[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]Will you be rooting for Scott Malsin to return to the City Council in the April 10 election?

I suspect many fewer will be cheering for him on Election Night than he once would have deserved.

No kid at politics, Mr. Malsin, a congenial raconteur-type, wants you to believe he has mastered his complex Rubik’s Cube craft.

He is smart, but not nearly as sharp as he thinks he is. If he were that cool, he would not have thumbed his considerable mind at the First Commandment of politics:

Public life is about public relations.

Mr. Malsin has become a self-inflicted public relations nightmare.

Riding a gigantic ego — not an unusual or insurmountable impediment — he has turned himself into a small-town, if not small-time villain, and foolishly imperiled his formerly promising political career.

Could It Have Been Worse?

It may not be possible to have butchered his Archie Bunker-style withdrawal from the City Council last year worse than he did. I mean, you had to try to be that undesirable. It didn’t just happen because that was nature’s way.

Here is what I mean:

Two similar politicians, separately, can play around the margins of acceptable behavior.

Whether the public will accept back either one and vote for him again, typically depends, 90 percent, on how each politician publicly tries to bounce back.

If Politician A takes his medicine, acknowledges “I did wrong” or “I used unwise judgment,” the American electorate almost always forgives.

If Politician B, however, plays the game of Coy, Wink-Wink — archly denies he slipped or says, “it is not anybody’s business but my family’s,” his path back to voters’ hearts likely will be rocky.

Mr. Malsin played Politician B for the second half of last year, needlessly.

This Is How It Will Be

He learned at mid-year the city’s drastic change in healthcare policies for qualified employees would sharply reduce benefits for his three-person family after Dec. 31.

Instead of being candid in a June interview with the newspaper, saying he and his wife were talking it over regularly with expert consultants, he sputtered miles of baloney into a nearby fan, trying to change the subject.

Must have been somebody who really dislikes Mr. Malsin who advised him in late summer to write a stupid series of three sneaky essays — that sure looked like triplets to me — that he strategically sent to the city’s half-dozen newspapers.

He calculated how to inform each agency.

Mr. Malsin, who may not drink water without a Look Right, Go Left calculation, pretended to cry crocodile tears for the other employees of the city who were losing their benefits. This was too heavy of a dosage of Me Scott, You Not for people who know him best. He skimmed over himself in the essays — the point of the darned project — so lightly that I missed it. I wrote that he ignored his case until Debbie Hamme from the School District pointed to the almost ephemeral mention.

He devoted six months, religiously, to ducking the Are You Quitting question.

Why?

Small town. Big fish. People want to know what you are thinking. Reaching a verdict may take calculation, Mr. Malsin, and heaven knows you did that.

But it ain’t nearly as dense as calculus or as you strung it out to be.

This self-drawn scenario called for frankness, honesty, a clean finish. Instead, Mr. Malsin fed us a Gotcha-style, circus-like, decidedly unfunny game-playing stunt.

What audience, praytell, are you playing to, Mr. Malsin?

They don’t want to watch you constantly fake right and go left, or fake right, fake left, fake to the middle, shrug your shoulders for six straight months and plead “I dunno” when you darned well know.

We reported for six consecutive weeks that Mr. Malsin would announce his resignation from the City Council on Dec. 12. He would not divulge this supposedly world-class secret to anyone, publicly, that is. He had been telling friends of his — shhhh — secret plans for at least a month and a half. That is how we found out.

Mr. Malsin, my mother taught her houseful of children:

“If you tell the truth, you never have to worry about what you have said.”

Other mothers taught their broods:

“Always tell the truth, even if you have to lie about it.”

Is there going to be a public lashback for the crummy way Mr. Malsin conducted his six-month Will I or Won’t I shadow dance?

He could have engineered his hoped-for U-turn to the City Council as tidily as a Boy Scout instead of hanging around behind a curtain, peeking when he thinks no one is looking.

He could have been welcomed back this month as a hero, practically with flowers being strewn in his path.

He is a good person. He is smart. He has been an effective politician even though he never will have to undergo self-assertiveness training.

Even as he was pulling papers yesterday morning for the April 10 election, I was hearing from people upset with his deliberate mangling. They were vowing not to vote for him.

A pity.

We shall see.