Cheryl Senter/AP

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden reacts while John Kerry, the former secretary of state and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, speaks at a campaign event in Nashua, New Hampshire, Dec. 8, 2019.

Throughout the Democratic primary, Joe Biden has argued he’s the candidate best positioned to beat President Donald Trump: the personable, been-there-done-that former vice president who’s moderate enough to appeal to independents in key swing states, and maybe even some Republicans.

But while casting himself as the president’s strongest opponent, Mr. Biden is also leaning into a message that is in some ways uncannily reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s own pitch in 2016 – his own variety of “Make America Great Again.” 

Mr. Biden frequently speaks about reviving the middle class, which he calls the “backbone” of this country. The rest of the world is laughing at our once-respected nation, he tells voters, and only a change in leadership will restore America to the prosperous superpower it once was. On a recent bus tour in Iowa, the former vice president tells audiences what a shame it is that parents have to turn down the volume when the president appears on TV, for fear of their children hearing something nasty or inappropriate. A grandfather who uses words like “malarkey,” he jokingly apologizes that one side of the room has to look at his bald spot while he speaks. 

Typically, political campaigns, especially presidential ones, focus on the future. Candidates offer fresh visions for the country, detailing innovative plans that would usher in a new, modern era of peace and prosperity. 

But if Mr. Biden, who served in the Senate for more than three decades, wins the Democratic nomination, then the general election next year will feature two septuagenarians who spend a great deal of time talking about the past.

“Advertisers have been using nostalgia for decades,” says David Pizarro, a psychology professor at Cornell University. The Biden and Trump campaigns “are taking a page from a strategy that has worked well for, say, Coca-Cola.” 

And while it may be less common in politics than themes like hope or change, Mr. Pizarro says it makes sense that campaigns today would employ nostalgia as a tool. Because despite “tons of things being way better than they ever have been” – such as longer life expectancies and improvements in education, for example – most people believe the country is worse off now than in the past.

“Part of the reason is that it’s easier now than ever to see all the bad things,” says Mr. Pizarro. “And because of that, it can really seem like things are getting worse and worse.” 

The Obama connection

One difference between Mr. Biden’s and Mr. Trump’s use of nostalgia, says Mr. Pizarro, is the time period of their idyllic years. Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” can mean different things to different people, but it clearly harks back to a time well before the Obama years. By contrast, Mr. Biden is wrapping himself in the Obama presidency – hoping to benefit from the warm feelings many Democrats hold for the former president, and the desire of many voters to return to the relative “normalcy” of that era. 

In Ames, Iowa, for example, a woman asks him about improving Amtrak, but before she sits down, she tells the former vice president: “I back you because you worked well with Obama.”

Jessica Reilly/Telegraph Herald/AP

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks with Marjorie Costigan, of Elkader, Iowa, during his "No Malarkey" bus tour at Johnson's Reception Hall in Elkader, Iowa, Dec. 6, 2019.

The same goes for Wartburg College students Makayla and Sidney in Waverly. “For me, it was his connection with the Obama campaign,” says Makayla, explaining why she decided to come hear Mr. Biden speak. 

To be sure, Mr. Biden is also careful to cast his vision forward. When a voter at Iowa State asks him how he plans to repair the damage from President Trump’s first term, he responds: “I’m not going to just repair. I want to build on what Barack and I built.” At a community college in Iowa Falls, he says he is “more optimistic than I’ve ever been” about the future of America. 

“As Vice President Biden said, he’s running not to take us back to a fondly remembered past, but to build on our accomplishments,” says Bill Russo, the campaign’s deputy communications director. That includes beefing up Obamacare by adding a Medicare-like public option, reentering the Paris climate agreement while looking to “up the ante” on climate change, and reauthorizing and updating the Violence Against Women Act to include modern problems like online harassment, Mr. Russo says.

Still, the former vice president frequently evokes the past – particularly when speaking about America’s image abroad. 

Mr. Biden’s “No Malarkey!” tour in Iowa coincided with the NATO summit in London where foreign leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson were caught on tape appearing to mock President Trump. At first, Mr. Biden said he would wait to comment because of his personal policy of not criticizing presidents while on foreign soil. But by the end of the day, he was referencing the tape directly and his campaign had released an ad saying four more years of President Trump would make it difficult to ever “recover America’s standing.” 

Substantively, it makes sense that Mr. Biden would focus both on mending international relationships (he has more foreign policy experience than any of the other Democrats running), and restoring elements of the Obama era (he was there in the White House, after all). 

It also makes sense stylistically, says Travis Ridout, co-founder of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising. One of Hillary Clinton’s problems in 2016, he says, was that voters seemed to want change after eight years of the Obama administration. Mrs. Clinton tried to sell herself as a change candidate, but the message didn’t really fit, since she was a longtime establishment figure who had served in the Obama administration. Mr. Biden would likely have similar difficulties if he tried to market himself that way. 

“An ‘I’m the change we need’ message is just not going to work coming from Joe Biden,” says Mr. Ridout. “Authenticity is important in politics.” 

A transition figure?

Recently, Politico reported that Mr. Biden has been signaling to close allies that, if elected, he would likely serve only one term. The Biden campaign quickly issued a denial, saying Mr. Biden would not make a one-term pledge and that it is not something the former vice president is thinking about.

But Mr. Biden’s age – he would be 82 years old at the end of his first term – may be his biggest liability as a candidate. And in some ways, he has been presenting himself as a kind of transition figure – a trusted, steady hand who can help stabilize the government after the chaos of the Trump years, while the nation figures out what it wants going forward.

That sense of familiarity may help explain why Mr. Biden has continued to hover at the top of national polls and in the top tier in Iowa and New Hampshire surveys, despite lackluster fundraising and smaller crowds than some of his rivals. Indeed, while other candidates have shot to the top of the pack at different times only to fall back again, Mr. Biden has shown steady resilience.

The most recent Iowa poll, from Emerson College, shows Mr. Biden back in the lead in the Hawkeye State, after a spate of November surveys showing Pete Buttigieg, the fresh-faced mayor of South Bend, Indiana, on top.

More than a dozen voters across four town halls say they are torn between Mr. Biden and Mr. Buttigieg. At a Biden event in Iowa Falls, one woman says she is leaning toward Mr. Buttigieg because the country might need a younger president. Another says she is leaning toward Mr. Biden because of his experience, but would like to see Mr. Buttigieg as his vice president. 

“I would vote for [Biden] in a minute if he gets the nomination,” says Kurt Kelsey after hearing Mr. Biden speak in Iowa Falls. Still, he and his wife, Arlisse, who farm corn, soybeans, and hay, say they’re leaning toward some of the other Democratic candidates. Mr. Kelsey likes New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Mayor Pete, and Mrs. Kelsey says she likes Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. 

“[Biden] said some good things, but not really how he’d do it,” says Mr. Kelsey, who’s wearing a “No Malarkey!” sticker on his jacket. “He doesn’t really have a plan.”

“But I agree with him that we can’t have four more years of Trump.” 

A tiny woman in a pink knit cap and red jacket hobbles over to Fergus Leung, her newly elected district councilor, as he greets constituents outside the towering Kwun Lung public housing complex on western Hong Kong Island.

“Where have all the orange rubbish bins gone?” she asks. Mr. Leung explains that Hong Kong police took away the bins, fearing protesters might use them to block roads, and replaced them with plastic bags. The woman looks dismayed. The orange bins had ashtrays. Without them, cigarette butts now scatter the sidewalks.

“The streets … are a bit dirty,” Mr. Leung admits, bespectacled and wearing a white button-down shirt. “I’ll write to the Hygiene Department.” 

It’s been less than a week since the 22-year-old University of Hong Kong student leader and pro-democracy protester defied the odds, defeated a pro-Beijing incumbent, and won the local district seat. Indeed, his term doesn’t officially start until Jan. 1. But Mr. Leung is in high demand. 

“It’s quite overwhelming,” says Mr. Leung, already immersed in issues of rent hikes, public housing access, and illegal parking. Living in a student dorm on the nearby campus, where he’ll graduate with a biomedical science degree in May, Mr. Leung is still somewhat amazed he won the seat held by the opposition since 2007. 

“It’s really a big surprise for me,” he says.

Considered a referendum on Hong Kong’s political crisis, the Nov. 24 elections saw a record turnout that produced a stunning defeat for the pro-Beijing camp and a landslide victory for pro-democracy candidates, who captured about 85% of 452 seats and took over 17 of the 18 district councils. Although the councils are advisory bodies, they offer democrats a platform for broadening their agenda and voter base, and a springboard to groom candidates for higher office.

But now it is up to Mr. Leung and other councilors-elect – many of them in public office for the first time – to translate the pro-democracy camp’s unprecedented win into long-term political gains by getting things done at the grassroots. 

Mr. Leung first was drawn to politics in high school, when he took part in Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement and saw police use tear gas against non-violent protesters. This past summer, he researched a District Council bid and learned that no other democratic candidate planned to seek the Kwun Lung position, considered a pro-Beijing stronghold. He decided to run in August.

“I have a lot of work to do,” he says. “You first have to win their trust, but it’s not easy.”

Uphill battle?

During morning rush hour, a week later, Mr. Leung is back in Kwun Lung, tracking a slew of constituent issues – from families stuck in tiny apartments to workers who need better bus service. “I would say it’s quite mind-blowing,” says Mr. Leung, who says he is gaining a deeper understanding of many real-world problems for the first time as he advocates for individual cases with the government.

Residents, many of whom are elderly and lower-income, seem to appreciate Mr. Leung’s earnestness – if not his democratic activism. But midway through the morning, a pro-Beijing resident walks up and denounces him in Cantonese slang: “Kill people, burn houses, and wear the golden belt!” the man says – loudly repeating the phrase for emphasis.

“I know, I know,” Mr. Leung replies in Cantonese. The saying is an attack on the protesters, and means roughly “do whatever you want without any consequences,” he says.

“This gentleman is a very loyal supporter of the DAB,” Mr. Leung explains, referring to the flagship pro-Beijing party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong. The DAB ran 181 candidates in the District Council election, and – in its biggest defeat – all but 21 of them lost, including Mr. Leung’s opponent. 

“This election brought a lot of trauma to those government supporters” who oppose the protests and believed they were in the majority, Mr. Leung says.

Nevertheless, pro-Beijing forces remain a power to contend with at the grassroots. For example, after its election drubbing, the DAB announced it would continue to pay its District Council members who were voted out of office, to prepare for a comeback in the next election four years from now. 

So Mr. Leung’s opponent, Yeung Hoi Wing, will remain ensconced in an office inside the very housing complex that Mr. Leung will soon represent. Moreover, he says, defeated politicians like Mr. Yeung will continue to organize activities and services with the help of pro-Beijing organizations built up over decades, such as the residents’ association of the housing complex.

Backed financially by Chinese offices and businesses, the vast pro-Beijing network in Hong Kong also includes leftist unions, workers at China-funded companies, and a variety of community organizations including cultural and recreational groups and women’s groups. These groups offer services, social activities, and free gifts such as meals, and they help groom local politicians and get out the vote in elections, according to Ma Ngok, associate professor of government at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“This will be a very big challenge to myself and all the democratic district councilors” who need time to build similar networks, Mr. Leung says. “Many of us are worried whether we can provide the same level of service as our opponent did before.”

New networks

Mr. Leung is banding together with other young, independent, new District Council members, including two from adjacent neighborhoods: Jordan Pang, another university student leader, who defeated DAB Vice Chairman Horace Cheung; and Cherry Wong, who captured a seat held by the DAB since 1994. 

Together, they plan to cooperate not only on traditional social services – such as planning day tours for the elderly and Chinese New Year festivities – but on creative improvements for the district.

Advancing his agenda of urban innovation, Mr. Leung will work closely with Ms. Wong on new ways to give breathing space to the beloved, more than century-old banyan trees whose exposed, vein-like roots cling to a broad stone wall in the neighborhood. He seeks to modernize recycling, to encourage cohabitation with the wild pigs that transit the area, and to oppose a giant land reclamation project that would disrupt a historic harbor-front pier.

Beyond the neighborhood, Mr. Leung says he’s receiving mentoring and training from established democratic parties and more experienced politicians.

He also plans to actively promote the pro-democracy movement that he says motivated him to run for office. “I won’t forget what we are fighting for,” he says. He will participate in protests – while trying to avoid arrest – and will step in to de-escalate any confrontations between police and demonstrators in his neighborhood. He also plans to donate a portion of his salary to a legal fund for protesters charged with rioting.

Aspiring to a long-term political career, Mr. Leung says his vision is to empower Hong Kong to break away from its dependence on superpowers and become “an active player on the international stage.” 

“We aren’t using our strength fully. Our imagination has been limited,” he says, taking a short break in a cafe over a mango smoothie. “We need to readjust our mindset, and think about the future of Hong Kong in a creative way.”

Mark Trumbull/The Christian Science Monitor

Audua Pugh (left) and Kyle Samejima are active promoting greener lifestyles in Minneapolis. They gathered with other residents at North High School on Nov. 20, 2019, for an event supporting a global "climate reality" campaign.

It’s a chilly Tuesday evening, and Kim Havey stands before the crowd with a simple message: Minneapolis needs residents’ help.

Last year, the city pledged to transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2030. But city administrators and utilities can’t meet that goal without citizen involvement, says Mr. Havey, the city’s director of sustainability. 

“This is going to be really a joint effort,” Mr. Havey tells residents gathered for the neighborhood association meeting. As he asks for their ideas, he encourages them to view the shift not as a sacrifice but as bringing local benefits – in health, jobs, and lower living costs.

The evening’s pitch is part of a larger mission for Mr. Havey: nurturing more sustainable behavior. Even in politically liberal cities like this one, the job of reducing carbon emissions hinges on more than just raising an alarm and setting ambitious goals. As a practical matter, it also means enlisting the public by making the solutions feel achievable and even welcome – not a burden on people’s time and bank accounts.

His efforts have implications nationwide. More than 90 cities around the United States have pledged to wean their electrical grids off fossil fuels, but so far only some relatively small ones have achieved this goal. Getting a city like Minneapolis, with some 425,000 residents, to 100% renewable would set a clear model for other midsize cities to follow.

In Minnesota and beyond, “behavior change is going to have to be part of the solution,” says Debbie Weyl, an energy-use expert at the World Resources Institute in Washington.

Here in Minneapolis, estimated carbon emissions have already dropped 17% since 2006, even as the city’s economy has grown 20%. But that’s just the beginning of a steep course lined with hurdles.

Currently 30% of local electricity supplies come from coal and another 14% from natural gas. Most homes aren’t robustly insulated, even though polar-vortex chills contribute to making buildings the city’s biggest source of emissions. And for many residents, the idea of a car-free lifestyle just doesn’t feel realistic. 

So Minneapolis is working on answers, one person at a time.

Easing in

In South Minneapolis, Erin Tietz says her family’s transition to a green lifestyle hasn’t felt onerous. The roots of this change were planted, almost literally, in the soil of organic waste. As someone with a lifelong love of cooking, Ms. Tietz says citywide efforts to compost food waste changed her thinking about trash – and whether she really needs to use the garbage disposal in her kitchen sink.

“My interest just continued to peak,” and now, as her kids help with composting at their school, Ms. Tietz says she tries to spread an environmental ethic to others.

Her own family’s steps have ranged from eating less meat to buying foods in bulk. 

“I won’t ever take a plastic bag,” she says. “I just transfer [groceries] from the cart to my car if I forget my bags.”

About a year ago, her husband started riding the bus to work. While she feels the need for a personal vehicle for the house calls in her nutrition-related work, Ms. Tietz is pondering a Vespa or similar scooter as a way to burn less fuel.

City officials believe this kind of story can be replicated. City-run sustainability programs can inspire residents to think differently about their own choices at home, says Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, by making it a little easier to make sustainable choices. Adding bus-only lanes, for instance, can further incentivize public transit usage, he says.

“If we can make it easier to take the bus, people will. And it will substantially reduce the carbon output,” Mayor Frey says, adding that in some cases “bus traffic occupies about 3% of the vehicular traffic yet moves almost 50% of people.” 

Mark Trumbull/The Christian Science Monitor

Chris Duffrin is president of the Center for Energy and Environment, a group that promotes energy efficiency and other efforts toward a low-carbon economy. Seen here in CEE's Minneapolis office on Nov. 21, 2019, he says the city's leadership is increasingly engaged in addressing climate change.

No one expects cars to disappear outright. But with more-frequent and faster-moving buses, public transit could become more enticing.

“The future is going to be less expensive if you’re low carbon – healthier, more convenient, safer,” Mr. Havey says in an interview.

He aims to establish a “mobility hub” within half a mile of each resident. These hubs would combine a bus or light-rail stop with things like rental bikes, scooters, and charging stations for electric vehicles. Ideally, a single app will allow people to browse and pay for various transit options.

Despite recent efforts “the city is still incredibly car-centric,” says Ashwat Narayanan, executive director of Our Streets Minneapolis, an advocacy group focused on transportation issues. “We want to change that and make sure the city is being inclusive of everyone – regardless of income, race,” or other factors.

Sweetening the pot

Similarly, the city’s efforts to transform the carbon footprints of homes may hinge on incentives that affect people’s behavior.

At the meeting with residents, Mr. Havey is pleased when a number of hands go up as he asks whether people have had “home energy squad” visits. With the city’s encouragement, local utilities are offering these voluntary visits as one way to make action as easy as possible for customers. Energy-squad reports outline the savings ratepayers can reap, map a path toward better efficiency, and even provide bids from a couple of contractors.  

Still, it’s a minority of “home energy squad” participants who actually follow up by installing new insulation or an efficient furnace. When consumers do make investments, comfort and cost savings drive the discussion more than climate change, says Chris Duffrin, president of the Center for Energy and Environment (CEE), a nonprofit that partners with local utilities to provide the home energy squad assessments. 

So the city wants to do more to make the math add up.

To incentivize action, Minneapolis is aiming to become the first major city to call on utilities to offer energy loans tied to a dwelling’s utility bill, rather than being tied to an individual borrower. That way consumers don’t feel they have to sacrifice upfront for a payback that will only materialize if they remain in the house for several years. Instead, the finance charge is offset by a lower monthly tab for power – both showing up on the same bill.

This “inclusionary financing” also means renters as well as homeowners can participate, and an occupant’s credit score won’t be an obstacle. 

“The leadership of the city of Minneapolis right now is constantly pushing the envelope on the ideas for how to address climate change,” Mr. Duffrin says. 

Confronting mistrust

But in some neighborhoods, the city’s climate campaign is met with mistrust.

“We’re overlooked all the time,” says Audua Pugh, a resident of North Minneapolis. “That’s where more black and brown people live,” she says.

Ms. Pugh founded a group to promote recycling and other environmental progress in her neighborhood, because she says she has learned not to wait for the city to protect her community. Pointing to lead in North High School’s water and air pollution from nearby industrial facilities, she asks, “where’s the follow-up?” 

City leaders acknowledge that in Minneapolis, as elsewhere, it’s low-income or African American neighborhoods that are most exposed to the negative effects of climate change and other environmental challenges. They say they’re working to address the challenge, in part by designating less-advantaged areas as “green zones” that qualify for extra assistance. 

For her part, Ms. Pugh supports the push for solar panels and efficiency. As to transportation, she sees a shift toward electric vehicles as the most realistic green-transportation option.

“I drive, and I don’t foresee that changing,” she says, referring to the cold winters and a disability that keeps her from walking long distances. 

Proof of concept

Even with financial incentives, voluntary change alone won’t carry communities like Minneapolis across the finish line of a fully decarbonized economy, says Ms. Weyl of the World Resources Institute. But individual behavior is a vital piece of the puzzle, she says, both in reducing emissions and in proving that green practices can work in real life.

“Political will is really critical,” and those who are early to embrace greener practices “are reassuring everyone that this is possible, this is not punitive.” 

Hanna Terwilliger is one of those people. Two years ago she chose to switch her home from gas heat to an air-source heat pump – with assistance from CEE. Her heating system draws warmth from the outdoor air, using some extra electricity to assist in very cold temperatures. She also replaced her gas stove with an electric induction range. 

Ms. Terwilliger was motivated in part by climate change. But after feeling her house shake from a deadly gas explosion nearby a few years ago, it was also about safety.

For now, it’s debatable whether her switch does much to reduce carbon emissions. But that will change as the local utility’s energy mix shifts more toward renewables.

“Someone has to be the early adopter,” she says. “If we can do it in Minnesota you can do it anywhere.”

This story was produced with support from an Energy Foundation grant to cover the environment.

Anthony Santurri surveys the scene at Free Play Bar Arcade in Providence, part of a two-story venue that he has operated with his business partner for the past decade. On the first floor, friends mingle among pinball and Pac-Man, chatting over a steady stream of 1980s hits. Upstairs, people flock to a dance floor monitored by various security guards: someone by the fire escape, one near the DJ, a floater. There are 12 guards total, plus 65 cameras, police detail, and at least one owner on the premises at all times.

Mr. Santurri credits the club’s success, in part, to intense safety standards. He’s even drawn up a 20-page manual of best practices that touches on everything from licensing to counterterrorism, and is proud of the safe environment he’s created for people to “decompress and destress” for a night. “That’s the value of entertainment and nighttime economy businesses,” he says.

Lawmakers are beginning to see the value, too. In Providence, city officials have launched a campaign to appoint the city’s first “night mayor” – a colloquial term for someone whose job is to improve public safety, economic opportunity, and quality of life during “the other 9 to 5.” Cities around the world, including at least nine in the United States, have created similar government roles under titles like “nightlife business advocate” and “nighttime economy manager.” And they serve as anything from conflict mediators to city cheerleaders.

“Once you get people to see that the issues and the opportunities at night are really something that have to be planned, rather than policed, then you’re going to have a much more successful social economy,” says Jim Peters, president of the Responsible Hospitality Institute (RHI), a national organization based in Santa Cruz, California, “which is what a lot of people who are living in cities want.”

Nightlife is messy – residents complain about noise; workers lack efficient public transit; business owners face state and local licensing hurdles; wherever alcohol and crowds mix, there will be public safety concerns – and the struggle to balance everyone’s needs is far from new. 

In the 17th century, for example, Puritans in Massachusetts Bay Colony banned celebrations of Christmas for an entire generation because of rowdy revelers. At the turn of the 20th century, citizen groups in New York and New England worked to eliminate prostitution and gambling by hiring investigators to file police reports on alleged illegal activity. 

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Downtown Providence, Rhode Island, was built around the nexus of three rivers and hosts the state capital. City officials have launched a campaign to appoint the city’s first “night mayor” to improve public safety, economic opportunity, and quality of life during “the other 9 to 5.”

Today, night mayors are intended as a collaborative approach to safer environments after dark. The concept originated in Amsterdam, which appointed Mirik Milan as the city’s first nachtburgemeester (night mayor) in 2012. Through innovative programs and community building, Mr. Milan reshaped Amsterdam’s nightlife and became an urban planning celebrity in the process. Municipal governments from Seattle to Tbilisi took note and soon followed suit.

Dedicated to the dark

Pittsburgh, where Allison Harnden serves as the city’s nighttime economy manager, was one of the first American cities to adopt the strategy, and it’s seen notable improvements over the past five years as a result. 

One neighborhood invested in security training and street clean-up crews using fees collected from a parking meter pilot program. It even paid for portable toilets on Saint Patrick’s Day. Ms. Harnden has also helped business owners navigate convoluted tax codes and is working to better understand and address nighttime noise complaints on the city’s 311 phone line.

“The overarching idea is to have somebody that has the pulse on what’s happening at night and can either advocate for those changes or actually work on implementing them,” says Ms. Harnden. 

But nightlife management comes with some unique challenges, as well. 

Several night mayors say they spend significant time convincing people that they’re not law enforcement officials. Nightlife industries are also very trend-driven, and something like a new ride-sharing app can solve long-standing issues – or create more problems – overnight. To help each other troubleshoot, Ms. Harnden hosts regular conference calls with all nine night mayors based in the U.S. Every city is unique, but it isn’t hard to find common ground. 

For cities considering a night mayor position, Mr. Peters of RHI says it’s important to consider what goals and resources that person will have. A lot of places are looking for “a magic wand” to fix all their problems at night, he says, but this role is also about creating opportunities and growth.

Turning trouble around

In Providence, it was a string of violent incidents around nightclubs that prompted a serious look into the benefits of a night mayor. City Councilwoman Kat Kerwin and school board member Travis Escobar launched the PVD After Dark campaign to explore solutions.

Ms. Kerwin wants to find a night mayor who can first address public safety concerns, then focus on supporting young creatives in the city and streamlining licensing for small businesses. To her, a vibrant nightlife is a need-to-have, not a nice-to-have. 

“As a city, we have really serious problems that we have to deal with,” she says, citing an unfunded pension liability and failing school system. “If we’re building our tax base ... and making great minds stay here because the quality of life is too good to refuse, then we’re going to be definitely investing in some of our other public infrastructure.”

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

A skateboarder uses a quiet stretch of pavement to practice on a cold night downtown, Dec. 7, 2019, in Providence, Rhode Island.

The PVD After Dark team is collecting information through an online survey, and plans to hold public forums to learn more about the community’s needs. They also hope to work with Frank LaTorre, executive director of the Providence Downtown Improvement District and local night mayor expert. 

For more than a decade, Mr. LaTorre has been addressing quality-of-life issues downtown. When he started, he says the knee-jerk reaction to any after-hours violence was to add a bunch of police and blame all the “terrible, scurrilous nightclub owners.” There was no nuanced conversation about what led to those incidents or how they could be prevented.

Recent efforts like the PVD After Dark campaign, plus other conversations with the mayor and license board, are giving him hope. 

“The amount of discussion going on for me, 10 years ago, would have been a dream,” he says.

But talking about a night mayor and actually investing in the position are different. To move the process forward, Mr. LaTorre says Providence needs to establish a nighttime task force that brings together all stakeholders. The city council tried creating a similar team four years ago, but it lost momentum and was never fully implemented. 

One of the task force’s main responsibilities, says Mr. LaTorre, will be completing an economic impact study to gather hard data on the current and potential value of Providence’s “life at night.”

These studies have been crucial for other cities with a night mayor. San Francisco’s study found that nighttime businesses generated $4.2 billion in spending and created 48,000 jobs.

Mr. Santurri agrees on the task force, but says there are smaller, incremental steps that Providence should take before investing in a full-time night mayor. He wants the city to commit to adding more police officers, and would like to see his best practices guide turned into a living document that other business owners could use and contribute to as needed. 

Others argue that a night mayor – maybe someone like Mr. Santurri, whose decades of experience with nightlife and local government resembles the typical resume – could drive such changes. They say its time for nighthawks to get a seat at the table.

“Let’s say that our nighttime economy became so stellar that it really is getting a good buzz, right?” Mr. LaTorre says. “People will come down from Boston and come up from New York, and people would say, ‘Have you ever been to Providence for a weekend? … It’s amazing.’”

In Clint Eastwood’s latest movie, a journalist from The Atlanta-Journal Constitution will stop at nothing to get her story. In this case, that’s not a compliment. “Richard Jewell,” a biopic about the man falsely accused of bombing the 1996 Olympics, implies that real-life reporter Kathy Scruggs slept with an FBI agent in exchange for a scoop about the case. 

The newspaper is so incensed that it hired a lawyer to demand that Warner Bros. include a prominent disclaimer about its portrayal. Ms. Scruggs is no longer alive to defend herself.

Hollywood’s journalism genre has long equated a vital profession with the so-called oldest one. As far back as the 1912 silent movie “The Scoop” all the way up to television’s “House of Cards,” female reporters are often depicted as exploiting their sexuality. It’s a hoarier cliché than scenes of reporters meeting their sources at park benches (though that’s still an improvement over an on-screen rendezvous in a bedroom).

Those plotlines create dramatic tension. But they traffic in boilerplate scenarios that suggest women reporters are unethical, inept, and fair game for sexual propositions. Many reporters worry that pop-culture characterizations of this sort undercut public esteem of female reporters in a male-dominated industry. The harm may be less apparent when characters are fictional. But at a time of widespread distrust of media, “Richard Jewell” smears an actual reporter and may leave the impression that sleeping with sources is not uncommon. 

“It’s condescending and insulting to my profession – and grossly inaccurate, both in the specific instance of Kathy Scruggs, and in the broader instance of how women reporters do their jobs,” says Kelly McBride, senior vice president at The Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida.

A need for transparency

Ms. McBride says the public often doesn’t understand how the news industry conducts its work, which she attributes to a lack of transparency. Hollywood has stepped into that information void to offer its own take. Unfortunately, the practice of journalism doesn’t easily lend itself to dramatic action. After Ms. McBride’s children saw the 2015 movie “Spotlight” – which she applauds for its representation of journalism and its female characters – their takeaway was, “All journalists do is talk on the phone.” To enliven stories, filmmakers turn reporters into immoral, self-promoting characters, says Ms. McBride. They also add sex. 

Movies and television series in which female journalists go truly off the record with their sources include “Thank You for Smoking,” “Absence of Malice,” “All the President’s Men,” “Three Kings,” “Sharp Objects,” “Dexter,” and “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.” Even Pulitzer Prize-winning Lois Lane is not above going on a date with Superman when she’s profiling him. 

“Many, if not most, of these films and programs are written by men from the perspective of the male character,” writes Martha Lauzen, founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film at San Diego State University in California, in an email. “It’s not surprising that the writers would make the male protagonist the object of the affections of a female journalist to make him appear more attractive and charismatic.”

The Hollywood trope of women sleeping with sources arose, in part, from the antiquated belief that women aren’t suited to high-level positions in journalism, says Howard Good, author of “Girl Reporter: Gender, Journalism, and the Movies.” Women were, consequently, relegated to the lifestyle pages or writing “sob sister” pieces. To this day, female journalists in hard-news jobs are often portrayed as freakish adrenaline junkies who may not be as talented as their male counterparts. (In “Richard Jewell,” Ms. Scruggs is said to “write like a brick”; a male character sneers that she’s “ambitious.”) That view of female reporters gave rise to the conceit that they have to resort to feminine wiles to get ahead.

In some quarters, those Hollywood depictions have taken hold in popular imagination. Last week, Fox News host Jesse Watters weighed in on the movie controversy by commenting that journalists of both sexes sleep with sources “all the time.” But he cited just one actual example and then tried to bolster his claim by listing several movies featuring a similar storyline. That’s not to say it never happens in real life. The true story Mr. Watters pointed to was a 2018 scandal about an affair of several years between a Senate security aide and a journalist who covered the Senate Intelligence Committee for Buzzfeed and Politico. 

Yet such cases are “few and far between,” says Elisa Lees Muñoz, executive director of the International Women’s Media Foundation in Washington, D.C. “What has a much, much greater impact on women journalists are the instances, especially the very well-known instances, of sexual harassment and unwanted sexual attention that women journalists get from sources or within the newsroom.” 

Indeed, the #MeToo revelations included stories of sexual misconduct allegations against the likes of former Fox News CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes. (The movie “Bombshell,” released this past Friday, chronicles some of those accusations.) Hollywood portrayals of female journalists offer the false impression that professionals are open to sexual overtures.

Characterization disputed

“Richard Jewell,” which grossed a meager $4.7 million domestically over the weekend, goes so far as to suggest Ms. Scruggs got between the sheets for the sake of her broadsheet. But those who knew her strongly dispute the characterization.

“Yes, she was colorful,” says Joey Ledford, who was Ms. Scruggs’ onetime city desk editor. “She was profane at times. She was very vivacious and striking. And there’s no question that Kathy knew what she was bringing to the table as a reporter. But I don’t think she crossed the line. And she didn’t cross the line in the Richard Jewell story.”

In a public statement, Warner Bros. defended the movie as “based on a wide range of highly credible source material.” A disclaimer at the bottom of the movie’s end credits stipulates that some characters and events were created for the purposes of dramatization.

Mr. Ledford, who has since left journalism, says she would have been “appalled” at the movie’s smear.

“I was not her editor [on the articles about the bomb], but I have a pretty good idea of who her source was in the Richard Jewell story and that gentleman had been her source for years,” he says. “She was just a tremendous reporter. She was the best I ever worked with in developing sources and working with cops.”

Ms. McBride of The Poynter Institute wishes Hollywood offered better role models. She can attest to the power of watching upstanding journalists such as those portrayed on television by Mary Tyler Moore and Candice Bergen. 

“I grew up as a young child watching Ed Asner and Mary Tyler Moore and then ‘Murphy Brown’ in the 1980s. And that definitely influenced why I wanted to be a journalist,” says Ms. McBride. “We know from broader cultural studies that entertainment has the ability to influence public opinion.”

Reuters

Sudan's former president Omar Hassan al-Bashir sits inside a cage during a court hearing on corruption charges in Khartoum Dec. 1.

The latest survey of Arab opinion gives the lie to the impression that the Middle East will always be mired in corruption. More than half of those polled in the region by the watchdog group Transparency International say ordinary people can help stop graft in high places.

In recent weeks, those personal convictions have begun to turn into public reality.

Mass protests in Sudan, Lebanon, Algeria, and Iraq this year show citizens can indeed make a difference in working toward honest, accountable governance. Here are a few of their successes:

In Sudan on Saturday a court convicted a former dictator, Omar al-Bashir, of corruption and sentenced him to two years in detention and the surrender of $351,770. Protesters had forced the ouster of Mr. Bashir last April, leading to tentative steps toward democracy. The conviction, while one of many that may await the ex-president for three decades of harsh rule, is seen as an example that a “spell of immunity” may be breaking in Sudan.

In Algeria, similar protests led to the downfall of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika as well as to a string of recent court convictions for former leaders, including two ex-prime ministers, on corruption charges. While the army still holds sway over democratic reforms, the convictions show the military is bending to demands by protesters to end graft. A newly elected president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, vows to fight the “corruption which has infected the Algerian state.”

In Iraq, months of protests have not only felled a prime minister but also forced parliament to lift immunity for lawmakers accused of bribery or other crimes. In addition, the country’s Commission of Integrity has arrested several former ministers, former governors, and others in a new crackdown on corruption.

And in Lebanon, months of protests have yet to lead to court convictions on corruption, but they have forced a crisis for a corrupt system of politics. Since the end of a civil war in 1990, the small country of diverse faiths has relied on power sharing among sects that has also produced mass patronage and nepotism. Now several leaders have mouthed support for a government of technocrats, which could break the current sectarian system. In a TV address, President Michel Aoun said, “Ministers should be chosen according to their competencies and expertise, not political loyalties.”

These examples of progress reflect a different vision of society among the region’s massive youth population. More than half of Arabs in a survey by Arab Strategy Forum say corruption is the “top problem.” In Iraq and Lebanon, nearly three-quarters resent the use of religion for political advantage.

The protests hint at an upwelling for integrity in governance. Some leaders have fallen. Yet fundamental reforms in democracy are still uncertain. For now, these examples in cleaning out corrupt leaders show something just is afoot in the Middle East.