New Albanian political lessons, ice-cold Coffey, and "Frost-Nixon."

It is an act of consummately ironic timing that Great Escape, New Albany’s exurban cinema, has seen fit to debut the film “Frost-Nixon” only days after 1st district councilman Dan Coffey’s recent dual public meltdowns in the council chamber and Studio’s family room.

I’ll get back to the Wizard momentarily.

First, and happily, director Ron Howard’s movie adaptation of the 2006 stage play is a resounding success, boasting insanely fine performances by Frank Langella eerily channeling Richard Nixon, and Michael Sheen as David Frost, the supposedly lightweight British television presenter whose legendary 1977 interviews of the deposed American chief executive are quite simply the stuff of legend.

Go see it. You will not be disappointed.

These many years later, it remains difficult to separate Nixon the man from Nixon the political operator. His stultifying arrogance was balanced by unconcealed self-loathing, his crippling self-deception countered by a brutally honest knowledge of his own damaged character, and his frequently keen insights into the character of others blindsided by a debilitating paranoia.

But Nixon’s undoubted skills are what make his personality and career compelling in the theatrical sense. From ancient Greek dramatists to Shakespeare, there is the realization that weakness and personal flaws alone are not sufficient to derive universal truth, primarily because they’re far too common in the human race. We see them all the time, sans nothing redemptive.

With Nixon, there is another dimension, one of genuine talent coexisting with the ever-germinating seeds of his own destruction. Without complexity, Nixon is useful for little beyond trite caricature. Without ability, he becomes just another over-reaching and hackneyed village wannabeen … which brings me to you-know-who.

New Albany’s own recurring civic disgrace, who’d be back on the street if we’d yet determined how to go about impeaching him, will never command six figures with an interview, although Steve Price might commit to a chat over iced tea at Bob Evan’s.

I freely confess to an inability to offer concrete proof of this assertion, but it is my opinion that insofar as Dan Coffey knows history at all – a questionable proposition, I might add – he almost surely sees elements of himself in a typically wrongheaded, romanticized view of Nixon.

Now, lest there be any misunderstanding, it must be conceded that this is true, although only insofar as Coffey’s tendencies accurately mirrors Nixon’s flaws of anger, paranoia and manipulative scheming. Unfortunately, any other more positive connections are purely imaginary in any remotely constructive sense.

Yes, an exhumed Richard Nixon, magically reanimated and transported by garlic-lined coffin to New Albany in the present day, might be indistinguishable from Dan Coffey in terms of obstruction of justice, Constitutional chicanery and tactical dirty tricks; however, even a dead Tricky Dicky would possess several useful characteristics that Coffey never will: Sufficient brainpower, working knowledge, political acumen and the possibility of achieving something during those rare times when the customarily emasculated “good” angel is at long last able to interrupt the daily dialogue with the “bad” one.

We’re being asked to exercise patience, and it has been noted that just because words are not said aloud, and for public consumption, it doesn’t mean that our decent, law-abiding council persons are not earnestly discussing what to do about Coffey’s latest demonstrations of his unsuitability for leadership.

The problem is that this isn’t a solution. Rather, it’s more of the same sort of problem that lies at the heart of our political paralysis. Disappointingly, it’s more of the same opaqueness, more of the same backroom dealing, and more of the same political class mentality that substitutes deals for dialogue.

Nixon’s overdue denouement was public, not private. Coffey’s should be, too. Anything less is the New Albany Syndrome, and we all know where that’s gotten us, don’t we?