You are doubtless familiar with many people in town, but it is those you do not know who may be the most interesting. Perhaps a few of us, here and there, have made the acquaintance of Pierre St. Menteur, a shadowy French national, reputed to be a planner, consultant, and schemer. Nothing of certainty can be said about him, and even his existence seems improbable. I can only relate, to the best of my imperfect recollection, occasional conversations with him.
I mentioned once, previously, that most people in my family spent time in Europe, and they all made good and lasting friends among people there. Europe for us always meant France. The French are hardly of a single type. Some might be inclined to an over-reaching state, but there are many liberals (that is, favoring a free market) there, and my family and I always looked fondly on the friends made from among that group. There’s much fuss and pretentiousness said about the French, but the truth is that the closer one gets to them, the more erroneous notions fall away in favor of admirable truths. I have always had happy times among the French, as others in my family have.
As for St. Menteur, one would find the formidable, but not the admirable. He is apparently middle-aged, educated, superficially charming, being committed to a world of managed economies, and cultural preservation through government regulation of speech and behavior. Many of the French reject these commitments, but they are the foundation of St. Menteur’s world view.
I cannot say what professional role he plays, if any, in Whitewater. A consultant of his echelon travels widely, but discretely, to many parts of the world. To my knowledge, he has never stayed overnight in our town; this is a man who would find Marcus’s Pfister barely tolerable.
I’ll relate part of a recent conversation, so well as memory serves. St. Menteur’s accent may seem odd, but then whole story’s odd. In any event, I would not tease through a caricature of the French if I did not love the real people so much.
Adams: What brings you back to our part of the world? I cannot say that it’s a pleasure, but it is a curiosity.
St. M: I love, just love, the people of Wisconsin. It is the adorable town, Whitewater, that says so much about America. All the happy little pilgrims, eating the turkey and watching football, it is super. I adore the unspoiled frontier. Wisconsin – it was ours once, non?
Adams: That was then, and this is now. Perhaps you’re working to get it back. You must have more on your mind than American holidays.
St. M: True, all true, Adams. I arrive to see the state of progress on regulation, on enforcement, eh…on propriety, in the small city. It goes well, does it not?
Adams: I doubt that you’re the behind of all this, but I believe that you’re mistaken about it all going well.
St. M: A budget municipal to the limits of the levy, a property owners’ group that defeats sales of the downtown property, a true vigor for the regulation and enforcement of the undesirable behaviors — all a direction positive and favorable.
Adams: There’s a limit to these directions, directions that I consider neither positive nor favorable. The City of Whitewater cannot spend our town out of above-average poverty, it cannot draw sufficient retail to overcome a lack of light industrial employment, it cannot persuade retail to locate through cosmetic or marketing efforts, and it cannot offer good governance without budgetary and law enforcement reform.
St. M: You would like the pigs to fly too, non? What you want will not happen.
Adams: What you favor will not last. These efforts you cite are inadequate to uplift more than a few. They’ll prove inadequate, and what seems promising through spending now will prove disappointing three years from now. A managed economy is typically mismanaged; smart growth is typically slow-going and slow-witted; our educational technology plan will prove ignorant.
St. M: What you call prove is the wish of the minority viewpoint, that’s all. These little few, they are not the city. The city it is for the decent, the proper, the citizens upstanding, with their police guardians. The student, the foreigner, the destitute – these are the blight of the city. The marketing, it does not mention these people.
Adams: Interesting that you’ve mentioned marketing. I know that our city will soon announce a new marketing effort. Is that your doing?
St. M: The credit, the honor, comes only after the success, Adams. This you must know. For now, I am merely the visitor and spectator to these developments.
Adams: Sound fundamentals would be of better use to us than publicity. If our taxes are low, and spending constrained, and our regulatory approval rapid, we will have something fantastic to market to Wisconsin and the region. We can employ more, more productively, through expansion of light industry and grey collar services than though a push for retail that will prove cosmetic.
St. M: The marketing is the perception, and the perception, it is the reality. Is this the foreign interloper, the scrounger, the looker for work? Non, I do not see this man; he is not here. Is this the student, the maker of trouble and trash? Non, he is not free in the streets; he is inside the school only. Is this the neighborhood pig-sty, the dirty dwelling? Non, this is the Services of the Community that defends against the little pigs.
It is clean and beautiful in the video and the pamphlet. This is the little city.
Adams: Anyone will see that there’s more than that to the city. No one will build on marketing alone — visits will be more important than promotional efforts and chaperoned stops to specific areas of the city.
St. M: This you say, but I do not believe. It is the marketing that I believe …. à la prochaine.