It will probably be years before this is completely understood. Seems like everyone dithered. Could it have been a failure of liberal governance:
It's called finger pointing. Politicians are masters (I have no problem with that word) at it and it keeps them getting reelected.
Did you say it COULD have been a failure of liberal governance? I have lived in the area for 70+ years. For the last 60 of those, the city has been run by liberal democrats. Over the last two dozen of those years, the radical democrats have taken over the city. I could write a book on the stupid policies that have destroyed the downtown area and allowed crime to go from occasional to expected. We moved to the suburbs in the late 1960s. Having no reason to go to downtown proper, we have not been there in over a decade. Absolutely everything we want or need is available to us within a half hour of our home.
Nobody dithered. It was a plan. It was patterened on the last two violent riot events of the Obama administration in which Dem Party mayors were ordered by Obama via the DNC as an intermediary to stand down the police departments and let sections of THEIR cities burn so as to allow the rioters maximum play and let the DNC politically milk it for all it was worth. So far as I know, only the Dem Party mayors of Texas disobeyed, and that was probably because they were afraid of being destroyed by their own constituents after the fact if they let Texas cities burn for the sake of Dem Party politics. But then again, I would not be shocked to see -- for instance -- parts of Houston, Texas burn in the future. It may not happen for ten to twenty years; but under Dem Party city rule, it eventually WILL happen.
Failure? Nah. Me thinks it has moreso to do with police reforms and how the police union there blocked them from happening. Without another option, political violence became acceptable. People forget that political violence can work at getting reforms and what you want done.