Blogpost #13 - Fisette's Fiacre

Blogpost #13 - Fisette's Fiacre

This is a letter I sent to the Sun Gazette in response to its article at http://www.insidenova.com/news/arlington/arlington-democrats-start-to-regroup-after-county-board-election-debacle/article_b7cf71e6-65ca-11e4-95da-af69bc0de6d7.html




Dear Editor: your article “Arlington Democrats start to regroup after County Board election debacle” said “Apparently, they did not see it coming, and Arlington Democratic leaders’ public and private reactions to the party’s drubbing in the County Board election ranged from nonplussed to borderline apocalyptic.”  Let me try and help, on the ‘nonplussed’ part: the article notes that “.. voter discontent at County Board decision-making was palpable.”  The first huge clue for me that change was in the air was two years ago when I was discussing the Garvey-Bondi primary with a friend who had always seemed to me a Dem loyalist, and he said, “Don’t vote for Bondi, she’ll just be Zimmie’s poodle”.  Lots of Dems made the same choice, and Garvey is on the County Board today.

The Clinton-era political operative James Carville got a lot of his national reputation from his colorful sayings, mostly sort of zoological: “That dog won’t hunt”, the parable of the frogs in gradually heated water, “If you can’t run with the big dogs, stay on the porch”, “Why do dogs lick their...” um, let’s not go any further with that last one, we’ll go back to the frogs. The frogs story said they will boiled alive in water which is very gradually brought to a boil, because they don’t notice things getting worse until it is too late.  A nice story, which has passed from use in the last few years both because these things have a shelf life and because it is scientifically Not True, gradually heated frogs in fact notice that things are getting bad and try to escape.

The application of this story in Arlington, I think, is that the Dem-dominated Board amassed huge stores of good will during the Bozman-Whipple-Eisenberg-Milliken-Brunner era. The Board made a lot of good decisions, listened carefully to citizens and tried to go forward in ways which they would support. During what I’ll call the Zimmerman Steamroller era there was a shift from that public servant model to what you might call a ‘leader’ model - Zimmerman himself was remarkably candid about it as he left office, was quoted in the Arlington Now blog on Feb 11th: “In the end, each Board member has to make a judgment about what is best for the community...Leadership is the unflinching exercise of that judgment without regard to momentary swings in popularity. I believe that the great success Arlington has had is the result of the combination of leaders who actively engage the people; listen closely to what they’re saying; and then chart a path that they, in their best judgment, believe is most likely to result in the ultimate happiness of the community; and the willingness of the people in this community to let them do so.”

Some are calling the current majority the Trolley Troika, but discontent is about far more than the trolley.  Hynes’ Hackney Carriage?  The Tejada Trimotor?  Fisette’s Fiacre?  The sterile legalisms with which the majority attempts to cow citizens away from opposition to the trolley, the temporary classrooms on the athletic fields, the thriftlessness of demolishing Old Wakefield as the need for a new middle school came into view, use of proffers as a slush fund for Board hobby horses, the threat to divert scarce parks to other public purposes - all of these things combine to breed skepticism about Board statements.  The water’s gotten hot, and the frogs have noticed.