The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Civic Official

Hi kid--what's your interest today? "Civic official?" Oh yeah, I saw that guy at the press conference explaining why the mayor wasn't really drunk at the boat show last weekend. I suppose, if that's what looks like a good way to spend your life, I could give you some ideas...

There's a fundamental flaw with municipal politics--or with most politics, really. You see, the people need a mayor to be someone who can understand the finer points of political discourse, study issues and look for resolutions, and pay attention to the minute details of governmental policy. Problem is, the characteristics that get you elected--charisma, broad appeal, making issues simplistic and polarized--are all antithetical to those characteristics that will make a good mayor.

That's where you will come in. You will be the one who does the boring background work on every issue. If there's a contraversy about a new housing development being built in a sensitive environmental area, you get to poll all the ecofreaks about their concerns. If the city sees the potential financial windfall from a legalized prostitution district, you're the guy who will have to sit down with the local priest and be harangued about your filthy lack of morals.

You will become a familiar fixture at the city archives, and your intimate knowledge of so many previous political decisions and all of the implications of any future legislation make you the mayor's first choice when he or she needs to be advised on what position to adopt. If you give wise counsel, the mayor will claim all credit and you will languish in the shadows. If you make a mistake, you will be sacrificed to the media, pilloried for your stupidity while the mayor disavows you repeatedly.

The mayor gets to attend all the galas and soirees, while you bring home stacks of briefs and position papers each night to further wedge distance between you and your longsuffering family--oh, didn't I mention you'll get married young? You'll do so shrewdly; binding yourself to the unattractive but well-connected daughter of a long-time political bagman.

Eventually your frustration with the stupidity of the elected officials around you leads to one of the three solaces of the smart but disillusioned civic official: drink, adultery or corruption. No matter which you choose, it will be a further descent into the loneliness that makes you daily question the worth of your existence. And when you are finally fired, whether for drunken incompetence, inappropriate office romance, or reckless embezzlement, you will silently rejoice that your career has ended.

Your new life, whether living in a cheap motel, sleeping over a tawdry bar, or hiding from libidinous fellow inmates, will still seem far superior to the walking death that is civic administration.