Columnist Jon Ralston: Ever-quotable Mack has curse of gab

Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2001 | 8:43 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the public affairs program "Face to Face" on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the Ralston Report. His column for the Sun appears on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@vegas.com

BY THE TIME he's done, Michael Mack may need his own page in Bartlett's.

Or at least a version of the famous quotations compendium for those words that should never have been uttered.

Just glance at a sampling of his 2001 offerings:

* January: "I hope it didn't come from him, because someone who's so ethically challenged should mind his own business." That was the Las Vegas councilman speaking of colleague Michael McDonald, a few months before he showed himself to be, well, ethically challenged.

* Also in January: "I'll take anyone's money. It's all green." That was Mack in response to a question about campaign contributions, showing the perspicacity and powers of discernment we have come to appreciate.

* July: "I was in La La land." That was Mack giving one of his many creative explanations for how he could have taken a $60,000 loan from a city supplicant, then forgotten about it and voted on an item critical to his creditor.

* December: "Not only have I been a successful and wealthy entrepreneur, but now I will be a candidate that has turned his business around. It's much like the city's (budget). (The city) is in a budget reduction, and we have to cut back, so I think overall it might help me."

This was Mack just this week, having declared bankruptcy, but talking about how he will campaign for re-election in 2005. Forget that if the city were a person, he or she could sue Mack for slander after that analogy. Perhaps the councilman will talk about the skill with which he fell $3 million in debt and also how he was taken in by what he says was a gold scam -- that sounds like a winning strategy to show his acumen.

The Wall Street Journal once dubbed then-U.S. Sen. Chic Hecht a "human gaffe machine." But, as 2001 closes, Mack is making Hecht look like William Jennings (or even Richard) Bryan.

The best-case scenario for the ever-affable Mack is that he becomes the local version of what Democratic elder Clark Clifford once called Ronald Reagan: an amiable dunce. But I have a better suggestion: Perhaps Mack should buy the T-shirt I purchased this summer (and those who know me will understand why I did) that is emblazoned thusly: "Help. I'm talking and I can't shut up."

Michael Mack needs help. Badly.

Every time he talks, journalists slobber, his colleagues and friends wince and his lawyer cringes. No wonder Rick Wright, the man defending the councilman against ethics charges and a lawsuit, has attempted to shut him up.

Our mothers all taught us, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything." Mack should learn a variation: "If you have something to say, don't."

As he looks toward 2002, a year in which he surely hopes he can put his embarrassing 2001 behind him, Mack must remember one of the political world's truisms. The worst thing in politics is not to lose or even to be disliked; the worst thing is to not be taken seriously, to be laughed at.

His anxiety attacks, clinical or otherwise, his convenient memory lapses and his business ineptitude (a failing pawnshop in Las Vegas!) have turned Mack from promising, even delightful newcomer into free-falling, even pathetic officeholder. The recent bankruptcy filing and his sad attempt to turn it into a positive will just bring more calls for him to resign, which he surely will not do, especially since he has more than three years (absent a recall) to recover.

Unfortunately for Mack, he will have to wait a month and a half into the New Year to begin his rehabilitation. That's because a convoluted, sometimes loony ethics process has pushed his hearing back from last summer to Feb. 14. And methinks this will not be the happiest of Valentine's Days for Mack, who clearly violated the city's ethics code by voting on an issue where his creditor, car mogul Joe Scala, had a financial interest.

As the councilman looks hopefully toward the New Year, it is worth noting that the most memorable (public) Michael Mack quote of 2001 did not come from him. Instead, it was District Judge Sally Loehrer who, when she decided not to find Mack guilty of malfeasance, made it clear how she felt and how many others have come to feel.

Wrote Loehrer: "Mack's actions ... while they may be characterized as incredibly unethical, go more to a lapse or even a void in judgment." It will be difficult, even for the ever-quotable Mack, to top that one in 2002. But, my guess is, he sure will try hard.