Nashville Mayor Karl Dean's Controversial Trip To Japan On Day of the Earthquake

IN ONE DAY, U.S. DEBT JUMPED $72 BILLON AS CONGRESS CUT $6 BILLION (One step forward, ten steps backwards)

GIVING NEW MEANING TO TERM STAYING THE COURSE

MAYOR KARL DEAN---hail fellow well met---has been quite the talk of the town around city water coolers this week after leaving on a part-business/part-pleasure trip to Japan only hours after the massive earthquake/ tsunami hit that country. After hearing the news, Dean continued on with his trip when he received assurances from Japanese trade contacts he was still welcome and wouldn't be in the way. And Dean took them at their word. He's has been severely criticized here for this.

An article on Dean's now infamous trip appeared in The Nashville City Paper today giving a few more details:

Dean....flew to Chicago from Nashville en route to Japan at about 5 a.m., Friday, March 11.

“I had gotten maybe one or two emails from colleagues saying that something had happened in Japan, but no details,” Dean said of his morning departure. “When I got to the airport in Nashville there was no other information. I went on to Chicago. At that point, I got a call from Consul General [Hiroshi] Sato, who basically said there [had] been a severe earthquake, but that I should go on with the trip.

“My only concern at that point was that I didn’t want to be in the way if there were some people taking actions that they normally would not take,” he said. “I didn’t want them to have to entertain me. He assured me that I wouldn’t be in the way and that I should feel free to come ahead.

Dean, who called the Japanese “incredibly stoic and dignified,” said this is his first trip to Japan. He said Tokyo right now is “extremely quiet” given the recent events.

“I’m in a hotel in the central business district that is probably less than half full,” he said. “Just going out for dinner, going into a restaurant, we’re generally one of two parties in a restaurant. It’s so empty. The traffic is much, much reduced. There are periodic blackouts. When I was in Kamakura yesterday meeting with the mayor there, there were blackouts. People are staying indoors more I think because of the radiation issue and because they’re just overwhelmed. A lot of things are closed. Stores closing, restaurants closing, a lot of the museums we wanted to go to were closed for the entire week.

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WILL DEAN COME BACK TO NASHVILLE GLOWING IN THE DARK?

On top of all those closings and blackouts, I understand many ATM machines in Tokyo and Japan are not working.

Whether Dean---who is still holed up in Tokyo with his family---should or shouldn't have continued on to Japan as scheduled after the the massive catastrophe continues to be open to debate. I question his judgment, but who knows and frankly who really cares.

Nevertheless, one thing seems certain after his week of rolling blackouts, aftershocks, threats of nuclear fallout, and massive business and restaurant closings: It's highly doubtful he'll ever make such a crazy, goof-ball decision again to go forward with such a schmooze-fest. I mean, would Dean have stopped everything last May to party and entertain trade officials from Japan during the massive, historic floods of Nashville? The biggest flood in history here? I certainly doubt it. And even more so, I hope not.

One last thing, over the past several years, Dean has literally rammed through a new downtown convention center the same way he rammed through his trip to Japan. It is one of the most ill-begotten boondoggles of all time. It will never, NEVER, pay for itself and is conceived of a by-gone era of unlimited business-friendly expansion with unlimited credit. There's nothing progressive in Dean's Convention Center Debacle. His are monumental delusions of grandeur and bad timing.

On second thought, maybe it's just as well if Dean is stranded in Japan a little longer.