From the WSJ Opinion Archives
CROSS COUNTRY
A Tale of Two Daleys
Chicago's mayor doesn't have a theory of governance. He just likes to solve problems.
CHICAGO--Power, like yogurt and celebrity, is generally thought to have an expiration date. Not always, not everywhere--and not, apparently, here in Chicago, where one family, the Daleys, has controlled the political action from City Hall for going on four decades. Richard J. Daley, or Daley père, was mayor of the city from 1955 to 1976, and died in office; Richard M. Daley, or Daley fils, began his run in 1989, and it begins to look as if I, who am five years his elder, am quite likely to die while he is still in office.
From time to time a local politician makes a noise suggesting that he would like to make a run at the Daley dynasty, as by now it must be reckoned. Most recently, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who does a fair impression of a serious politician--unlike his father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who does a very poor imitation of Martin Luther King Jr.--has criticized Daley fils for yet another of the small- and large-bore scandals--this one having to do with affirmative-action contracts--that are as indispensable to Chicago politics as nitrogen to plant life.
Rep. Jackson is on record as saying, "I am concerned about the reports of rampant corruption and fraud and abuse in the city. I'm interested in our city restoring honesty and integrity in our government." (Pause here for chortle followed by yawn.) He also insists that he has no intention of opposing Daley fils in his run for a sixth term as mayor in 2007, though he wouldn't rule it out. (Pause here for raised left eyebrow followed by cynical smile.)
Yet whoever might run against him in 2007--even if candidates were to include a combined reincarnation of Winston Churchill, Gandhi, Disraeli and the Archangel Michael--Daley fils will be, as they say in Vegas, a prohibitive favorite. To be sure, he has done some very high-handed things in office; the most impressive of all in this line was plowing up Meigs Field, the city's small downtown lakeshore airport the survival of which everyone else thought was still up for discussion, and doing it, as the mystery writers like to say, by dark of night. But most Chicagoans don't seem to hold any of it against him. Hey, the kid's OK.
Corruption, like sexual satisfaction, is relative. Corruption under Daley père was widespread and wide open. Everything that passed through City Hall was for sale: health and building inspectors, cops, judges, even in one notorious instance--the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential election--the White House. (I first heard the motto "Vote early, vote often" during this election, where it was more a modus operandi than a mere motto.) Some people see corruption as intrinsic to, if not inherent in, big-city government, and I'm afraid that I happen to be one of them, but then I'm an American, like the man said, Chicago-born.
No one has ever accused the Daleys, father or son, of being thieves. Their interest has never been in money--only in what money can do to smooth the way to power, which for them has always been the real point and prize of politics. Critics of Rich Daley--the father was known as Dick, a harder name for a more obdurate man--say that politics in Chicago under him is business as usual. I don't believe this is quite so, but in any case if corruption has gone on during his administrations, he at least has provided real compensations.
Chicago was once a city distinguished by having not one but two skid rows: one on south State Street, the other on west Madison. Under Rich Daley both have been replaced by charming neighborhoods lived in for the most part by the go-go young. Once drab and dreary neighborhoods show new buildings, lots of rehab, and Starbucks as far as the eye can see. Where squalor once was, youthful gentry now reside.
Everywhere around the city flowers and trees have been planted. The new Millennium Park, with its Frank Gehry outdoor concert hall, skating rink, modern sculptures, charming walkways and fields for lolling is a great hit with everyone who has seen it. The Chicago of my youth, filled with gruff cigar-smoking pols in size 48 suits, suddenly seems a city for the young, who appear delighted to be in a city with so much to offer and themselves lend the metropolis a winning liveliness.
Between the Daleys, especially when Harold Washington and his successor, Eugene Sawyer, both black men, were in office, racial feeling in the city was raw and the confrontations between blacks and whites in the City Council was ugly. Rich Daley has done a good deal to eliminate that. No one, I think, would say that he is in the least racist. Cliché though it sounds, he really does seem to want to be the mayor of all Chicagoans. In the 2003 four-candidate mayoral election, he won 79% of the vote, though voter turnout was down to only 34%, expressing either satisfaction or voter apathy, or (most likely) confidence that he was unbeatable.
Rich Daley appears to have no theory of government, but merely a boundless appetite for governing. He is a fix-it, a problem-solving, man, treating the city of Chicago as if it were an unending episode of "This Old House"--and he seems to be turning the old heap into a damn stately mansion.
But perhaps the real secret behind the Daley family success is the fixed but limited ambition of both father and son. Neither Dick nor Rich Daley ever aspired to rise any higher than Mayor of the City of Chicago. Dick Daley, doubtless, enjoyed being a kingmaker and a power in the Democratic Party; this would appear to be less true of Rich Daley, but then the age of king-making Democratic Party bosses seems to be over. A homeboy, the current mayor does not wish to become governor or a U.S. senator, or--here's a thought to pass on to the search committee in Cambridge--the next president of Harvard. That goes a good way to explaining why he is so good at his job and why he is likely to be able to keep it for as long as he likes.
Mr. Epstein is the author, most recently, of "Envy" (Oxford, 2003).
