Nowadays a politician has to be careful. He can’t completely avoid the People or be disdainful of them like an 18th or 19th century statesman. That would be stuffy, elitist, antidemocratic. But neither can he be a bubbly Happy Warrior, glad-handing, back-slapping, sighing, weeping or smooching in public. He has to maintain the perfect balance between being too cold and aloof and too warm and gushy.

Mayor Wilson

San Diego’s Mayor Pete Wilson walks a very straight line between these two extremes. When he talks, his sentences are long and wordy but also emotionless and very serious. Jokingly asked if he partakes of the Weed, he doesn’t even crack a smile, just a cool “I don’t want to disappoint you, but no I don’t smoke pot.” Kind of a defensive tone in his voice but not strongly so. When he talks about his own politics, he dispassionately distinguishes between “liberals” and “conservatives” and explains why he avoids either label.

“When you use those labels, you’re indulging in generalizations. It reminds me of Mark Twain who said, ‘all generalizations are false, including this one’... You have to take a man’s position issue by issue, examine the record.”

But you must have some sort of standard by which to judge the “issue by issue,” don’t you?

“Well, yes. That is, government exists to do things for people that they can’t do themselves.”

Pete Wilson looks a lot younger than 39. He doesn’t yet show the facial lines or body bulges of middle age, and his short hair and conservative suit give him and innocent, very earnest air. But none of the modishness of a Lindsay or a Kennedy, none of the stylish clothes, sideburns or shaggy neck hair. The mayor’s 24-year old press secretary, on the other hand, wears a full red beard which somehow makes one more comfortable, sitting in the contemporary furniture of the Mayor’s wood-paneled, yet austere office.

Mayor's office

The evenness and moderation of Wilson's personality seem to extend into his political philosophy. He is a man of the center, a pragmatic man, claiming that “among most pragmatic people today, there’s a tendency toward the center, rather than toward ideology.” It becomes obvious whom Wilson admires, and he elaborates: “I think the President is like this. He's called a conservative, and yet under his administration you have things like the Volunteer Army and his Family Assistance Plan. The approach has been pragmatic, one that many Democrats arc taking too.”

You’ve made a choice, though, between the Democrats and Republicans. If they’re both pragmatic, why have you chosen the Republican Party?

“It pays to err on the side of less government rather than more... The more significant programs have come about because of men who have been called conservatives. They have an easier time... ”

The Mayor’s press secretary had warned me that he didn’t want the Reader interview to pre-empt the Mayor’s State of The City address. So it looked as though we would avoid city issues altogether. But when asked about the apparent contradiction between his Republican politics and his support of urban redevelopment in the Horton Plaza area, the Mayor gave his longest answer of the interview. He began by declaring that Federal laws “have as a condition for renewal the elimination of blight.” It wasn’t clear whether this was his justification or not. He started describing the flight to the suburbs and decay of the urban core besetting cities in the East. “San Diego has an advantage. We can avoid that. We're the fifth largest city in land area in the U.S. Whereas people in the East flee the cities for many reasons, some of which are the increasing tax burden, people here don't do that. They move within the limits of the city of San Diego.”

During interview

Then Wilson came back more specifically to the Horton Plaza area: “What we have here is property owners who’ve been content to make money but who don’t make improvements. They sit on the property and enjoy the increase in land value. But the land doesn’t increase to its potential.”

Is the potential increase in tax revenue, then, the main purpose of the redevelopment?

“It's the prevention of blight... But a co-equal purpose is to let the downtown area achieve its potential... that’s the major purpose.”

Wilson thinks that downtown San Diego really has potential. He went on to say that the downtown development would encourage adjoining property owners to improve their property. Given the fact that “we have the cleanest harbor in the world for its traffic and size” and that San Diego’s downtown is bound by the harbor on two sides, the redevelopment is very important for the city.

But now that you’ve accepted the right of eminent domain for removing “blight”, where do you stop? Can you declare any low-income area, whether it's at the beach or in Southeast San Diego, “blighted”?

“No, it depends.” Wilson agreed that here was where pragmatism provided the best approach. He wasn’t going to draw a fixed line between the rights of an individual and the public right of eminent domain. Taking a rigid position like that wouldn’t be pragmatic. But is “pragmatic” just a euphemism for “expedient”? Does Mayor Wilson cloak political expediency in nice, all-American “pragmatism”?

Certainly the statements cited in July’s San Diego Magazine would make one think Wilson has compromised his environmentalist views for expediency. Eugene DeFalco, a San Diego supermarket chain executive, for instance, was said to feel that “Wilson has retreated somewhat from what some businessman considered a radical position at the beginning of his term.”

But Wilson denies any retreat. He insists that one look not at what people say, but at “the record”. He claims that he hasn’t adjusted or welched on his campaign promises. “What scared some people was that I did exactly what I had promised about the problems of urban sprawl and sign control.”

Relaxed pose

Pete Wilson is almost too good to be believed. Maybe it’s his Marine background (he was an infantry officer from 1955 to 1958.) but his stoicism and discipline and purity infuse everything he says. Here's a man who majored in English at Yale and refuses to criticize intellectual life in San Diego: “I made a very conscious choice in picking San Diego as a place to live ... we’ve got a lot of talent here.” Here’s a man who works at nights and on week-ends, a man who refuses to take campaign contributions of over $300 from businessmen who do business with the City. And here’s a man who talks about being mayor, his blue eyes expressionless and his mouth unwrinkled. Wilson had remained so quiet and gesture-less throughout our talk-not a raise of the eyebrows or a twist of the mouth- that the photographer stopped taking pictures and when it was over, asked him if he’d sit at his desk and talk a little more. Notepad at my side and both of us a little more relaxed, I unconsciously threw out, “Do you like being mayor?”

“Yes, I do, a lot. You seem to get so much more done. I liked my job in the State Legislature, but here you get a lot more ink, press coverage-he hesitated-not that that’s so important, but you do something and it gets done. You can see it take effect.”

Wilson was predictably careful when asked about the future. “Political life has its rewards but one of them is not job security... I've never denied that I’ve been interested in other offices ... ” But he was very close-mouthed about speculation whether he was aiming at state or national office. He has had experience on the State level, of course, but he found what he was doing now “much more exciting” than the Legislature. Everything seems to be going so well for Mayor Wilson here (the Yellow Cab settlement, Council approval of sign control and Horton Redevelopment, no one group particularly unhappy with the Mayor), and the background looks so good (Yale, the Marines, Boalt Hall), and he is such a careful, serious politician that certainly the excitement of San Diego cannot be the last stop for Pete Wilson.