TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2002 — As I watched the spectacle of Mayor Tom Menino swearing in the Boston City Council members at Faneuil Hall yesterday, it was hard to avoid one thought: "These people are Boston’s best and brightest?" Meanwhile, South Boston councilor Jimmy Kelly didn’t even bother to show up, angry that Menino hadn’t given him more complimentary tickets to the event. Magnifying the incongruity of the scene was the fact that Menino performed the ceremony directly beneath an oversized painting of Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster delivering his stirring unionist cry in the halls of the US Senate: "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable." A visitor witnessing this scene could rightly ask what tragic fate had befallen Boston, which had such magnificent leaders over a century and a half ago.

Certainly none of those feelings of trepidation about the council was vitiated by the long time its members spent horse-trading over who would be the next council president. Spectators could only gape at the site of councilors filing in and out of their offices for three hours as they decided who would support whom for higher office.

Out of this mess emerged new council president Michael Flaherty of South Boston. The choice of Flaherty — an at-large councilor — means a leader who is accountable to all parts of the city, rather than just one neighborhood.

The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald both see Menino’s hand in Flaherty’s selection. The Herald called it "a shrewd City Hall power play." The Globe’s Sarah Schweitzer wrote, "Several councilors yesterday alleged that Menino had offered to support their peers’ bids for higher offices in return for a Flaherty vote." Paul Scapicchio of the North End, who had waged a bid for the presidency, bitterly told the Herald that "politics is a dirty game. If we learned anything, we learned that."

How about a little perspective on this? The city’s charter holds that the mayor — not the city council — is the dominant political force in Boston. In recent years, the council has become a cheerful, do-little board under embarrassing leadership — most recently of former council president Charles Yancey (who tried to push through a generous pay raise for councilors even as the state suffers through a devastating economic downturn) and the pugnacious Kelly, who in the latter years of his seven-year reign as council president spent much of his time fighting with Menino. With Flaherty, we get a young, politically connected politician who has the capability to grow. He was one of the first pols from South Boston to raise the possible acceptability of a waterfront ballpark. He has worked hard at appealing to supporters of socially liberal causes, such as domestic-partnership benefits for the same-sex partners of municipal workers.

Flaherty’s father, Michael F. Flaherty, may have been a state representative and traditional South Boston pol, but his son has tried slowly — and generally too cautiously — to expand his reach. A little-noticed fact is that unlike most local politicians — who attended Boston College Law School or Suffolk Law School — Flaherty went to Boston University Law School, which is generally attended by many out-of-towners and international students. He boasts a network of friends along the East Coast. Flaherty has the potential to see beyond Southie and even Boston. Let’s hope that vision helps him develop into an effective city leader.