Mayor Barry's legacy - Marion Barry

National Review, Jan 27, 1989

Two D.C. UNDERCOVER cops were stationed at a Ramada Inn late last month, where they were about to make a drug deal with one of the guests, a former city employee named Charles Lewis. But who should drop in for a social call on Mr. Lewis but Mayor Marion Barry?-whereupon the detectives were recalled from their .assignment. After Lewis checked out, police found traces of cocaine in the room where he'd just spent four weeks. The mayor had visited him several times, and a Barry aide had picked up the tab for his stay. Upon leaving, Lewis vanished.

When the story hit the front page of the Washington Post, Barry had a lot of explaining to do. He didn't do it. He admitted only "maybe lack of some judgments" in his associations and accused the Post of waging a vendetta against him, perhaps because it has persisted in reporting on his associations. He implied that the liberal paper was somehow driven by racist motives, a charge only his most diehard followers were buying.

Barry has been the subject of several scandals and many rumors. In his ten years as mayor, 11 city officials have been convicted on corruption charges, and his former mistress served time twice, once for drug dealing and once for refusing to testify whether she'd slipplied Barry himself with drugs. His turn may be coming: the Justice Department is investigating his latest indiscretion.

It's a pattern at least as old as Jimmy Walker: a flamboyant big-city mayor with an ethnic base of popularity plays fast and loose with the law, then tries to keep his head out of the noose by appealing to his followers' shared sense of victimhood. This time the act isn't flying. Even (or especially) the capital's black journalists are openly saying he's an embarrassment, and whites, in this post-Bonfire world, aren't being bluffedor scared off from criticizing him. Barry has made D.C.'s city government a bad joke, brought discredit on home rule, and jeopardized whatever chance the District had of attaining statehood.