An evening on the brink: Tragicomic opera courtesy of NA's Siamese councilmen

Q: Mr. Cappuccino, how many audits will be needed before you can remember what you missed during your previous term on the council?

A: Why, it's obvious, son - cut Scribner Place!

1st District councilman Dan Coffey plays the game of ward politics like Liberace played the grand piano, with a costumed, grandiloquent bravado so transparently obvious as to submerge any notion of subtlety or restraint beneath a positively Nixonian tsunami of rampant insecurity and malignant overcompensation.

If you were to encounter a piranha on the street, and the carnivorous fish proffers his fin and tells you he’s given up meat for Lent, the ensuing skepticism necessary to protect you against losing a digit or two would be no match for the wave of audible chortling that filled the third-floor meeting room of the City-County building Monday evening when Coffey again skillfully evaded even the remotest sense of irony and kept a straight, if reddened, face while denying any interest in “playing politics” during a heated discussion over Mayor James Garner’s general fund repair plan.

If Coffey could somehow muster just a fraction of Liberace’s deft touch at high camp, the incident might be laughed off as a harmlessly small-town politico objecting to the sun’s habit of rising in the East, but unfortunately a steady diet of barbecued bologna has been known to starve the body of the vitamins it needs to behave responsibly at times of crisis, and so the Wizard of Westside continues to hector, bloviate, bully and grandstand in opposition to a resolution of the city’s budget crisis.

Although, not to the extent of casting an unequivocal “no” vote during the first reading of two separate parts of Mayor James Garner’s plan. An entire evening’s worth of unrelenting demagoguery produced the stunningly sparse yield of two abstentions by Coffey, the second of which was so damningly indicative of Coffey’s craven abdication of responsibility that even Steve Price of the “District Formerly Known as the Third, and Now Identified by a Symbol from a Captain Marvel Comic Book that Stands for First and a Half” resisted the tug on his leash and voted “yes.”

To find the best contemporary example of Coffey’s careful grooming of Price into an obsequious, fawning sycophant, you’d have to travel to Pyongyang and view the posters that proclaim Kim Jong Il as the fountain of all human knowledge.

Like Price, captive North Koreans know when to stand up, sit down and roll over, and these talents are helpful when one is faced with the prospect of his revered leader (Coffey, not Mr. Kim) droning for hours on selected matters that range from proper drainage and the untrustworthiness of professional engineering to newspaper proofreading and an unmatched record of attendance at public works board meetings.

This brings us back to Monday’s meeting. For a strictly servile Pavlovian such as Steve Price to even once abstain from abstaining is to threaten the Wizard’s political world with chaos and disorder, especially since it rests on so shaky a foundation.

In the context of the city as a whole, far outside the friendly confines of Coffey’s 1st District, where the Wizard still can rally his troops by appealing to the ominous threat posed by laptops, Chinese carry-out and any book with more words than pictures, Coffey’s brand of old-fashioned ward-heeling is a dog that no longer will hunt.

And everyone knows it except Coffey himself and now Price, his rudderless acolyte.

Coffey’s recent race for a leadership position within the Democratic apparatus ended in political humiliation at the hands of youngsters who harbor progressive visions of the future, and he certainly understands that his citywide appeal steadily erodes as time marches on and traditional voter demographics move into realms that no amount of slick reinvention is able to overcome.

To continue his tragicomic posturing, to perpetuate his political shell game, and to retain the power he has with the council as his stage, Coffey needs at least one pliable dupe, and better yet, one or two council allies of sheer convenience who don’t necessarily sanction Coffey’s antics, and in fact probably are revolted by them, but feel that they’re making use of the Wizard – and not the other way around.

It doesn't require an all-points bulletin to know who the dupe is.

Unfortunately for the otherwise progressive 3rd District, when council newcomer Price was instructed to select a “role model” from the list of incumbents, he thought they said “droll twaddle” and looked immediately to Coffey for sustenance, commencing an alliance that is as fortuitous to Coffey as it is catastrophic for Price’s own district.

Clearly, Steve Price has surrendered his district’s sovereignty to Coffey’s self-aggrandizing tentacles, the electoral repercussions of which will return to haunt the third’s collaborationist in 2007.

As for the motives of the two veteran councilmen who have tended to vote with Coffey and Price, and who by doing so have permitted themselves to be associated (unfairly, we believe) with Coffey’s congenital tactics of intimidation and obstructionism, much less is known.

Larry Kochert (4th District) and Bill Schmidt (2nd District) are genuinely respected and hard working public servants, each possessing a conscience, and both unafraid to show it.

Something has to give, and perhaps it already has.

One, or perhaps both, of these two councilmen likely will heed the call of reason prior to the next City Council meeting.

One, or perhaps both, of them will examine their consciences and see that even in a time of crisis, the city must continue moving forward toward a better future somewhere beyond the small-timer’s gloom and doom as threatened by the lugubrious “no progress at any price” faction.

One, or perhaps both, will sense that the community needs to believe in something, not nothing, and will realize that the alternative to progress, regress, simply is not a viable option.

One, or perhaps both, will smile wisely with justifiable pride, and see that their long and successful careers in public service, while not over, are indeed headed into the backstretch, and that the baton has been passed to a new generation of leaders in their own Democratic party, some of whom are walking the walk now with respect to the city’s difficult decisions.

One, or perhaps both, will respond to these and other complex considerations by voting to approve the various planks of Mayor Garner’s budgetary remedy for the city’s ailing general fund.

Will Coffey and Price risk complete political isolation with a continued rear-guard action against the 21st century?

While our newly emerging constituency for progress no doubt agrees that it isn't about politics, and that the first and most important priority is for the City Council to exercise responsibly its obligation to consider the fiscal options, to deliberate, and to decide accordingly, if on the other hand certain of the council’s regressive members suffer stinging collateral damage owing to a genetic inability to work constructively … que sera sera.