What can Cincinnati learn from Dayton politics?

The apparent breakdown of Cincinnati's strong council/weak manager/stronger mayor form of government has people inside and outside City Hall ruminating: Is it the system? Or the people in the system?

Dayton Daily News columnist Martin Gottlieb puts forward another possibility: It's the culture.

He looks at why Valerie Lemmie thrived as city manager in Dayton, but got chewed up by Cincinnati's political meat-grinder.

Whether or not Cincinnati represents an extreme form of urban politics, Dayton certainly does, only the other extreme. Things are peculiarly placid around here. Flame-throwers, political hot-dogs, race-baiters and colorful crooks and cranks are seldom in evidence these days.

Just about everybody is low-key, constructive, focused on solving problems. Many aren't very good at it, but they're at least serious....

While Dayton's political style is, all things considered, probably better for a community than Cincinnati's, it is not entirely good. It's boring. ...

In Cincinnati politics, maybe shame is not such a strong force.

All of which is not to say that Lemmie was out of her league there, but just that some systems chew people up. Charlie Luken, a sober, moderate fellow who didn't like being in Congress, is getting out of Cincinnati local politics, too. For both, the time just came.