The two apostles of things as they were sat in the Los Angeles City Council last week and flaunted their lack of vision.Our police chief and our mayor were trying to explain their responses to the Rampart police scandal that keeps spreading like an ink stain on a white pile carpet.By insisting that the LAPD can yet cleanse itself, Mayor Dick Riordan also defended his seven-year pro-police agenda. Chief Bernard Parks, meanwhile, was aloofly defending his own response to Rampart, which scandal one might, uncharitably, call the upshot of Riordan’s police policy.Riordan mouthed his familiar bromides about how wonderful it was that he, Parks, the Police Commission and the council were together on this one: ”Most of the LAPD officers are honest and hard-working,“ he said. ”The criminals will be brought to justice.“ Never in his lifetime of inept public utterances had Riordan sounded so wooden.