There's a great scene in the movie "Patton" with an important lesson for Boulder. Early in the film, when George C. Scott, as Major General George S. Patton Jr., inherits his first World War II, he inspects a sloppy American headquarters and finds chaos. At length, he finds a sleeping soldier, whom he kicks and asks, "What are you doing, son?"

"Sleeping, sir," the soldier replies.

"Well, go back to sleep, son," Patton replies, "you're the only S.O.B. who knows what he's doing around here."

Replace the sleeping soldier with PLAN-Boulder County and you've got a picture of effective politics around these parts. Despite no shortage of activists, long talkers at city council meetings, a reasonably smart collection of council people and a Board of County Commissioners, the real force for effective city and county government and policy making in Boulder is PLAN-Boulder County. All government organizations and civic groups could take a lesson from the group.

Knowing what you're for is an important part of political success at any level. Just ask President Bush, who, despite popular negative views of his intellect and mocking derision of everything from his ears to his religious faith, has managed a successful political career by knowing what he's for and forcing others to define themselves against it. Likewise, PLAN-Boulder County knows what it's for and has set others, including the Council, to its agenda for quite some time.

That agenda, like Bush's, is simply set forth: retaining Boulder's character, preserving its open space and rural character, improving transportation, restricting growth and preventing sprawl. The organization maintains a clear and navigable website, takes succinct positions on issues and studies issues carefully, even those it opposes.

The 15-person board of PBC is bound by a two-thirds majority rule to support positions the board takes as a whole, so the organization maintains discipline. Its positions are articulated in position papers and its values are transparent for all to see. It's not a body governed by overweening assumptions like, say, Boulder's Planning or Liquor Board, but a deliberative body that sets the parameters of issues and debates and drives an agenda based on those parameters.

In short, it's the de facto government of Boulder and Boulder County (or at the very least, a kind of kingmaker for those governments) and we have to wonder sometimes why Boulder ever needs a city council when it's got a citizen organization doing the hard work of policy making so well.

Maybe the lesson, though, is for the business community and the council to use PLAN-Boulder County as a model for governing, dealing with citizens and reaching consensus on critical issues.

We've seen the need for that skill set, particularly when the Council deadlocks on something like a $140,000 prairie dog fence and turns the matter back over to the city manager to decide.

For the Council or the business community to have the kind of clout PLAN-Boulder County does would require those entities to take a page from the latter's playbook, particularly the one on supporting consensus.

The very idea of consensus to a Council populated by self professed experts is almost an anathema; why set clear directions and work toward commonality and public service when it's much more fun to assert one's expertise, knowledge, viewpoint and talents all the time?

You see this on the new council a lot, particularly in what we might call the "Moses" complex of many on the council. Just as the Old Testament prophet returned from Mt. Sinai with the revealed wisdom of God in the form of the Ten Commandments, so, too, do some of Boulder's council people return from national seminars and workshops with brilliant ideas that they toss, with no warning, into council debate at the last minute.

The gesture is calculated as either a demonstration of their own brilliance or to offer just the right non-local (which of course, makes it great) solution to whatever ails the city. It is an occupational hazard of having so many government types on the Council.

That last minute quality of governance you will never find in PLAN-Boulder County. It talks, deliberates and discusses and, to be sure, has no shortage of know-it-alls and experts. But they listen. to one another because they know, ultimately, it's not about them, but about the county and the common well-being of Boulder. In the end, dissent abates in favor of progress.

Okay, to be fair, advocacy organizations are at best support systems for government and not government itself. We know that. But smart values and a smart approach to consensus building can be borrowed, and the Council, along with the city's business community, should borrow a little from PLAN-Boulder County.

When they do, we might see more progress in city government, and a good deal less tiresome expertise. That would be nice all around, not to mention meaning that more S.O.B.'s would know what they were doing around here.