It’s oddly appropriate that Detroit Mayor Dave Bing’s farewell event, held Wednesday at Cobo Hall, was dubbed a “tribute celebration.” It sounds like "The Hunger Games" tribute ceremony.

Both events, the real-life celebration of a failed mayor and fictional ceremony to send children to fight macabre and pointless battles, strain the very notion of “tribute” so far that even George Orwell’s linguistic villains would blush.

What are we supposed to be celebrating about Dave Bing’s four-and-a-half year tenure as Detroit’s mayor, exactly?

The fact that he continued Kwame Kilpatrick’s debt-happy budget practices?

The fact that he couldn’t hire a competent police chief to save his own life?

The fact that his signature policy initiative, the Detroit Works Project, devolved into a hot mess of citizen distrust, inside baseball wrangling, and insufferable consultant jargon?

The fact that, perhaps unique in the entire history of American governance, Dave Bing was an elected official with no ability or even desire to connect with his constituents?

Do you recall ever seeing Bing comfortably chatting with residents in Detroit neighborhoods, playing basketball—he is a NBA Hall of Famer, after all—with local kids, or eating in some tucked-away neighborhood restaurant? Roast doesn’t count.

It’s almost as if Dave Bing’s entire understanding of contemporary Detroit was limited to what he could see from the freeways that delivered him from his pre-mayoral Franklin home to the Detroit Athletic Club.

In the end, Dave Bing seemed as out-of-place governing Detroit as he would have been trying to govern Phnom Penh or Reykjavik.

That’s a tragedy because Bing came into office at a critical moment in Detroit’s history. The city’s finances in critical condition, neighborhoods bleeding residents, and a collective psyche still damaged by Kilpatrick. Detroit needed a mayor capable of Churchillian leadership. Instead, with Bing, Detroit got a Neville Chamberlain. Not the Chamberlain who met with Hitler in Munich—that would be an absurd comparison. However, Bing was reminiscent of the Chamberlain who, after Poland, foolishly believed the German war machine would quickly collapse under the weight of an economic blockade, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Bing fought his own Phoney War to “save Detroit” that did little to alter the disastrous course of his predecessors.

Yes, Dave Bing is a decent man who seemingly governed with integrity. Yes, that was an improvement over Kwame Kilpatrick’s criminal enterprise. However, by the time he delivered his first State of the City address early into his first full term as mayor, the charm of not being a dirt bag had worn off.

Not being a dirt bag isn’t enough.

To those who argue the die was cast, that there was nothing Bing could do, well, if Detroit’s bankruptcy truly was a foregone conclusion, then Bing failed Detroit by not forcing the issue and expediting the process.

Instead, Bing doubled down on the status quo. He continued the long-term borrowing to pay short-term expenses. He deferred $100 million in pension contributions—money the city owed its employees for driving buses, policing streets, and fighting fires—so they could continue paying Wall Street creditors in full. It was a silly, politically-motivated effort—damn the inevitable consequences—to delay the obvious emergency manager appointment.

It may have been an expedient course for Bing in the middle of 2011, but it was bad policy long-term for Detroit.

What’s more, giving one’s best effort isn’t reason for gratitude. Like not being a dirt bag, it is literally the least one can do in a position of leadership.

Anywhere else, a mayor with Dave Bing’s record would be trying to quietly fade away. There would have been no farewell to the troops speeches, like Bing’s recent talk at the Detroit Economic Club. There would be no “tribute” dinner, and certainly no columns full of fawning quotes from ineffectual Important People about Bing’s unquantifiable positive traits.

Sadly, Detroit is too quick to celebrate "the try" instead of demanding results. Detroit's civic culture and civic leaders are far too proud of its consolation prizes. If the Spirit of Detroit was truly representative of the city, it would be holding a "participant" trophy. 

If the post-Dave Bing, post-bankruptcy Detroit truly wants to be a world-class city, it needs to shed the “you tried your best” attitude and raise expectations for its leaders.

Photo illustration by Lauren Ann Davies