5 ways Philly can extinguish its political dumpster fire

This had to be the most Philadelphia week ever in the City of Brotherly Love's long and occasionally sordid history. We deserved it. One day we're giving ourselves high-fives and patting each other on the back for pulling off the DNC with flair and panache, and showing the world that respecting the First Amendment rights of protesters actually gets better results than clubbing them over the head or throwing them in jail (who knew?).

It seemed all too good to be true, and maybe it was. The good karma vanished in a flurry of headlines that read more like a late-night comedian's cliche-ridden anti-Philly diatribe than the worldly 21st Century city that we prefer to brand outselves as. Joey Merlino back in the docket. A Phillies' fan who was so obnoxious he was tossed out of the game by the umpire. A bunch of cafones Wawa_after_dispute_over_cigars.html">brawling at the Wawa over cigars. And then, finally, the incredible, but short-lived, dumpster pool craze.

Maybe that was a grand metaphor of foreshadowing -- citizens trying to power-wash away the grime and germs of a gross and contaminated past to create a cool, clean summer oasis, only to be told by City Hall that what they sought to accomplish wasn't feasible. A short time later, we learned that the FBI and other law-enforcement agents were raiding the home and the union hall of Philadelphia's most powerful political insider -- and Mayor Kenney's 2015 election patron -- John "Johnny Doc" Dougherty of the electricians' union. They also raided the offices of a longtime Dougherty ally, City Councilman Bobby Henon.

It didn't take long for another shoe to drop. My intrepid colleague, William "Bill" Bender, reported on how another Philadelphia city council member, Kenyatta Johnson, used his so-called "councilmanic perorgative" to steer desirable lots into questionable no-bid deals that made some developers rich in his fast-gentrifying district. If you didn't see the piece (a hot August weekend isn't always the best time to stir up readership), please go back and check it out: It's a fabulous piece of investigative reporting that will hopefully change the way the city does business.

But then ... does Philadelphia ever change the way it does business? It's been 113 years since famed muckraker Lincoln Steffens called Philadelphia "corrupt and contented," 99 years since the city's mayor was accused of complicity in a political murder, 66 years since six city workers killed themselves during overlapping corruptions probes, and 36 years since Abscam and "money talks, [BS] walks." After all this time, how can Philadelphia still be so corrupt and yet so contented?

We should have seen the Johnny Doc shoe coming straight at our head. The 2015 mayoral election was an uninspiring affair in which the city's effort at campaign finance reform and limiting the size of contributions was swamped by a tsunami of so-called "outside expenditures." What that meant is that the two main candidates were a) a guy whose campaign was largely paid for by three trading-and-investment billionaires who wanted to impose their vision of charter schools on the public and b) a candidate who countered those millions by leaning heavily for cashon his patron, Johnny Doc, even though Dougherty and his union's brass-knuckle approach to politics had long been the subject of scrutiny. It's hard to say a lot about this new FBI probe -- we don't many of the details yet -- but it seems likely to taint Kenney just when he was getting traction from the DNC and the political coup of the soda tax.

By the way, I don't think there's enough hours in the day to mention all the recent corruption foibles of Democrats in Philadephia and in state government -- the recent felony convictions of Rep. Chaka Fattah, state treasurer Rob McCord, and former gubernatorial chief of staff John Estey, and the pending charges against Attorney General Kathleen Kane and state Sen. Larry Farnese are merely the first ones that popped into my head.

So ... do we give up? I'm not convinced that Philadelphia can ever change, given its history. But things could get better. Here are 5 things that could make Philadelphia less corrupt. Most of them are local, one of them is national; some involve changing the system, but others depend merely on human grit and determination.

1. End corporate personhood and overturn bad U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as Citizens United. OK, I'm starting with the hardest one, and the one that requires action in Washington. But the 2015 mayoral race showed us that local campaign finance laws -- no matter how well intentioned -- aren't worth the paper they're written on. Individual donors were barred from giving more than $2,900 to a candidate's committee, but Dougherty's electricians' union gave $595,000 to an "independent" fund that helped elect Kenney as well as U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle. And with U.S. Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United that gives corporations the "free speech" rights of people, it's impossible for any political entity to prevent unlimited spending by unions, or billionaires, or corporations.

Hillary Clinton (who, ahem, met with Dougherty during this year's primary season) has said -- after months of pressure on the issue from her rival Sen. Bernie Sanders -- that overturning Citizens United will be a top priority. But that depends on Clinton -- who seems to be spending a lot of her post-nomination summer wooing billionaire endorsements -- keeping her word, and electing a more forward-thinking Congress. Citizens-schlubs like us need to keep that pressure on Washington this winter. (If Donald Trump wins, we're up the creek, in more ways than one.)

2. Public campaign financing. This is an idea that was popular in the post-Watergate era and then lost steam -- even though it's the best way to keep influence-peddlers out of politics. As a reporter, I've seen the system work both in presidential campaigns -- which were publically financed for most of the latter 20th Century -- and on the local level in places like New York City and New Jersey. It leveled the playing field: Rudy Giuliani -- a Republican challenging a Democratic incumbent New York City Mayor David Dinkins who would have raised millions from developers (like Trump) -- was able to pull off his 1993 upset win with public dollars.

This kind of depends on No. 1 -- court decisions like Citizens United as well as blocking limits on what candidates can spend have rendered public financing fairly obsolete. What's more, voters who hate the political system are wary of spending any of their tax dollars on politicians .. .that's understandable. However, think how many millions more of your tax dollars are wasted by politicians appeasing their donors through things like ... no-bid land deals, for example. Writing off the public financing option is penny-wise, pound-foolish.

3. Mayor Kenney must pick up the torch of reform. If you're old like me, you may remember what happened to Arizona Sen. John McCain in the 1980s and '90s. The so-called "Keating Five" campaign finance scandal -- when he banded with four other senators to do the bidding of a tainted savings-and-loan billionaire -- almost cost McCain his career; he saved himself by becoming (for a time) the biggest proponent of campaign finance reform in the Republican Party, and a co-sponsor of the McCain-Feingold law.

Now, in Philadelphia, the best way for Kenney to distance himself from the apparent taint of his connection to Dougherty is to "pull a McCain," to make ending corruption his No. 1 issue going forward, regardless of what's happened before now. In just seven months in office, the mayor's shown a knack for impossible missions like the soda tax and reinventing the police department -- so why not now turn his energies toward ending the city's pay-to-play culture, whether it's a 2.0 version of the city's campaign finance law, ethics reform, or pushing to end wrinkles like "councilmanic privilege."

4. Bring back the Philadelphia Republican Party. Arguably the best way to have real democracy in the city that gave you the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution would be to have two viable political parties. Right now, in the middle of Summer of Trump II ("just when you thought it was safe to go back in the political waters ..."), the GOP brand is more tarnished than ever, which makes this seem like a Mission Impossible in such a diverse city.

Still, it's not hard to imagine what a viable urban rival to the entrenched Democratic machine might look like: Embracing the broad urban consensus on social issues such as LGBT rights or a clean environment, but with a different leaner approach to taxes and government spending, targeting small business owners and home ownership. The Democrats, with their string of indictments, convictions and FBI investigations, have handed the GOP a once-in-a-century opportunity -- but only if younger party reformers can overtake the party's decrepit statis quo. The irony, of course, is that competitive elections would also make the Democrats better -- ask Hillary Clinton how that works.

5. Readers like you. The only real lasting political reform comes from the grassroots. Think back to this spring and the hundreds if not thousands of locals who signed onto the reform-oriented "political revolution" led by Sanders, volunteered for his campaign, and, in some cases, protested last month outside the DNC. It's not surprising, perhaps, that in a celebrity-and-media-driven culture that so much of our political attention gets hurled into the "reality show" of a presidential race, while local politics seems boring

But imagine what a "political revolution" it would be if just a fraction of these folks ran for local Democratic committee person, and then if they banded together to elect ward leaders -- the neighborhood DNA level where political reform can bubble up. Beyond that, an active engaged electorate that goes to the polls in off-years -- like 2017, when the marquee local race will be for district attorney -- can make a real difference. The political powers-that-be won't change unless we change them.

In the summer of the dumpster pool, it would be easy to give up hope that we can ever extinguish the perpetual flame of the dumpster fire that is Philadelphia politics. We shouldn't. Call me an optimist, but I hope there will come a day when Lincoln Steffens is never again dredged up to describe current events in the city. Hopefully it won't take another 113 years.