So, the one inconsistency in the display of tags is the one I like the most
We obviously are looking at these differently. If I'm scrolling through the list, I'm just looking at the start of the tags. It only when I stop on a book that I go deeper and read through them. Or I use the tag browser to find all the books for a tag.
Using a custom column for tags isn't very convenient. It won't get populated by the metadata download so there would be some copy and paste afterwards.