Elmer Smith: Milton Street knows how to make news, but his is a story of promise squandered

IF GOD hadn't given us Milton Street, some columnist would have created him.

He wouldn't have been as colorful. The dimensions would have been more modest.

After all, only God can make a tree.

The language would have been more subdued and the episodes wouldn't have been as hard to believe.

We wouldn't have had him pitch a tent on the Capitol lawn in Harrisburg to protest the condition of his legislative office, or roll out a coffin as a campaign prop. I doubt that any of us would have had him set up a company to counsel traffic scofflaws after he lost his Traffic Court job for nonpayment of his own tickets.

And what columnist could have written that scene in which he confronted Common Pleas Judge I. Raymond Kremer to demand that Kremer send him to jail so he could do research on prison conditions.

"I have a right to say you have no right to throw yourself in jail," Kremer declared.

You can't make that stuff up. That's why I, and every writer in this town, should be in a state of acute euphoria with the announcement that T. Milton "call me Moses" Street is running for mayor.

While Street's futile fling will never unseat Michael Nutter, it could, as Bonnie Raitt would say, give us something to talk about.

But I'm going to look this gift horse in the mouth. What seems like harmless fun is neither.

It's not fun to watch a man I once admired lay waste to what's left of his legacy. And for him to try to assail Nutter in the black community with a blacker-than-thou campaign is hardly harmless.

In 2007, he dubbed Nutter "Watermelon Man" for the Godfrey Cambridge character who changed race from white to black in a 1970 movie. Street called then-congressman Rev. Bill Gray an "Uncle Tom" when he ran to unseat him.

Milton is no fool. He read the recent Franklin & Marshall poll that had Nutter's approval rating in the black community at just 42 percent. Milton's history was always to present himself as the real black candidate, whether he did it overtly or subtly.

Subtlety is not his strong suit. When he was leaping the rails in City Council, trading punches with a teacher on a picket line or moving squatters into vacant properties to dramatize the plight of the homeless, Milton Street was never subtle.

I liked that about him. I was an early and ardent admirer of the Street brothers dating back to my student days at Temple University, when Milton earned his living grilling kosher hot dogs from an orange truck outside the Paley Library and John was a block away in the law school.

Milton was the one. John was an adoring acolyte of his big brother, as were many of us. Milton's methods were questionable, but his passion was contagious. He didn't always get things done, but he had a knack for empowering people who got things done.

He banged his fists on the palace gates until his knuckles got bloody. But when he finally barged his way in, he didn't know what to do.

His legions elected him to the state House in 1978, then to the state Senate in 1980, where he switched parties to give the Republicans control of the Senate. They gave him a committee chairmanship.

It was all about him. He used one office to run for the next, going down to defeat in '82 when he ran for Congress as an independent. In '84, he lost a re-election bid for his Senate seat. Then he was defeated in both his legislative runs in '86 and '88.

And now, fresh off a two-year bit in federal prison, he's tilting at another windmill.

He deserves a better epitaph than the one he's been writing since his political career tanked. Milton Street was a man to be reckoned with.

Now, he's another self-styled Moses who is destined to view the promised land from afar.

Send email to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: www.philly.com/ElmerSmith