Riordan Urges Graduates to Shun Bureaucracy

Speaking Sunday to graduating students at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, an animated, thoughtful Mayor Richard Riordan exhorted his audience to heed his pragmatic brand of philanthropy and government, one that combines commitment to children with disdain for process and bureaucracy.

“In a bureaucracy,” Riordan told graduates, family and faculty members of the small but prestigious Westside school, “it is much easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

Sunday’s address was in some respects an unusual one. It featured the Irish Catholic Riordan speaking on the campus of a university dedicated to Jewish scholarship, and it found the sometimes reticent mayor sharing anecdotes from his varied career--one that has included philosophical studies, venture capitalism, educational philanthropy and four years as the mayor of the nation’s second-largest city.

Riordan, who recently won an overwhelming reelection victory, campaigned for the city’s highest office without often discussing his personal history. A shy man who entered the race with a commanding lead in the polls, Riordan instead focused on specific campaign themes such as improvements in city law enforcement and economic turnaround.

Sunday, however, he shared anecdotes about his Army service in the Korean War, briefly acknowledged that only the mental toss of a coin led him to law school rather than business school, and reverently repeated the words of his mentor, the great Catholic scholar Jacques Maritain.

“It is not sufficient to believe,” Riordan quoted Maritain on Sunday. “You must also act.”

A devout Catholic and a lifelong student of religion, Riordan joked about a New Year’s Eve debate with friends over the eight levels of giving, as defined by Moses Maimonides, a renowned Jewish scholar. According to the mayor, the debate was settled when Riordan called a friend who is a rabbi, and that man, on New Year’s Eve, faxed over a copy of Maimonides’ work.

“Of course, I won the debate,” Riordan said, drawing laughter from the crowd. “But what Moses Maimonides thought, which you all know so well, growing up in Judaism, is that the highest level of giving is teaching people to be self-sufficient. Put another way, to teach people to fish rather than giving them fish.

“That,” Riordan continued, “means giving everybody access to the tools to compete in society. This has shaped my charitable giving. I believe that God has given every child the right to quality education, to quality health care and to quality nutrition, which will give them the opportunity to get and keep quality jobs.”

In some ways, Riordan’s reflections were as telling for what they omitted as for what they included. Uncomfortable in some ways with politics, Riordan’s speech did not address ideological or political issues at all, except as his philosophizing might apply to politics.

Instead, the success stories he told of his administration were about aides who solved problems with actions, not with new laws.

His fondest recollection, for instance, grew out of a meeting with garment industry executives who complained that customers’ cars parked outside their businesses were being towed because they violated posted parking regulations, even though they were not interfering with traffic. The Transportation Department produced a 25-page memo explaining that it would take years to address that concern, Riordan said. Annoyed, he asked a deputy to look into the matter.

Riordan then gleefully recalled that the aide handled it in just the right way: He went out at night and took down the “No Parking” signs himself. That, Riordan said, is “thinking outside of the box.”

Reflecting on the changes in the world since he graduated from college--Riordan is an alumnus of Princeton University and of the University of Michigan law school--the mayor commented on a world that is more complicated and technological, where choices are unbounded and the nation no longer focuses on a single adversary.

But those changes have not all been for the best, he said.

“People have too many choices,” he said. “Choices of many colleges, ability to change jobs often, unhappily to change spouses too often, and even the diabolical channel changer. These choices have made people on the whole less satisfied.”

Riordan, who is twice divorced, did not mention that aspect of his personal experience, lamenting only the “lack of focus and belief in our society.”

The mayor’s comments were warmly received by the several hundred attendees at the graduation ceremony. As he was presented with an honorary degree, Riordan smiled and waved, showing off the diploma to an enthusiastic crowd.

“This is one of the proudest days of my life,” Riordan said. “My mother, who died four years ago, would have been proud to see me here today. I thank you all for this wonderful honor.”