It’s well understood that Coffey’s ascendancy to the council presidency is owed to two primary factors:
1. No one else on the council wanted a leadership role
and
2. Since a majority of the other council members have shown an unwillingness to stand against Coffey’s often untruthful, always counterproductive grandstanding, they hope the presidency will tame him in a way that they’ve been unable to muster themselves, with Gahan’s consistent cowering (as praised by Coffey last night and confirmed by other CMs and citizens elsewhere) being exhibit A.
Didn’t the Tribune jeer specifically mention “reactionary tradition” and that “leadership is lacking”? Isn’t this a textbook case?
Council members regularly complained throughout the previous year about both Coffey’s taking over meetings and his pugnacious yet incompetent residency on the Redevelopment Commission. Their first step of 2009 was to ensure more of both.
Given that they individually passed on taking responsibility for reining Coffey for a solid year, does anyone actually believe, should it become necessary, that council members will suddenly convene to do so in the future?
As Coffey himself mentioned last night, sometimes the most telling changes are the ones you don’t see. That’s commonly true because they don’t happen.
I’m sure they’d point to other things but, to more experienced eyes, perhaps the most important impact generated by freshman council members, at least some of whom surfed what was essentially an anti-Coffey/Gang of Four wave into office, was to ignorantly hand off any notion of leadership to the most seasoned obstructionist in the city.
If recent history is any indication, we can all expect a succession of private mea culpas in the coming year about how they wish they’d voted differently while never actually raising the point publicly as Coffey runs over them.
The thin blue council line is getting noticeably thicker. Unfortunately, the defensiveness and insular instincts already apparent in the first meeting of the year aren’t the byproduct of risk taking or bold maneuvering but rather a more general insecurity associated with the inability to explain one’s self.
Even if Coffey handles the presidency well, he was put there by fear, misgivings, and a lack of fortitude that lend themselves to cynicism about rather than trust in any future council decisions.
Ask any of the council members about the person best suited for the presidential role and I highly doubt that more than a couple, let alone a majority of them, would name Dan Coffey. And yet, he’s their new president, solely because no one else would step up or speak out.
Is that how they define an accomplishment? If so, I hope they let us know soon. Otherwise, their count and the public’s count may differ even more than last year.
