the band played “In the Midnight Hour.” He got up onstage and sang the old Beatles song “Twist and Shout” without a twitch of self-consciousness, even though his singing style resembled a doglike croon. He did a little chain dance to another song. When the leader of the band yelled to the feverish crowd, “How many people are happy that Ed Rendell is the mayor of Philadelphia?” the applause in the room was loud and strong, except for one tiny voice of dissent.
    “Not me,” said Rendell with a devilish smile on his face.
    At the stroke of midnight, a cake in the shape of the city was brought out, and it didn’t take long before little chunks were being stuffed into Rendell’s mouth as if he were the groom at a wedding. From several feet away, Bob Brady, the chairman of the city’s Democratic party, watched the proceedings with a grandfatherly benevolence. Political decorumwould dictate that chunks of cake should probably not be forced into the mouth of the mayor of the fifth-largest city in the country even under the most joyous of circumstances. But Brady had been down this road many times, and he seemed to know instinctively that the best night of a mayor’s life was usually this very first one. “Let ’im have fun,” said Brady. “Tomorrow he’ll wake up and say, ‘I’m the fucking what? What the fuck happened?’ ”
    Behind the swell of hope and optimism lay the unraveling of a once glorious American city. And there were also issues of Rendell’s character. Several weeks before the election in November, Cohen had gotten word from a variety of sources that the
Inquirer
was delving with a vengeance into allegations that Rendell had engaged in acts of sexual harassment while district attorney. Cohen received nearly thirty phone calls from individuals who had either been contacted by the newspaper or were aware of the investigation, and so he knew intricate details of it: the names of the reporters assigned, the supervising editor, and the kinds of allegations being pursued. He knew that the investigation had generated considerable controversy within the paper’s newsroom—some thought it was a legitimate story; some thought it had nothing to do with anything. Cohen questioned the timing. Such rumors were not new. Virtually every time Rendell had run for office, they had