Woolard, a former City Council president, at one point bundled a bunch of audience questions into one: How far did they expect to take the Beltline by the end of their first term?

But each of the candidates gave too tepid an answer for Woolard’s satisfaction.

“I think we are going to get transit done, but it’s not going to be soon,” answered Lisa Borders, the current Council president and one of the frontrunners in the mayoral contest.

After each answer, Woolard goaded the candidates by muttering that she still wouldn’t have transit after four years with such unambitious vision. “I’m still driving,” she’d say, mocking the answer — in a good-natured way, I should add.

She did give a bit of credit to state Sen. Kasim Reed, who noted that if a regional sales tax for transit, which he’s been pushing, is approved next year by the state Legislature, the Beltline could get the funding it needs to speed construction. (I’ll put up another post a bit later on my impression of the candidates’ performances, but wanted to post this piece on Woolard — UPDATE: Click here for a full review of the forum.)

But when Jesse Spikes, the last of the four candidates on stage, finished his answer (and Woolard spit out her last “still driving”), Woolard added: ““If you want to know how to build it in four years … I do think some notes were left over when I left City Hall.”

Intentional or not, that came across to me as swipe at Borders, who succeeded Woolard as Council president. Borders had begun the evening by crediting Woolard for being the first politician to advocate the Beltline, and by she crediting herself with helping to push along what Woolard had started.

Before the next question came, candidate Mary Norwood turned the tables on Woolard. “Cathy,” she asked, “why don’t you give us your three-minute version” of how to make the Beltline a reality?”

The moderator proceeded to answer the question in real why-I-thought-you’d-never-asked fashion. She whipped through a series of ideas on how to fund the project (through existing tax-allocation districts and a tax on parking lots, among other things), on how the transit portion of the Beltline ought to be altered to justify spending the money on it (run it across town on Auburn Avenue, through downtown and to the Atlanta University Center, rather than continuing further south), and on getting the thing done without all this hand-wringing (she observed that Denver was among many cities that have completed major transit lines in less than four years).

“You can do it pretty quick,” she said.

In fairness to the other candidates, it’s a bit easier for those of us who aren’t running — including Woolard — to offer bold answers to big questions. We don’t have to balance promises that we’re making to different constituencies and campaign contributors. For example, the city’s powerful parking lot industry might not be so keen on the parking tax idea.

Candor, smarts and a bit of showing off about did get some of Woolard’s colleagues sore at her when she was a politician, and the cerebral approach isn’t necessarily the way to get votes. I still remember being so impressed at Woolard as a congressional candidate in DeKalb County, only to find out the hard way that she wasn’t connecting with voters — she didn’t even make it into the Democratic Party runoff. came in third.

I suppose it’s inevitable that an evolutionary law of politics usually leaves us with a choice between smart people who are very careful to calibrate their sentences (and ambitions) on one hand, and ambitious blowhards on the other. Still, I get kind of jazzed when the showy brain comes along and works some magic. After all, as Borders noted, we probably wouldn’t even be this far along on the Beltline if it wasn’t for Woolard.

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