All his best qualities were on display when David Miller announced that he will not stand again for mayor: energy, dedication, intelligence, passion.
He spoke with force about his achievements as mayor and sincerity about his love for a city whose "best days are yet to come." He choked up once when he spoke about how growing up without a father had spurred him to invest in troubled youth. He choked up again saying how honoured he has been to serve as mayor. You knew that he meant it. Say what you like about his record, Mr. Miller is a good man who believes deeply in public service.
Why, then, was he such a disappointing mayor? His six-year tenure as leader of Canada's biggest city has been a story of great promise unfulfilled.
Enormous hopes rested on his broad shoulders when he swept to office in 2003, a surprise victor over former mayor Barbara Hall and business executive John Tory.
After the scandals and drift of mayor Mel Lastman's farcical final years, Mr. Miller was a gust of fresh air: a smart, idealistic, Harvard-educated lawyer who waved a broom as a symbol of his determination to sweep away the dishonesty and inertia at City Hall.
But by the time he announced yesterday that he was leaving, he was one of the least popular mayors in recent memory.
With the bitter taste of this summer's city workers strike still fresh in their mouths, many Torontonians were fed up with the mayor with the big frame, boyish smile and shock of white hair.
Two high-profile rivals, Mr. Tory and Ontario Deputy Premier George Smitherman, were lining up to take him on in next November's city vote. Several others were sniffing the air. Even if family demands had not driven him from the stage, the voters probably would have.
His supporters find that mysterious, even infuriating. His campaign team applauded and whooped as he worked his way through his nicely wrought farewell speech. Supporter Adam Giambrone, chair of the Toronto Transit Commission, had tears in his eyes afterward. Councillor Gordon Perks, grim-faced, just shook his head and walked out of the room.
Mr. Miller commands sincere loyalty among those close to him, and no wonder. Even if he were not nearly 6-foot-3-inches tall, he would stand heads above anyone else on city council in sheer intellectual power. He knows the issues that face the city backwards and forwards. His idealism is genuine. So is his devotion to the disadvantaged.
In the political cockpit of City Hall, he is a gentleman who strives to respect those with clashing views even when they are being idiots.
He is nearly always available to the media, not because he is a publicity hound but because he thinks it is part of his job to be accessible.
On top of these sterling personal qualities, he has a fair record of achievement to boast of. He really did use that broom to clean up City Hall, bringing in an ombudsman, a lobbyist registrar and an integrity commissioner.
He was instrumental in the events that led to the appointment of Bill Blair, the best police chief Toronto has seen in years. Crime is down and diversity on the police force up.
He got the provincial government to start taking back some of the service burdens downloaded to the city in the Mike Harris years. He got provincial and federal governments to promise billions for new transit lines. He helped secure a share of federal gas-tax revenues for cities. He made a start on the much-delayed renewal of Toronto's neglected waterfront.
So what went wrong? It's hard to say exactly. Perhaps it is asking too much to expect one man to turn around years of civic mismanagement and stagnation.
Perhaps he just ran out of time. Many of his projects, like his dream for a Transit City, won't bear fruit for a decade or more. A fractious, short-sighted council didn't help. Nor did the indifference of a public that barely bothers to vote in city elections.
But Mr. Miller damaged himself, too. The glaring example was this summer's strike.The 39-day walkout by city workers this summer was a golden opportunity for the leftish mayor to live down his reputation as a patsy of the unions by holding the line on municipal workers' wages and benefits. Instead, he settled for a saw-off that let current workers choose to keep their rich sick-leave perk and get a pretty good wage hike to boot. Voters who had backed the mayor against the unions felt betrayed. The post-strike polls were calamitous for his re-election hopes.
But, in fact, Toronto had begun to sour of Mr. Miller well before the strike. His refusal to change his mind about the island airport - even after the growth of a new airline, Porter, proved its worth - was stubborn and futile.
His One Cent Campaign to get a share of the federal goods and services belly flopped, confirming a sense that he was trying to foist Toronto's financial problems on other levels of government. His more recent gamble on getting the feds to fund Toronto's transit expansion out of stimulus funds - even though Ottawa said again and again that it wouldn't - was a similar failure. His new taxes on land transfers and vehicle registration diversified the city's property-reliant tax base but confirmed his reputation as a tax-and-spend, big-government mayor.
Under Mr. Miller city spending has soared from $6.6-billion in 2004 to $8.7-billion this year, leaving the city with an annual shortfall of up to $500-million. Despite all that money going out the door, the city still has a road-repair backlog of more than $300-million. In aid of "progressive values," he has refused even to consider efficiency measures like contracting out garbage collection.
In the suburbs where many of the votes lie, the feeling has grown that Mr. Miller cares more about green bins and green roofs than fixing the potholes. Successful politicians of the left run against type, holding the line on spending and showing they can run the store. Instead, Mr. Miller has conformed to type, leaving opponents to label him as the pie-in-the-sky leftie of old.
In doing so, he has fallen short of the expectations placed upon him. With all he has going for him, Toronto's 63rd mayor could have been one of its greatest. Instead, he is leaving under a cloud. What a shame.
Marcus Gee