So many people like to blame much of the downfall of Detroit on poor political leadership, but is that really the true story? Yes, Detroit's had more than its fair share of bad politicians, but you have to look at it this way: how many good, smart politicians would willingly get themselves into a doomed situation? Detroit had so many problems facing it from an economic and social perspective that there probably wasn't anything that really could've been done politically to "save" it. Detroit was a sinking ship - like the Titanic after it hit the iceberg - and didn't matter how good of a captain you were. This ship was gonna sink.

Jerome Cavanagh, for example was considered a rising star when he was first elected mayor, but in the end the stress of trying to manage Detroit most likely contributed to his early, untimely death. How many honest politicians that want to have a successful career would willingly follow his footsteps? A few, but not many.

Look at Gary, Cincinnati, Youngstown, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Toledo, Saginaw, Flint, Decatur, Pontiac, Benton Harbor, Warren [[Ohio), south Chicago, Muncie [[Indiana), and etc. Do you think it's all the fault of politicians that those cities severely declined, or were there bigger issues at play? It's convenient to blame politicians, but maybe we should look in the mirror instead.

If you ask me, it's clear that we made decisions both socially and economically to kill these cities. Maybe some of it was inadvertent, but we did it nonetheless. You can cry about Coleman Young or Kwame Kilpatrick, but they weren't the real culprits in Detroit's decline. We were.