As a consequence of the recent Baltimore protests and riots, there has been a lot of discussion about the leadership qualities of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake ("Who's in charge?" April 28). There is a fatal flaw in this debate. People are equating the quality of her leadership with decision-making. Should the police have been more assertive initially in shutting down the protests when they began to turn violent or was it better to maintain a low profile so as not to inflame the protesters? Leadership is not demonstrated in the rightness or wrongness of that decision. Leadership is the ability to explain your decisions and the courage to accept responsibility for those decisions.
It is becoming clear that Mayor Rawlings-Blake initially urged police caution, which gave protesters space to destroy if they wish (after all, it is just property). That is an understandable decision based upon what occurred in Ferguson. The strategy of keeping a low profile, however, did not turn out as well as she hoped. Her failure of leadership is her attempt to distance herself from her own decisions. Real leadership would require her to explain why she choose an initial low profile position, to acknowledge that it turned out to be an incorrect decision and to promise to learn from that mistake going forward.
That is what a real leader would do. That does not describe Baltimore's mayor.
John Egan, Hunt Valley