Failure to Launch (Part 1)

A look at Ariel Fernandez's first 100 days in office

Note: This was originally going to be a single post, but the word count got out of hand. So, for the sake of readability, I’ve split this post into two parts. I’ll post the second part later this week.

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100 days of ineptitude

The 100-day evaluation during an elected official’s first term is, like so many political customs, largely theatrical, but that’s not to say it is purely arbitrary. The concept as we know it stretches back to the very beginning of FDR’s tenure when the newly elected president summoned congress into a roughly 100-day special session for the purpose of passing vast and aggressive legislation, kicking off what would eventually become the New Deal. The effort was so consequential that every president since has been subjected to his own 100-day evaluation. Of course, we live in an era of trickle-down politics, and so what is good for the presidential goose is good for the gander. It is not uncommon, therefore, to find newly elected local officials romantically touting 100-day agendas of their own.

So, I must admit it came as something of a shock to me when on August 6, 2023, Ariel Fernandez, of all people, allowed his 100th day in office to slip by so unceremoniously. We are talking about a guy who has not let a single fourth tier, nonsensical, invented yesterday, bullshit holiday go unmentioned in his social media since the advent of the front-facing camera. National Lawn Care Day? Rest assured your Instagram feed will feature a photo of Ariel grinning ear to ear while holding a dewy pile of freshly cut grass in his gently cupped hands, #MerryMowing #Grateful4Grass #GodBlessTheBlades.

But, alas, we would get no pomp and circumstance from the commish—for once. No YouTube video featuring Ariel rattling off a long list of accomplishments before hopping into his electric cart thingy and driving off toward the sunny uplands of history. No Instagram post festooned with loud and gaudy graphics and lots of ticked checkboxes beneath a “promises kept” banner. Nothing even remotely…Ariel.

All we would get (to my infinite chagrin) is a perfunctory mention in the intro of July’s Commission Insider of Ariel completing his first three months in office along with some vague and barely intelligible nonsense about moving hurdles and then others placing hurdles and then moving some more hurdles—or something like that. And if the content that followed was meant to be a comprehensive list of his early achievements, then, good Lord, it is no wonder he soft pedaled reaching his 100-day milestone.

Say Cheese

Take the first section of the above-mentioned edition of Commission Insider, which Ariel helpfully labeled “Commissioner In Action,” and which included a rousing thumbnail of Ariel vanquishing a small tree branch like Hercules wrestling the Nemean Lion. This is obviously where Ariel would list his most impressive early accomplishments, and judging by how aggressively he scraped the bottom of the barrel, the 14 items he featured represented the very limit of what he could muster. But for the sake of brevity, let us look only at the top five, which we can presume are the most important:

• Reviewing the Budget: aka taking a selfie while staring officiously yet blankly at a budget that he would later show astonishingly little interest in during a meeting dedicated to said budget.

• Filling Potholes: aka taking a selfie with a hard-working city employee who was busy trying to actually fill potholes before he was rudely interrupted by an on-the-prowl Ariel hunting for a photo-op.

• Power Restoration: aka taking a selfie with an unsuspecting FPL repair crew he decided to ambush so he could later characterize it as meeting with “FPL Leadership” as though he assembled some kind of impromptu high-level summit with state utility C-suiters right there on the sidewalk.

• Streamlining Permitting: aka taking a selfie with an entire department who happened to be having their own planned meeting before a commissioner dropped in uninvited all so he could tell them to “think outside the box” and take a hostage photo.

• Country Club Curb Project: aka taking a selfie next to a crew performing work on a project that predates him and that he more or less opposed back when he was still LARPing as a muckraker.

I guess he decided to leave out his botched attempt to terminate the City Manager, completely caving on the Mobility Hub, and failing to snuff out all the supposedly obvious corruption in City Hall. You know, the little things.

Notice how there is no legislation, no initiatives, no collaborations with colleagues, nothing that would even begin to suggest concerted action, much less achievement? Is there anything on that list that could plausibly be characterized as even the beginnings of an accomplishment?

And lest you accuse me of cherry picking, I encourage you to peruse the remaining nine items and subsequent sections, because it only gets worse, as we are treated to a series of awe-inspiring gems such as Addressing Concerns, Finding Solutions, and Pickleball. Hark, the drums of revolution beat in the distance!

Of course, if you are not interested in slogging through the rest, just know that the entire document with its whopping 52 selfies could be neatly summarized with just two words: Say Cheese.

“North America was a great big land, with a great big job to be done, a job that needed a great big man, and Paul Bunyan was the one!”

Haters gonna hate

I know what some of you are saying. You are saying, "Aesop, you’re kind of a jerk to Ariel. You obviously hate him and are determined to paint him as a failure no matter what happens. You’ll never, ever, give him a fair shake.”

Yeah, I get that. He certainly is a bugbear around these parts. But I don’t hate Ariel. In fact, I see a few qualities in him that I respect and admire, chief among them being his obviously genuine love for his family, particularly his son. It tells me there is goodness inside the man somewhere, even if that goodness is all too often thwarted by rapacious ambition. And I would not have voted for him if I hated him, no matter how much cringy entertainment he brings to Gables politics.

What really ruins it for me with Ariel is not the incompetence, per se. Nor is it the white-knight posturing. It is the combination of the two. It is the constant failure to deliver on the interminable hype he so doggedly engineers, and the progressively uncouth behavior to which he resorts as he grows increasingly aware of his impotence. It all makes for the very worst kind of audacity.

He also suffers from a terrible case of apathy, not because he is innately devoid of love, kindness, and compassion, but because all his love, kindness, and compassion seems to flow only inward. It is always, without exception, all about Ariel and what is his. It is why to the extent that he puts any effort into being your commissioner the only recognizable output is his aggrandizement. It is all so utterly performative. If he were serious about doing actual work on behalf of other people, he would put at least a modicum of effort into cultivating a meaningful command of the issues. Instead he settles for vague familiarity.

What’s more, he seems to think that merely associating himself with something carries with it some kind of remedial power. Watch these past commission meetings closely and you will notice just how much of Ariel’s input takes the form of “yes, I too am familiar with X, I drive by X every morning, I agree we should do something about X.”

He has also had a fair number of gotchas boomerang right back in his face thanks to his ignorance, such as when he tried to nail the parking director with a question about a parking study that everyone in the room but Ariel knew the answer to, or like when he agreed to tie the fate of protocols during commission meetings to an employee survey that every modestly informed observer knew would not go his way.

Then there are the pointless PSAs no one asked for, e.g. the beat-the-heat tips and the back-to-school messages. It is a bit excessive, don’t you think? I don’t know about you, but I did not vote for Ariel so that he could spend the next four (maybe six?) years bombarding me with unsolicited and imbecilic tips like “wear sunscreen” or “drink plenty of water” when it is 99 degrees in the shade. He knows damn well that no one needs to be told to stay indoors when it is as hot as Death Valley outside. So why bother with these videos at all? The answer is very simple: “Look at me!”

Give a dog a bone

Still, while Ariel’s odd and tacky brand of grandstanding is annoying, and while his being an empty suit is disappointing, none of it amounts to much more than a misdemeanor in the vast realm of politics. A narcissistic lightweight? In politics? Well I never!

If ego and ineptitude were the only issues here, then Lago and Anderson would have a clear path forward. All they would need to do is feed the ego. Keep Ariel busy, but don’t let him break anything. You know how you give a toddler an old VCR remote with no batteries in it so he thinks he’s the one changing the channels? Do that, essentially. Give Ariel a new and shiny pair of oversized scissors with his name engraved on the handle and send him off to each and every ribbon cutting. Send him to every rubber-chicken event, every gala, every League of Cities conference. Let him flitter around the city with his lapel pin on so he can see people wave and hear them shout from across the street those magic words, the words he has waited his whole adult life to hear, “Hey there, Commissioner Fernandez.”

But if only it were that simple…

Stay tuned for part two later this week.