How to Take Measure of a Mayor

Most politicians pick the community dinner over the dreary policy meeting. Williams is wired the other way around. Ask him about transforming the city, and instead of talking about some family whose life he turned around, he boasts that "we really rebuilt the planning office, to rebuild the self-esteem of the city. Your planning is how you think of yourself, how you dress as a city."

He's right. And wrong -- and he knows it. "A community that's hurting wants to see advocacy, and they haven't seen that in me," he says. He makes the inevitable comparison to Marion Barry, born advocate. And he offers other theories: He's more in the W.E.B. DuBois, intellectual tradition of black history than the Booker T. Washington, practical preacher tradition. Or he's a person who thrives on conflict, which is why reporters like him, while the public values stability and security.

But it comes down to this: During our tour, he passes dozens of constituents, but the only time he approaches a citizen, it isn't to shake a hand or ask how a family is faring. No, it's to seek a security guard's permission to enter a city tennis center. "I'm just giving them a tour, okay?" the mayor of the capital of the free world asks a security guard. Marion Barry never asked permission. The flabbergasted guard can only sputter his assent.

We elected him because he was the anti-politician, the bean counter, the non-Barry. And then we act shocked when he turns out to be exactly what we ordered.

The criticism hurts, of course. But he's certain he was right to shut down the city's public hospital, right to stake everything on bringing back baseball as an economic development tool. He notes that "in the white community, my popularity is still 75 percent by your poll."

Why the racial gap in how he's viewed? "It's the issue of whether I was seen as fighting for the interests in the community," he says. "And that I think I could have done more of."

We're outside the ARC, a $25 million arts center in Southeast, a perfect symbol of the Williams years: a spectacular facility that brings poor residents enriching and transforming advantages that have always been reserved for the affluent. Yet Williams probably couldn't be elected trashman here.

No matter: The mayor confidently predicts that his legacy as the guy who saved the city will be "enduring." Anthony Williams plants a foot on the base of a lamppost and swings himself lazily around the pole, a kid in his own world, resolved not to care what others might say because he knows he's done well. It's not politic, but it's what we needed.

E-mail:marcfisher@washpost.com