Kilpatrick sets out to rehab image

The doctor is in.

Kwame Kilpatrick's new spokesman, Mike Paul, is a high-profile New York public relations man who touts himself as "The Reputation Doctor" and specializes in crisis management.

Paul has an extensive list of clients listed on his Web site, from Jesse Jackson to Aretha Franklin to Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

In Detroit's ex-mayor, though, Paul has surely latched on to one of the more challenging cases of his career: The once-electric politician whose private scandals and public crimes continue to metastasize. Might it be too late to rehabilitate the Kilpatrick aura?

"Not at all," says Paul, who prescribes his own six-point cure for Kilpatrick's image woes: daily doses of truth, honesty, transparency, accountability, humility and consistency. To rehabilitate Kilpatrick in the public eye, he must embrace those qualities, Paul says. Kilpatrick must openly become the person he says he now is, in a way that we can all see, honestly, and without shortcuts.

"Spin won't work," says Paul, who says he was hired by Kilpatrick's lawyers and addressed reporters on the Wayne County courthouse steps Thursday.

"The goal is for people to understand who the real Kwame Kilpatrick is ... the nonmayor, the person who has admitted he has done wrong."

But the devil's always in the details, isn't it?

For starters, those Kilpatrick legal pleadings of poverty, coupled with revelations of secret loans, a leased Dallas-version of the Manoogian and expenditures on luxury goods and elective surgery, emerged only in court.

Paul is Kilpatrick's second high-profile spokesperson. Two years ago, in the heat of the text message scandal, Kilpatrick enlisted Washington, D.C.-based public relations powerhouse Judy Smith, who had advised Clarence Thomas and Monica Lewinski. She didn't return calls.

"We've been down this road before," says Adolph Mongo, a former Kilpatrick political consultant. "Two years ago, you could make these arguments and they'd resonate. Now people just want all of it to go away."

Paul sees a "very different Kwame, not the hip-hop mayor" but a man now trying to do right by his family but caught in a political maelstrom.

Paul is trying out the new truth about the new Kwame Kilpatrick: "I'm spending time with the man, and we're in high-level strategic meetings and he says, 'I've got to say goodbye to my boys,' or 'I've got to go home for dinner now.' "

Other "truths" you may expect to hear from Paul: Unfairness from the courts and the media. Political shenanigans on the part of Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner and Prosecutor Kym Worthy.

"One of the things I find amazing ... in this case is that it's very political. But Kwame Kilpatrick isn't the one being political," Paul says.

Fresh on the case, Paul may not realize how toxic the Kilpatrick aura has become. The public's already been trotted through multiple apologies, vows of humility and assurances of good intentions to pay off the city, work hard and move on.

"Why are you hiring a PR agent instead of paying restitution?" asks Eric Foster, a Detroit political consultant.

He noted that if Kilpatrick was such a good family man when he was mayor, the city would have avoided the prolonged text-message scandal over his affair.

Paul says he and Kilpatrick met years ago and were recently brought together by a mutual friend. Paul wouldn't reveal his fees or how he's being paid, but industry sources say fees for his line of work typically are $250 to $500 an hour or higher.

Cynics, or even realists, may wonder why Kilpatrick newly feels the urgent need to improve his public aura. Could it be, as Nolan Finley suggested Thursday in The Detroit News, that Kilpatrick's worried about federal investigators closing in?

Paul sounds upbeat and confident, as he talks about the bias Kilpatrick faces from judge and prosecutor.

"For every person who thinks (harshly of him) there are others who believe he's earned the opportunity for a second chance," he insists, describing strong support for the ex-mayor. Paul says he hears from plenty of Kilpatrick supporters. "They're saying, 'How can I help and do more?' "

He makes an enigmatic promise: "Soon you'll be hearing more about that."

The reputation doctor has made his diagnosis: It's a reworking of the ancient Greek PR guy, Socrates, whose advice for gaining a good reputation was: "Endeavor to be what you desire to appear."

As advice, it's sound. But taking the medicine -- living an honest, ethical and open life with humility -- hasn't been a cinch for Kilpatrick over the last few years. He has to "take it one day at a time," says Paul, the fly-in reputation fixer.

Please don't be offended, doctor, if most of us do the same.