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Stuart Revercomb

Stuart Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.

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"Thursday's Fare"

And if your looking for that good man with the leadership qualities serving in public office you better have your binoculars with you. Even then you may be hard pressed to find one.

Of course you might not want to look too hard.

If you ponder for too long the overall display of what passes for "public leadership" these days you may find yourself feeling just a little bit queasy. It doesn't matter whether its on the local, state or federal level - political leadership, perhaps always questionable, has been on a heck of a slide.

Our beloved Roanoke City Council blundered its way through the better part of 1999 making a series of almost comical decisions regarding the city's water shortage. Their adept handling of this matter finally ended when feeling completely trapped and with a look of total panic in their bloodshot eyes they struck a "deal" with Roanoke County that made the Louisiana Purchase look reasonable. It was a "victory for all" they declared.

It was a victory all right.

I swear I have never seen County Administrator Elmer Hodge smile like that. Henry Faison -- the developer of Valley View Mall, maybe -- but never Elmer Hodge.

The county, of course, deserved the deal as the same City Council they now duped, had by virtue of their sheer ineptitude, head faked the county into building a much larger reservoir than they would have committed to on their own.

What goes around comes around, huh, Elmer?

Three months after "the deal" the city reservoir was almost two-thirds full and by February a couple of feet short of full pond, and Roanoke is now contracted to buy water from the county -- the same folks they used to sell it to.

That's one thing you'll never be able to accuse Council of being - "at full pond."

Shrewd work, boys.

They followed this deft bit of leadership up by reaching a new high in City Council lows with the now infamous "Halloween scheduling debacle." The worst part of this charade carried out by our local government "leaders" is that while they spun themselves a continual series of tangled webs over such critical issues as when to hold Halloween, the real needs of the community went almost entirely unmet.

A couple of weeks later, Council tried to give themselves a raise. They failed miserably at this as well.

Imagine that. Unable to give yourself a raise. Think these are the kind of brain trust that have what it takes to make legitimate plans for attracting new business?

During the week Council struggled with the Halloween decision over 80 new businesses licenses were applied for in Raleigh, N.C.

In Roanoke, we had 18.

But at least when our industry goes belly up we don't abandon our people.

When a special bill was drawn up in the Virginia General Assembly last month to assist the area of Southside Virginia which had fallen victim to an extraordinary number of industrial closures, our noble and wise governor, Jim Gilmore, declared that "we can't favor one section of the state over others."

He refused to sign.

So are we to understand that at any given time each section of our fair state should have the same needs as all the others? When the next hurricane sweeps through tidewater taking with it a good portion of Richmond can we too apply this logic in withholding assistance?

"Sorry folks ... can't favor one section of the state over ..."

It seems immaterial whether the suffering is inflicted by the capriciousness of nature or by companies that have cut and run for better profits in Mexico.

C'mon Jim. What gives? These people are hard-working folks. They're not looking for a handout so much as a lifeline so they can get back in the boat. This isn't bailing out a company -- the companies are gone -- this is relief work. Help these people back on board. At the very least toss them a raft until the next ship comes along.

Its called compassion, Jim, and good leaders know when its needed.

And when it's not.

Which leads us to the federal level and Willie Clinton. If that sounds a tad bit disrespectful, it's meant to.

If leadership can be defined as a quality exhibited by one who possesses both vision and passion then Willie has it half right -- by all indications he is quite passionate.

Unfortunately, it is in ways that are not conducive to leading a country.

A "Hedonism Resort" maybe, but not a country.

Nice leadership, Bill.

We'll save a spot on our new council for you -- but don,t expect a pay raise anytime soon.