There’s a reason most people viscerally dislike politics. It’s because they hoped they’d left the backbiting and petty score-counting behind in high school. But it continues, with cults of personality and cults of personal destruction. Every success redounds to someone’s credit, every failure is pinned on a donkey.

Last week, Seattlepi.com published a report (“Seattle’s ‘green jobs’ program a bust“) on how Seattle’s Community Power Works program, itself powered by a $20-million federal grant, was faring after its inaugural year. Wrote Vanessa Ho:

It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.

But more than a year later, Seattle’s numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program.

That sounds just terrible. But as it turns out, 337 homeowners have applied for weatherization assistance–the bureaucracy has just been slow in fulfillment. Funds for low-interest loans and incentives for energy-efficient upgrades have gone to larger buildings, like hospitals, that see more immediate financial benefits from weatherization than residential homeowners.

But as the story notes, “Half the funds are reserved for financing and engaging homeowners in Central and Southeast Seattle,” and it’s in the residential weatherization side that most of the job creation was expected.

More importantly, in terms of the program’s goals, Ho admits that, “The city had applied for the grant at a time of eco-giddiness, when former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels was out-greening all other politicians except for Al Gore.” Progress has been slow, no doubt about it, but the recession’s impact and the replacement of “new jobs” taken by out-of-work construction workers also have to be factored in.

Across the street, so to speak, in the Seattle Times, you can read more about Mayor Nickels. Danny Westneat’s article, “South Lake Union’s barely noticed boom,” wraps up with the statement: “Nobody has talked about how former Mayor Greg Nickels, once again, had the big stuff right.”

Years after a huge political and cultural battle over whether to convert a worn-down part of town into a sort of loft for the creative class — and after we kicked out the mayor who staked his career on it — an early verdict is in on South Lake Union.

Westneat runs down the number of jobs created in South Lake Union: 10,000. (Including the thousands of jobs transferred there when Amazon moved from Beacon Hill and elsewhere, it’s 14,000.) But again, this is years in. Westneat is picking up on this story from Publicola, who actually include the graph of anticipated jobs growth. Click over there and take a look at how many jobs were expected one year in. Even so, few believed that chart at the outset–not Peter Steinbrueck and Nick Licata. Steinbrueck then: “We need to sober up.”

Questioned by Seattlepi.com’s Joel Connelly at a press conference, Mayor McGinn defended Community Power Works by claiming it hadn’t had even a year to work: if you subtract set-up, the program has only been operating four months.

Green jobs advocate Van Jones writes on Sightline, in response to the dust-up:

In some ways, the media is faulting the program for trying to do this pioneering program the right way. Engaging with multiple stakeholders and setting high standards in various areas of performance takes time. And if creating a good energy upgrade program with decent wages were easy to do, someone would have done it already.

Can you feel the irony yet? At the very moment former Mayor Nickels is being lauded for his foresighted development of South Lake Union–giveaways to a billionaire, critics groused–current Mayor McGinn is on the hot-seat for “sluggish” progress after four months of Community Power Works actually going to work. I don’t mention this for McGinn’s benefit–I mention it for Seattle’s.

Weatherization to create more energy-efficient homes is a terrific idea, it has enormous long-term consequences. If it puts people to work, so much the better. And I’m not disparaging criticism of the “speed of government.” We would all like to see hustle from public servants. But “bust”? Come on.