WELL, blow me down. City Hall’s cannons are finally quiet. A flag of truce flies from the civic mast.
A mere three weeks before the Tall Ships are set to arrive, the standoff between Tom Menino and Sail Boston has been resolved. The mayor, who had blustered about trying to ban the majestic ships from the harbor, has put down his cutlass.
First, kudos to the person who was essential to getting this done: Governor Deval Patrick. His staff worked to come up with the ransom money - ah, make that, security and cleanup dollars - Menino had demanded to let the popular event proceed. Patrick, meanwhile, personally helped nudge the sulky mayor up the gangplank and onboard.
This will not be the event it could have been, however. There will be no picturesque parade of sail into the harbor. Nor will there be a fireworks exhibition - unless, that is, Menino treats us to another round of political pyrotechnics.
After almost 16 years of this mayor, we’ve grown accustomed to this kind of hissing match. But in this mayoral election year, let’s step back and use this brouhaha as a telescope for evaluating leadership styles.
Around town, it’s a virtual given that Menino dislikes Dusty Rhodes, lead organizer of the Tall Ships event, though no one quite knows why, and that that supposed antipathy lurked like a reef here.
Mayoral spokeswoman Dot Joyce denies that. The problem, she says, is that Boston and its taxpayers got stuck with some $1.2 million for security and cleanup costs from the Tall Ships visit in 2000, while Rhodes’s firm, Conventures, has made money from Sail Boston, the nonprofit that organizes the event. To support that claim, City Hall produced a 2007 Sail Boston tax return showing a $99,772 payment to Conventures.
Actually, says Rhodes, Conventures has lost an accountant-certified $1.5 million over the last decade on Sail Boston.
As for the $99,772? “You have to report it because it was an invoice, but that bill was never paid,’’ she asserts.
Finally, she notes that it was the state, not Sail Boston, that reneged on a commitment to pick up the $1.2 million for costs from the 2000 Tall Ships event.
But here we’re getting drawn into the swamp of the squabble, when the larger point is this: What we saw here from City Hall wasn’t big, visionary, problem-solving leadership. Instead, it was a temper tantrum from a small-minded mayor who threatened to torpedo the Tall Ships visit unless he got what he wanted.
So what would the men-who-would-be-mayor have done differently?
“I certainly wouldn’t have had a public grudge match that put the focus on me rather than the issue at hand,’’ says City Councilor Sam Yoon. “I’d have called the stakeholders together here. If you can gather the stakeholders to the table and put aside your desire to get credit and the problem is solvable, it will get solved.’’
City Councilor Michael Flaherty says he would have met with Sail Boston and state officials early on in a quest for solutions. “I would have been identifying ways to be helpful,’’ he says. “I would not have been putting up roadblocks.’’
Noting that the Boston Redevelopment Authority has spent $1 million for a social-networking website, Flaherty maintains Menino could have found city money to help with an event that brings hundreds of thousands of people to spend money in Boston. “This should be about the best interests of our city,’’ he says.
South End businessman Kevin McCrea, another mayoral candidate, says: “You call up the governor, you call up the businesses . . . and you get it done.’’ He adds: “A million dollars is not a lot of money for what is a signature event for the city. There are a lot of ways to raise that money.’’
Now, it’s easier to be a rhetorical mayor than a real one. Still, the prescriptions for pro-active leadership we hear from Yoon, Flaherty, and McCrea are far more appealing than the petty brinksmanship - sulksmanship, even - we saw from the incumbent.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. 
