Page Two
If myopic concerns could be traded as legitimate, revenue-based options, Austin would be looking at one of the great bull markets of our time
By Louis Black, Fri., April 9, 2004
Groups often complain loudly about every aspect and action of the city, rarely seeming to consider that a huge part of the problem is other groups complaining just as aggressively, from exactly the opposite point of view. Action seems impossible in Austin because almost any action taken is going to be roundly condemned by one group or another.
Currently, this situation is magnified because the council seems to be the least harmonious and cooperative in recent memory. There's certainly not a voting block we support, but there also isn't even close to one we oppose (or can label with some clever acronym). On almost any issue, it is a crapshoot as to who is going to take what position. Rather than the best interests of the city or, at the very least, attempting some cohesive leadership, for the most part council members' overarching concerns seem a lot more trivial and disconnected. Their agendas are so convoluted, personal, and overwhelmingly guided by either favors owed or in reaction to those they oppose that the sense is more of individuals engaged in an elaborate role-playing SimCity game than a group committed to leading the city. Sure, some of the responsibility can be laid at the mayor's feet, leadership being just one of the skill sets he's learning on the job, but in reality herding cats would be easier. The menu of current behavior – which includes grappling for political advantage, grandstanding, pouting, self-righteously defending, shamelessly politicking, hopelessly daydreaming, aggressively serving an ever-narrowing constituency – finds the squabbling group moving round and round, neither backward nor forward.
Those advocating single-member districts for democratic, proportional reasons won't be dissuaded (I'm not sure I'm not among them) but should at least appreciate that this level of inefficient politics will seem lock-step compared to what it would be like if they succeed.
Added to this chaos is that one of the worst times to try and accomplish anything in Austin is when, right after bottoming out, the economy begins to improve. There's not enough money even to consider most of the new projects different groups would like the city to undertake or to help fund the many stagnant ones nonprofits are trying to rejuvenate. Yet, with groups smelling the very first vapors of the possibility of renewed prosperity, demands become not just more aggressive but hallucinatorily unrealistic. In this tossing and turning sea of expectations, the realities of too long often profoundly underfunded city services and departments are ignored; there's nothing very sexy about them. In so many cases, just getting them back to "underfunded" is going to require the kind of money that makes most aggressive new city spending as out of the range of possibility now as it was 24 months ago. Only then, people were resigned to the situation; now, they're convinced, is the right moment of opportunity.
Couple this with the consequences of the severe federal and state spending cuts just beginning to be felt. Even granting the anti-tax crowd's most opium-dream-induced visions of government fat, at least some of those cuts affect vital programs. Which means that, though the federal and/or state government isn't going to pay for them, they're not going away. We, the taxpayers, will foot the bill – if not in new local taxes, then in cuts in services or social consequences.
Yet Austin still must and will move forward. I should be excited by this environment so rich in possibility. Criticisms of the mayor have to be tempered against his optimistic enthusiasm for Austin, his sense of unlimited possibility. The city's whacked sense of adventure is returning, its unquenchable belief in the power of civic ideas renewed. Block 21, the many stalled nonprofit building projects, the central library, Seaholm, and many other civic ambitions are the kinds of visionary ideas I mostly find so intoxicating. Usually this city is best when imagination laps economic reality. But given that the new prosperity might be more a wishful desire than a cash-register total, pitching big ideas and ambitious progress while barely considering the needs of basic services and responsibilities seems an ill-fated recipe. Granting my paranoid and chronic, cynical pessimism, instead of the new Athens, I'm fearing the old Beirut – where the level of intra-city fighting and feuding reaches an almost unparalleled intensity. If myopic, shortsighted concerns could be traded as legitimate, revenue-based options, Austin would be looking at one of the great bull markets of our time.
A partisan aside: The oft-made campaign claim that the Republicans have strongly answered terrorism by reacting militarily and holding tough domestically, whereas the Democrats are too soft and would have been incapable of a forceful response, represents the pinnacle of naive self-delusion. The point being made is that we've stopped the terrorists dead in their tracks, shown the world what we are made of, and taken the necessary and most internationally aggressive route (not tied down by petty humanist concerns) by invading Iraq. Given that there is no proof of Iraq's involvement in 9/11, the inescapable quagmire of Iraq, and international diplomatic and worldwide Muslim attitudes toward us, this conviction indicates an unfounded optimism so great its size dwarfs the known galaxies.
It is time to also caution Democrats, as for the first time ever, in light of what is going on in Iraq, President Bush seems vulnerable. Despite poll-based soothsaying or long-term, power-wielding conspiracy theorizing, Bush's re-election has seemed inevitable: Once the race gets serious, the Kerry Democrats can be counted on to muddle it up, losing sight of their greater message. Conversely, there is the polling-booth aphrodisiac of the simple-word, single-sentence Republican message, where what is said is crafted independent of record, actions, and intentions. Short-attention-span, emotionally rich, opinion-affecting symphonies will be realized in 60-second commercials. The Republican onslaught has seemed unstoppable, with electoral victory almost assured.
The nightmare of Iraq, almost sure to intensify, may not be sublimated by any easy, feel-good or, at least, blame-the-Democrats sloganeering. If things stay the same or get worse, for the first time since his election, I think there is a chance Bush can be defeated. Lest this causes any optimism to administration opponents: It shouldn't. As of the moment we invaded Iraq, there was no easy way out. The United States can't leave, as fervently as pacifists might feel to the contrary. The setup for a bloody civil war is too great. Any such internal hostilities would only be localized for the shortest period before graduating to international and ongoing reverberations. The notion that democracy is going to triumph is beyond hallucinatory. We might officially turn over power at the end of June – but we won't leave. The situation suggests few positive resolutions; as the central government has been destroyed, the most likely scenario is long-term occupation, escalating resistance, and intra-community fighting. If a Democrat is elected, nothing changes, except where the blame is assigned. Accepting a United Nations-led occupation would at least share some of the burden, but still wouldn't change any of the responsibility. 
