Nothing reveals the true character of a person–an employee, a boss, a pastor, a politician–like the way he/she exits a position, particularly when the experience has not been a good one.

In one church I served, they’re still talking about the way a former staff member exited–this was before my time, so I have no personal knowledge of him or the event–with great venom. The church was without a pastor at the time and the staffer had filled the leadership vacuum. When he left to go to another church position, he used his final pulpit time to unload on the leadership.

What causes a person to do that? What good do they think can possibly come from it? Or, at they just venting and trying to unburden themselves of their anger?

We have such a situation plaguing the city of New Orleans now.

We’ve written on these pages over the last three years of the so-called Recovery Czar brought in to organize the city’s rebuilding work after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. His name was (and is) Dr. Ed Blakely. The mayor paid him big bucks, he sported a resume that was the envy of every city planner in America, and he walked in making with the big talk.

He became a laughing stock. An expensive laughing stock.

At his first news conference, Blakely promised we would be seeing “cranes in the sky” in short order as the massive rebuilding effort got underway. He promised “the fastest recovery that anyone has ever seen.”

Blakely called more news conferences over the next few years to a) make grandiose promises that never came to fruition and b) take credit for what was either in the works before he arrived or achieved by other people.

The Times-Picayune informs us that in addition to his annual $150,000 salary–pretty good as far as civic incomes go–Mayor C. Ray Nagin had to come up with an additional $100,000 from non-public sources in order to buy Blakely out of whatever he was engaged in at the moment so he could give full attention to New Orleans’ needs.

He never gave anywhere near full attention to us. He kept his professorship at the university where he was on staff, kept drawing a salary from them, and continued to accept speaking invitations around the world for large fees, all as a result of his reputation as a wonder worker. New Orleans began to feel cheated almost from the first.

Finally, some six months ago, after 31 months on the job, Blakely put us out of our misery, resigned, and moved back home. (I can never remember whether it’s Australia or New Zealand where he’s from.)

No one shed a tear. The attitude of the citizenry as well as the city’s real leadership was “don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”

Last week, Blakely gave an interview to something called CalTV in Berkeley, California. The venom he poured out was something to behold.

–the city of New Orleans will not exist in 100 years, he said.

–the city has the worst race relations he has ever seen, and race riots will be occurring soon.

–the white population is so glad the African-Americans are finally in the minority and are looking forward to taking back the city.

–he took credit for great accomplishments.

The newspaper has been deluged with letters from citizens irate at the sheer audacity and ignorance of the man. A Tulane professor called Blakely “a snake oil salesman.” A Covington writer said, “The two best words to describe him are ineffective and gone.”

The editorial in the Wednesday, November 4, edition of The Times-Picayune is headlined: “The czar had no clothes.” It begins: “Ed Blakely has what might politely be called a superiority complex. He thinks he is great, and he’ll tell you so a nanosecond after he meets you.”

During his tenure, the paper says, “New Orleanians had to endure his droning on about his supposed accomplishments and the inferiority of everyone else around him.”

What was it he once called the city’s political leaders? Hoodlums, I think.

In the CalTV interview, Blakely says, “I should have left a little earlier…. I had other things I wanted to do and administering a recovery is not one of them.”

Think of that. He took nearly a half-million dollars from us and now admits that he was not interested in running the city’s recovery efforts.

Blakely has shot himself in the foot, methinks. He has made it a dead certainty that no other city will engage him to lead their recovery, an art and skill at which he is supposed to be the master. As the editorial says, the czar has no clothes–and has revealed his naked shame to the world.

One week earlier, in the October 28, 2009, newspaper, Columnist David Brooks (who writes for the NY Times) had an article titled, “The fatal conceit.” It seems to pertain here.

He begins, “Humans are overconfident creatures. Ninety-four percent of college professors believe they are above average teachers, and 90 percent of drivers believer they are above average behind the wheel.”

Brooks references some researchers who tested computer executives about their own industry. Afterwards, each estimated he had gotten perhaps 5 percent of the answers wrong. In truth, they got 80 percent wrong.

Brooks says in the financial world, investment whizzes think the future is an algorithm and “they’ve cracked the code.” That is, they do until the bottom falls out and they too are shown to have been ignorant.

In the government centers, leaders tend to think they “stand above problems and solve them in a finely tuned and impartial manner.” They set about resolving Wall Street’s problems and move on to the health care crisis in America. Look out.

“Reality, of course, has a way of upending finely crafted plans.”

Brooks ends the only way to conclude such a discouraging commentary on today’s political scenarios: “I hope they know what they’re doing.”

My own word here is that nothing becomes a leader of any stripe–political, economical, theological–like humility.

Just once, I’d like our elected leader to walk to a microphone and say, “Frankly, this thing is way beyond me. It’s tougher than anything any of us have ever dealt with. We’re going to be needing the input and prayers and patience of everyone as we try to get a handle on this situation.”

If nothing else, he’ll not have to leave in disgrace if it turns out nothing he tried worked. He made no grandiose claim that we would soon see “cranes in the skies” over our cities.

Had Ed Blakely not promised cranes, but herons, now that would have flown. We have them–the egret variety–all over the place.