Briley Driveway

Posted by Freddie on June 25, 2007 under Uncategorized |

So, yes, Mary and I went to the David Briley bloggers lunch. I missed the one to which he alluded that he held earlier in the campaign at Amerigo. Kleinheider wrote it up, has audio, and also rounds up the other attendees, so I’m not going to bother.

I led off with a question about Councilman Briley’s take on the Jeff Woods article. Mr. Woods seems to be building a journalistic track record of inviting controversy, a pattern not unfamiliar to The Scene as a whole. I have to admit that I’ve struggled to place the Dean candidacy in anything but the context in which Mr. Woods places it — namely as a deep pocketed attempt to continue the pragmatically progressive trend of Nashville mayors in the Bredesen-Purcell mold. Having been in a multi-way race myself before, I can’t begrudge anyone the opportunity to attempt publicly elected service, but it’s always interesting when ideologically similar candidates square off in a race where they are certainly distinct from the rest of the competition. Briley’s “fishing from the same pond” analogy was, I thought, an apt one. And I’m left wondering whether any of these campaigns will field a grassroots operation that puts the others to shame.

As has already been mentioned elsewhere, too, I asked Councilman Briley about whether he would use tonight as an opportunity to ask Congressman Clement about his vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq. The councilman actually already cleverly brought this up on our show, so I thought it would be worth revisiting the issue. In my personal opinion, the congressman’s vote is very indicative of his leadership style, which, based on this issue, seems to lack boldness. I think the congressman was perhaps more concerned about his ability to win his U.S. Senate race in 2002 than whether the war would cost all Americans $265 million per day or Nashvillians something on the order of $300 million to date. So, yes, I think that this is, in many ways, a local issue. And I’m interested to know whether the congressman has learned anything about bold political leadership in his time out of office, specifically as a result of this vote, which I see as one of the key congressional votes of the 21st century.

I also asked the councilman about how mass transit fits into his green agenda and whether he could see MTA being fully funded. He put some of the onus of improving mass transit on the state, and I can’t help but agree that TDoT should look to enhance local transit systems with some of the gas tax.

Having spent time listening to each of the candidates in various forums and scenarios (including all but Clement having appeared on Liberadio(!) for interviews), I have to say: I think David Briley is the only candidate who has come close to presenting a vision for Nashville. I found his Green Mayor pitch to be visionary, and even if he’s backing off of it slightly, it’s clear that he’s sincere about a lot of the proposals that were core to that vision. Briley has spent some time talking about what Nashville might look like 25 years from now, and I’m not sure any of the other candidates have that on their minds. Doing 4 years of (even slightly improved) status quo management — which I think all the other candidates would be able to handle — just doesn’t excite me.

As far as the lunch itself was concerned, it’s amazing what a difference there was between this event and the one I went to with Karl Dean at the Flying Saucer. This one felt much more casual and conversational. Would any of the other candidates feel comfortable enough with local writers (often non-journalists) to invite them into the intimacy of their homes? I wish that our show hadn’t conflicted with Vice Mayor Gentry’s recent event. I would’ve like to see him in this sort of conversational setting with people he was expecting to write about him later.

To the best of my knowledge, Clement, Dozier, and Eaton have not held similar events. I wonder if any of them would see it as a net positive at this point in the campaign to conduct one.

And now I’m off to watch the debate!