The suspense is over: Jean-Claude Brizard, a senior executive with the New York City School District, will be Rochester's next superintendent.

Now it's time to reflect on the drama that surrounded the School Board's search. Maybe we can learn something.

The drama reached a peak late last week, with Democratic Party Chair Joe Morelle phoning School Board members, urging them to delay their decision until new board members take office. In his phone message, Morelle said that "from the party's perspective," choosing a superintendent now would be "a grave mistake." Do we really want political party chairs pressuring School Board members?

In an interview on Friday, Morelle portrayed his effort as being in the public's interest. Two of the current board members are retiring at the end of the year. If the current board made the decision, Morelle said, the public wouldn't be able to hold the full board accountable.

But that's loopy. Members of the current board interviewed the four candidates repeatedly. They spent months discussing the district's needs and the candidates' qualifications. Until last week, when they were brought into the final interviews, the incoming board members knew no more about the candidates than the public did.

Morelle wasn't the only person pushing for a delay, of course. And the real goal wasn't some kind of "accountability." The real goal was to get a board that would change course and choose Interim Superintendent Bill Cala.

Actually, I thought myself that Cala was the right choice. This has nothing to do with the strong credentials of Brizard or the three other candidates. And it's not because I think Cala would do a better job than the others; he hasn't been here long enough for anybody to know that.

But he has built broad support in the community, among parent activists, in City Hall, and among some business leaders. It will take a while for Brizard to do that. And over the next couple of years, while Brizard is learning the ropes and building community support, the test scores will be rolling in. Barring a miracle, those scores won't satisfy community leaders.

And so - you can count on it - in a couple of years, the same critics will be voicing the same criticism.

I figured that if Cala were superintendent, he could convince City Hall and the business leaders that we're expecting the district to do the impossible. Until that happens, the community won't work together to attack the real problems. And we'll just keep losing children.

Cala's not going to be the superintendent. Jean-Claude Brizard - an impressive, experienced educator - is taking that job. If the board's critics are really interested in helping Rochester's children, they need to move beyond their disappointment and embrace Brizard as they have embraced Cala. Brizard can't do his job with anything less than full community support.

The Dems in DC

It was no surprise, I suppose, that Senate Democrats wimped out on Michael Mukasey's nomination for attorney general. Despite his dissembling, the Dems found a way to sound high-minded as they endorsed him and ran for cover.

Among other problems with his testimony was Mukasey's refusal to define waterboarding as torture. Waterboarding, the Times noted in its strong editorial on Sunday, clearly violates both US law and the Geneva Conventions. But enough Democrats - led by New York's Chuck Schumer - voted for Mukasey that he'll be our attorney general for the next year and a half.

With this administration in charge, a year and a half is an eternity. This was no time for the Democrats to relinquish the power that voters have given them. But relinquish it they did last week. And we have yet another attorney general who won't say no to torture.