ED BURKE: OUR MODERN DAY ICARUS

 

12/22/23

 

The verdict is in, ladies and gentleman; former 14^th Ward Alderman and Committeeman Ed Burke stands convicted on all but one of the many counts federal prosecutors brought against him.   This comes as no surprise to my readers, and, to be uncharacteristically humble, just about anybody else.   As I wrote in my already seminal piece of 11/28/23, WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT ED BURKE, despite the apparent flaws in the logic of the arguments of the prosecution,

 

“… given the resources of the federal government and its determination to go after corruption, both real and perceived, it is a rare occurrence for a federal defendant, especially a high profile federal defendant, to walk out of a Dirksen Building corruption trial a free man or woman.   The odds, therefore, do not appear to favor Alderman Burke.”

Am I happy about the verdict?   Yes.   It is always reassuring to see justice being done and, especially given those taped comments by Ed Burke, it’s hard to argue that justice was not done here.  Mr. Burke’s  defense team could argue all it wants about the low character of former 25^th Ward Alderman Danny Solis (Though I haven’t been in that part of the world in a while, I highly recommend the Italian restaurants on the stretch of Oakley Avenue on which the former Alderman’s former office sits.   Most people seem to like Bruna’s, which is great, while the Quinns prefer Bacchanalia.  But I digress.), who wore the wire on Mr. Burke to save himself from a future in federal housing, but, as the prosecution in this case, and in most such cases argued, correctly and using different words, St. Francis is rarely a party to the types of discussions that get people tossed in the hoosegow.

What the jury was not even asked to consider was Mr. Burke’s most salient offense:   an astounding lack of good, solid judgment.   Such poor judgment was evident most immediately in trusting the likes of Danny Solis.    You can’t tell me that Mr. Solis’s colleagues, certainly including Mr. Burke, did not know that Mr. Solis has certain, er, eccentricities that were indicative of his low character and, morality aside, his consequent vulnerability to blackmail and the attention of federal law enforcement.

However, Mr. Burke’s lack of judgment was more profound in something less immediate.   One of my oldest friends, a guy with whom I went to grammar school at St. Walter, sent me a quick e-mail in response to my 11/28 piece that read, simply, “When is enough enough?”   As he usually does, my old buddy hit the proverbial nail on the head.   Ed Burke had it all…power, prestige, the admiration of most of his colleagues, and, as far as anyone without access to Mr. Burke’s financial records can tell, enough money to enable him to live in luxury for several lifetimes.   Why didn’t he just pack it in five or ten years ago?   Why did he find it necessary at this point in his life to, of all things, shake down a Burger King franchisee a few blocks off the Stevenson?   Such questions doubtless apply to former House Speaker and 13^th Ward Committeeman Mike Madigan, whom we will surely be discussing in a few months, but I again digress.   At any rate, Mr. Burke’s life seems to be the perfect Greek tragedy:  a guy who was to the manor born (Yes, the manor happened to be in Canaryville, but Joe Burke had constructed quite the political manor for his son.) who did not rest on his father’s legacy but took the ball and ran with it, accomplishing much for his ward, for the city, for his family, and, yes, for himself, but, unable to decide when, as my friend put it, “enough is enough,” flew too close to the sun and crashed to the earth.

While I am happy that justice seems to have been served in this case, I will not join the jubilant crowds cheering the demise of Mr. Burke as “the final nail in the coffin of the Machine,” or something similarly inane.   Why?

First, the lid on the coffin of the Machine has been firmly welded in place for decades, a tale I have told in my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, and would have remained so regardless of the outcome of Mr. Burke’s trial.

 

Second, I reference a paragraph in the obviously ebullient reporting of the Chicago Tribune on the conviction of Mr. Burke:

"It’s a trial that in many ways has reflected the man and his career. The son of a Democratic ward boss and alderman, Burke grew up in a home steeped in Chicago’s particular brand of street-level politics. He was expert at smoothing potholes, fixing up friends with patronage jobs, and making sure everyone who benefited knew how to vote -- and for whom to vote."

 

Give me fifty people like that in the City Council rather than the assemblage of self-proclaimed Democratic Socialists, goo-goos, popinjays, poltroons, poseurs, mountebanks, and other misfits who currently populate that body.   I would much rather pay the notorious “corruption tax,” which, in retrospect, looks like a bargain, than be a lab rat in Brandon Johnson’s social experiments.   Yeah, the Machine guys weren’t saints, but the city worked when they dominated the City Council and occupied the Mayor’s office.   Further, while politicians on the take present the world with a relatively trivial degree of danger, idealists who are adamant about reshaping the world to their liking have caused the deaths of hundreds of millions throughout history.

 

You might argue that the choice does not have to be between leftist loon-tunes and self-aggrandizing politicasters who see their craft as a business and public service as a means of advancing that business.   There must be, you might argue, a third way, a good, responsible, city government without a trace of corruption.   While I, too, would like to live in that world where sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows sustain herds of friendly unicorns, yours truly is too old and has seen too much to think there is such a yellow brick road to good government in Chicago…or much of anywhere else, for that matter.   People’s motivations and ideals matter far less than the results they achieve.

 

Let me close with one question and one observation:

 

Who would you rather have as your alderman:   Ed Burke or Scott Waguespack?  Unless you’ve never lived in the city of Chicago, the answer is obvious.

 

In light of the Burke trial and the upcoming Madigan trial, it’s more important than ever that you read my books, both of which would serve as fertile bases for compelling feature films:

 

The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics, and its sequel

 

The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics.

 

Both are available at Amazon and several other online booksellers.

 

Blessed and joyous Christmas to you and yours, everybody, along with a happy, holy, healthy, and prosperous 2024.    You could help on the last by buying my books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT ED BURKE

 

11/28/23

Given my extensive writing on Chicago politics, including my two books, on which more will be written later in this post, how could I not write something on yet another “Trial of the Century” in Chicago and Illinois politics, that of former 14^th Ward Alderman and Committeeman Ed Burke, the quintessential Chicago ward boss and power broker?   Yours truly is not at all confident about the outcome of this trial, but I am confident that this will not be my last post on Mr. Burke and/or his trial.

Given all the eccentricities of the legal process, the apparent and not so apparent skills, or lack thereof, of the lawyers involved, and the difficulties of getting into the heads of any group of jurors, only a fool tries to call the outcome of a trial.   Not being a fool (though others might argue the contrary), I will not venture into this graveyard of guessmen.   I will, however, make a few observations, which run counter to each other, at this stage of the legal proceedings against Mr. Burke and his two co-defendants.

First, given the resources of the federal government and its determination to go after corruption, both real and perceived, it is a rare occurrence for a federal defendant, especially a high profile federal defendant, to walk out of a Dirksen Building corruption trial a free man or woman.   The odds, therefore, do not appear to favor Alderman Burke.

I do have a good story, however, about one of those high profile federal defendants who did indeed walk out of the Dirksen Building a free man, albeit temporarily.   Recall that, in his first trial, former Governor Rod Blagojevich was found not guilty on the majority of the counts against him while the jury was hung on the two or three remaining counts.  Mr. Blagojevich’s attorneys in the first trial were Sam Adam, Sr. and Sam Adam, Jr., two of Chicago’s most prominent defense attorneys, at least at the time.   Sam Adam, Sr. made an impassioned speech after the verdict about the power of the federal government and the potential for abuse that went with that power, using, of course, the feds’ treatment of his and his son’s client as Exhibit A in that argument.   Being one of libertarian tendencies, and more so at the time, I was beyond impressed with the speech.   When Mr. Blagojevich was re-tried on the counts on which the first jury had been hung, and Messrs. Adam decided to pass on representing him in that second trial, the former governor was convicted and went to prison for a long time, but this digression is not the point of this larger digression.

A month or so after the first Blagojevich verdict, my son Mark and I were having Sunday breakfast at Lume’s, a neighborhood pancake house, after Mass and Mark’s Religious Education class at Sacred Heart, where Mark and his sisters were confirmed.  Lume’s, the subject of a now seminal 8/20/21 post on this blog (THIS WEEKEND’S MASS SHOOTING AT LUME’S, A PLACE IN THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD WHERE YOURS TRULY HAS ENJOYED MANY A MEAL), is located at 116^th and Western, in my old neighborhood, which lies directly south of Beverly, where Sam Adam, Jr. lives, or did at the time.   So it came as scant surprise that sitting next to us at Lume’s that morning were Sam Adam Jr. and Sr. along with Sam Jr.’s wife and small children.   As Mark and I were preparing to leave, I went over to the Adam table, politely introduced myself,  and told Sam Sr. how much I admired his speech.   Sam Jr.’s response was, paraphrasing…

 

Oh, great.  Now I’m going to have to hear from my dad all day, and probably all week and all month, about what a great orator and lawyer he is because the guy at Lume’s took the time to tell him what a great speech he made after Blagojevich’s trial.   Thanks a lot!

 

Of course, I digress; that tale had nothing to do with Mr. Burke’s trial and is repeated in the cited August, 2021 post, but I still thought the story was worth re-telling.    Back to the Burke trial:

 

Second, I have three sub-observations regarding the current Burke trial and the facts surrounding it:

 

1.       Mr. Shoukhat Dhamani, who runs the franchisee corporation that owns the Burger King on Pulaski in the 14^th Ward that is at the center of one of the allegations against Mr. Burke and one of his co-defendants, Peter Andrews, an old-time 14^th Ward political hand, DID NOT HIRE Klafter and Burke for any legal work.   Mr. Dhamani’s company DID GET the driveway permits it was seeking.

 

2.       Mr. Peter Cui, a co-defendant and a developer who was seeking a large display pole for a Binney’s Beverage Depot store in a strip mall he owned on the north side, EAGERLY HIRED Klafter and Burke.    Mr. Cui DID NOT GET the permits necessary to erect said pole.

 

3.       The Field Museum allegedly was bullied by Alderman Burke; if the Museum did not hire the daughter of Alderman Terry Gabinski, who was also Mr. Burke’s Goddaughter, as an intern, it would not get the increase it sought in its admission fees.   The Field Museum DID NOT OFFER Ms. Gabinski the internship.   It DID GET the admission fee increase it sought.  To be fair, the Museum later offered Ms. Gabinski a paid position, but this was after-the-fact and, by that time, she had moved on and no longer wanted the job.   Still, this is another case in which the alleged victim did not bow to Mr. Burke’s alleged demands but still got what it wanted.

 

Hmm…Two alleged victims did not do what Mr. Burke’s wanted them to do but still got what they were seeking from the City.  One co-defendant did what Mr. Burke wanted him to do but did not get what he wanted from the City.   If I were a defense attorney, I would make this abundantly clear to the jury that is charged with deciding whether Mr. Burke was running some kind of extortion racket.

 

One more digression…

 

When I was in the green room waiting to go on Milt Rosenberg’s Extension 720 program on WGN Radio in the wake of the publication of my first book, Dr. Rosenberg, whom I had never met before, came into the room and, before saying hello or exchanging any other pleasantries, looked me in the eye and asked

 

“Is Chairman Collins (the main character in my book) Ed Burke?”

 

I answered “No” and further elaborated on the show; guessing who was who in my book had become something of parlor game among readers who were knowledgeable of Chicago’s political history.   Chairman Eamon DeValera Collins was much like Don Vito Corleone, but not in the way one might suspect.   Many people thought that Don Vito was Joe Bonanno, Russell Bufallino, Vito Genovese, or any number of prominent Mob bosses on the East Coast in the post-War years.   But Don Vito was none of those people and all those people.   He was an amalgam of many of them.   Similarly, many people thought Chairman Collins was Mike Madigan, Ed Burke, Richard J. Daley, Dick Mell, Ed Vrdolyak, or any number of the denizens of Chicago politics in the latter part of the 20^th century.   But Chairman Collins was none of those people and all those people.  He was an amalgam of many of them, with a bit of fiction thrown in to make for a more entertaining novel, if such a thing were possible. 

 

Let me also remind my readers that both my books are timeless classics and are still available at, among other places, Amazon.   You should read them if you haven’t already and re-read them if you have:

 

The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics

 

 The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics

DID XI AND KHRUSHCHEV DRAW SIMILAR CONCLUSIONS FROM THEIR SUMMITS WITH OUR PRESIDENTS?

 

11/26/23

 

I sent the below letter to the Wall Street Journal on 11/16/23 and the Journal published it on 11/24/23, the day after Thanksgiving, providing me yet another thing for which to be thankful.   I thought my readers would enjoy this missive:

 

 

11/16/23

 

Historians have long argued that one of the precipitating factors behind the Cuban Missile Crisis was Premier Khrushchev’s assessment of President Kennedy at the Vienna summit of June, 1961.   Mr. Khrushchev, it is reported, considered Mr. Kennedy a lightweight, a glamour boy who had attained his presidency with his father’s money who was in way over his head.    This assessment emboldened Mr. Khrushchev to ship intermediate range missiles to Cuba, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.   Fortunately for all of us, Mr. Kennedy proved to be of sterner stuff than Mr. Khrushchev had supposed, leaving us all alive to discuss such things as the Cuban Missile Crisis sixty-one years later.

 

It is doubtful that Chinese President Xi came away from his meeting with President Biden (“The Biden-Xi Truce of the Moment,” Review & Outlook, 11/16/23) thinking that Mr. Biden is a glamour boy or the scion of a wealthy father determined to buy his son the presidency.   But it is not hard to imagine that, given Mr. Biden’s age and increasingly obvious infirmity, Mr. Xi may have determined that Mr. Biden is indeed a lightweight who is in way over his head.

 

What ramifications could such an assessment, regardless of its accuracy, have for Taiwan, the western Pacific, and/or the entire U.S./China relationship?   If Mr. Xi were to act on such an assessment, would Mr. Biden prove to be of the sterner stuff that Mr. Kennedy displayed in 1962?

2024 WILL NOT BE A BIDEN VS. TRUMP RACE

 

11/18/23

I have long contended that the 2024 presidential race will not be a Trump/Biden rematch.  I grow increasingly convinced of this contention with every passing day.   Why?   Let’s take a look at the situations both parties face from the perspective a hypothetical mainstream member of either party, in the first person.

FROM A HYPOTHETICAL MAINSTREAM DEMOCRAT

“We’ve got a problem.   Our president is not a popular guy.   Polls show him either neck and neck with, or losing to, Donald Trump.   Donald Trump!   This thing could go either way.   If last week’s CPI numbers are right, inflation might be down, maybe way down, by election day, but, then again, that recession everybody has been predicting may finally hit us next year, which would probably kill us in any case but would certainly kill us if Joe is our candidate. 

“We have two hot wars going on and who knows if the Chinese are going to make a move on Taiwan?   Our big time adversaries sense weakness, real or perceived, in our leaders; look at what Khrushchev did back in ’62 when he thought Kennedy was a lightweight?   He almost started World War III!   Speaking of World War III, any of these geopolitical flashpoints could lead to just that.   But let’s not get crazy here and just stick with the current situation.   Foreign policy could hurt us if things get out of control.   Or it could really help us from a political standpoint if people decide to rally behind their leader, not switch horses in mid-stream, or that sort of thing.   Probably foreign policy won’t make any difference because most Americans don’t give a damn about foreign policy.   But I don’t like playing those odds.

“Even if inflation goes down, the economy continues to grow, unemployment remains low, and things don’t blow up overseas, Joe will still be 81 years old and, er, not a young 81.   Even people in our party think the guy is losing it, and nobody could be blamed for wondering if the guy is going to make it another four years, making our candidate, in a lot of people’s minds, Kamala Harris, which presents another set of problems.    And even if the “age issue” doesn’t do in Joe, we still have crime and the border, which the electorate always, rightly or wrongly, blames on the president.

“Yeah, we could still win this with Joe.    We could really beat the Republicans over the head with the abortion issue, which has been a big winner for us ever since Roe v. Wade was overturned.   Why do you think the House Republicans are looking like a bunch of clowns?   I guess we should thank the Supreme Court for that one, but I sure as hell won’t.   But I digress.  And if Trump is the GOP candidate, we could make this a referendum on Trump rather than on Joe.   Yeah, we could get Joe over the goal line on abortion and Trump, especially if inflation is down and the economy is still holding up, but I say ‘Why take the chance?’

“We should just nominate a young, vigorous candidate who is as far to the left as most of the Party but can be sold as a moderate to most of the voters, sort of like a fresh version of Joe Biden.   We’ll win this election if we do that, especially if the GOP nominates Trump.  

“Yeah, we’ll have some problems.   The true believers on the left will scream bloody murder.   They have some arguments with Joe, especially on things like the Middle East, and it really makes them nuts when he talks about being Catholic.   But, in Joe, they have a guy who will do most of what they want while being promoted, with a straight face, as a moderate by our friends in the media.   And Joe, even on those points on which he disagrees with the true believers, is not in any condition to put up much of a fight.   They might get blowback from a more capable moderate who sees the more outrageous aspects of their agenda for the silliness that we secretly know it is, but not from Joe.

“Then we will have the Kamala problem.   If we replace Joe as our candidate, she’ll surely feel that it is her time; she’s the Vice-President, for God’s sake.   But if we run her, we might see 1972 all over again.

“But we can figure out a way around these problems.   Yeah, Joe is a stubborn old Irishman and won’t leave quietly.   But Joe is nothing if not vain, and maybe we can sell him with a story about how he saved America from Trumpism but, if he runs again, his great victory will be effectively overturned.   Does he want to be the guy who saved America from Trump or the guy who returned Trump to power?   Joe might buy it.

“As for Kamala, we can come up with something nice for her, maybe a seat on the Supreme Court the next time one opens up.   That’s a permanent job that she won’t have to run for, and running for office is not her strong suit.   She’ll go for something like that.

“Regardless of the difficulties, we have to have somebody other than Joe bearing our standard in 2024.   If we don’t, there’s a pretty decent chance that we get four more years of Trump, and, unless you are the type of Democrat who puts Party above country and focuses solely on putting the Party in a good position for the next election, you can’t possibly want that outcome.”

 

FROM A HYPOTHETICAL MAINSTREAM REPUBLICAN

“We’ve got a problem.   Donald Trump is running away with the nomination.   Even if you like the guy, you have to admit that, by now, he is a proven loser.   Regardless of what he says, he lost in 2020 and took us down in the Senate that year by his antics in Georgia to boot.   He, along with abortion, turned what should have been a red wave, maybe a red tsunami, in 2022, into a disaster in the Senate and a barely perceptible majority in the House, which has led to us looking like a bunch of clowns as we try to form an effective majority out of a bunch of people who just don’t like each other and regard those who don’t agree with them as corporatist, anti-American RINOs, gun-toting right wing loons, or, in AT LEAST one case, “bitches.”   Donald has been a disaster for the Party.

“Yeah, some of the polls show Trump ahead of Biden, especially in the battleground states, and, if you watch Fox News enough, you would be convinced Trump is going to win against Biden in a walk.   But it’s not going to happen.   Trump is not going to cut substantially into the Democrat’s share of the Black vote, even if that Democrat is Biden.  Trump is not going to win back the suburbanites whose antipathy toward Trump turned hundreds of deep red counties purplish blue.   And even if Trump runs an inside straight policy wise, he is still going to be 78 years old, which is young only relative to Joe Biden.  And has anybody noticed that Trump is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, either?   That may be due to factors transcending age, but only compared to Biden could he look strong and in control of his faculties.   Further, Donald could be a convicted felon by the time election day rolls around.  While that may make him more attractive to a lot of people, there are plenty of people who simply won’t vote for a convicted felon, regardless of what they think about the motivations behind those convictions.   A lot might change between now and election day, and probably not in Trump’s favor.  

“Sure, the economy could get so bad that memories of the Trump prosperity will carry Donald over the electoral threshold.   Further trouble in the three (and counting) world hotspots could shake the people out of their foreign policy indifference and induce them to support a guy who at least argues that he could handle the likes of Putin and Xi better than Biden.   And we always have the border, which is a disaster, and crime, which may be the biggest issue in the election

“Yeah, all those things could combine to put Donald back in the White House, but I say ‘Why take the chance?’   If we nominate somebody who embodies conservative principles but carries none of Donald’s baggage, we will win, especially if we are facing Joe Biden.   The Democrats only win this thing if they can divert attention from their candidate.   Why should we let them do that?

“There are lots of problems with replacing Trump.   Trump is so far ahead in the polls that it looks like he is unstoppable.   True enough, but it is still early and Donald has set expectations so high that even a minor stumble opens up the field.   Let’s see what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire.   One gets the sense that there is room, albeit only a little room, for one of his opponents to emerge as the sole alternative to Trump, and then it could get interesting.   This is admittedly a long shot, and many of us are probably talking more out of hope than facts here, but it could happen.

“The biggest problem is that many, maybe most, of Donald’s loyal followers don’t give a rat’s hindquarters about the Republican Party;  in fact, they see part of Trump’s mission as destroying traditional Republicanism and replacing it with what can be vaguely described as Trumpist Populism.   So any argument that Trump will destroy the GOP’s chances either has no appeal to them or indeed further increases their ardor for Trump.   But do these voters really want to see another four years of Biden or a younger version of him?   Is that really preferable to four years of, say, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, or Chris Christie?    Maybe the most ardent Trump backers would never support Nikki or Chris, but, surely, Ron would be acceptable to them…right?”

 

BACK TO YOURS TRULY…

You see where this is going.    One, or both, of the parties is going to somehow dump its front-runner.   And whichever party does that, assuming the other party keeps its front-runner, will win.  The country is yearning for an alternative to Trump and Biden, and it’s not going to emerge from any of these nascent Third Party efforts.

 

 

 

THREE (OTHER) WISE MEN

 

11/7/23

 

 

Three points need to be made before discussing the wisest person, or people, I’ve ever met and what I have learned from them.

 

First, there is a yawning gap between being smart and being wise.   In fact, one of the most salient attributes of a wise person is not feeling the need to let people know how smart s/he is.

 

Second, there is wisdom, to varying degrees, in everybody.   However, we often miss the wisdom in those closest to us because we see such people in moments when they don’t seem the least bit wise.   Conversely, we often attribute more wisdom than is merited to other people because we have only, or usually, seen them in situations in which their wisdom manifests itself.   Probably because these people are not the closest people in our world, we don’t get the opportunity to see them making the ordinary mistakes and errors in judgment we see made by those who are nearest to us.   So we underestimate the wisdom of the former and overestimate the wisdom of the latter.

 

Third, what we have learned from people is largely a measure of what we are willing to learn.   Over the years, people have dispensed great advice, and provided plenty of examples of wise behavior, to me.  Had I followed the advice or the actions of such people, I would be much wiser today.   So people have tried to teach me things, but I refused to learn, which shows the limited extent of my wisdom, at least at an early age.  It also shows a lack of humility on my part.   A very wise man I once knew told me that humility can be defined as teachability, i.e., the humble person is the person who knows s/he has a lot to learn and is willing to learn it.   In that sense, humility is the very essence of wisdom.

 

So, given those stipulations, who was the wisest person I’ve ever known?   I simply can’t narrow this answer down to one person, so you will have to settle for three.

 

 

One of those wise men I knew was my Dad, Dick Quinn, Sr..  Dad did not have much formal education, at least by today’s standards, but he was, as I have said in another chapter, perhaps the most thoroughly self-educated man I ever knew.  This never-ending pursuit of knowledge was what made Dad smart.   What made him wise was never wearing that pursuit of knowledge on his sleeve.  He was a man of few words, which probably comes as a surprise to those who know me but never knew my Dad.   This reticence may have come naturally to my dad, given the circumstances under which he grew up, but it also had to do with his belief that he had plenty to learn from people who were better educated than he and his reluctance to say things that might expose his lack of education.   It may have been my dad who told me that you don’t learn anything when you are talking; if so, that is one piece of wisdom that I completely ignored most of my life and have only recently begun to appreciate.  At any rate, my Dad was smarter than those of his friends who had advanced degrees or the like, so he need not have feared speaking up.   In fact, the world would have been a better place had he more freely shared what was on his mind.  But he was a cautious man, overly cautious, really, and this was one of the reasons he was as quiet as he was.

 

Dad also taught me the virtues of hard work, delaying gratification, gratitude, and trust in God and in one’s self.   He taught me not to expect anything from anybody, that whatever one had in life was the result of hard work and dedication.   He taught me the importance of children in one’s life and how important it was, if I were to marry, to marry the right person.   Some of these lessons were intentional, some were not.   And not everything my Dad taught me was right.   I managed to learn many of these lessons, good and bad, and I also refused to learn many of these lessons, good and bad.   But Dad was, if not the wisest man I ever knew, certainly the first wise man I knew and the one who, and not only because of his role as my father, was most determined to teach me the things I would need to get along in life.

 

 

Another wise man in my life was Bill Cowhey, who was a mentor to me in some very rough times in my life and in some of the best times of my life.   Bill was an older gentleman (in the best sense of that very misused word), though not as old as my Dad, who felt it was his duty to take those people under his wing who wanted to be taken under his wing.   One of Bill’s wisest attributes was not forcing himself on people; he only dispensed advice, counsel, and friendship to those who asked him.    Bill was patient but driven, always working to help, in any way he could, people who needed help.   He was tireless, even late in life, in his work among people who needed and were seeking help and was generous, perhaps too generous, in giving his time to, often, complete strangers.    This attitude of service, and Bill’s overwhelming sense of calm and restraint, were things that Bill tried to teach me, primarily by example, that I am still trying, however haltingly, to learn.  One of the things that Bill did manage to teach me was that I didn’t know everything.   That wasn’t easy for either of us.

 

Bill’s two rules of life were….

 

1.       Don’t sweat the small stuff, and

2.       It’s all small stuff.

 

I obviously didn’t learn that, if at all, nearly as fully as Bill, or I, would have liked, but when my anxiety goes into overdrive, I think of Bill and what he would have said, and it usually brings me down to earth and leads me to an appreciation for all that I have, all that I will not lose, all that Bill tried to impart to me, and all that I have to give.

 

When Bill died in 2018, I wrote this in his online condolence book:

 

“Bill may have been the greatest man I ever met.  I don't know where I'd be without his help and guidance.  He helped save my life and the lives of countless others.   His quick wit, seemingly inexhaustible patience, and his understanding of the world and of human nature are permanently implanted in the minds and, more importantly, the hearts, of his legions of friends and admirers.   None of us can be Bill; we are just grateful to have known Bill.

I will miss Bill, think of him often, and pray for, really to, him. 

Thanks, Bill.”

 

I was not alone in my feelings; Bill’s funeral at Old St. Patrick’s was one of the largest in memory at Chicago’s oldest continuously operating church.   Another of the commenters on his online condolence book wrote “Mr. Chicago has left the building.”   How true that moniker was.

 

 

The third wise man I would like to note was Father John Kinsella, a Jesuit priest, lawyer, distinguished scholar of the law, and long-serving faculty member at Loyola Law School.   Like Bill, John was with me through some turbulent and wonderful times.   He listened when I needed someone to listen, taught when I needed someone to teach, and made me, and many others, laugh when I needed to laugh.   His perspective as both a priest and a man who knew the streets and its denizens was rare.   Our similar backgrounds…Catholic, but with a sense of and appreciation for the Church’s shortcomings, of the same Irish ethnicity with all the good and the bad that entails, from the same neighborhood, alumni of the same high school…instantly attracted us to each other.   I never knew anyone, including myself, who believed in me as much as John did.   When I talked with John, I felt I could do anything, and, whenever I came up with an idea that I thought had promise, John was the first one to tell me to go ahead and do it as long as it was something that enabled me to use what he thought were my considerable talents to, to use his vague and often-used term, “help people.”  As long I was going to do something that would help people, I wasn’t to worry about the small stuff that was holding me back and not to lose sight of the big picture for all the minutiae and detail that were really just excuses for inaction.

 

John’s rule of life was even simpler than Bill’s:

 

“Do the next right thing.”

 

Simple, but not easy.  The tricky part, of course, is knowing what the next right thing is, and, when I pointed that out to John, as I frequently, and probably annoyingly, did, he would break into that inimitable Irish smile and say “Pray; you’ll know.”  

 

John, like Bill, was a man who, out of an immense sense of gratitude for all he had been given, felt a continuing, and joyful, obligation to serve others.    Sometimes this desire to help was not as considered as it should have been; he certainly followed his own advice, sometimes too assiduously, to put the fears aside and just go ahead and do the next right thing, which nearly always involved providing help to people who were able to convince John that they needed it, which was often too easy.   This put John into some precarious situations, and even led to a few injuries, especially when he got older, that drove me and his many other friends crazy.    But regard for his personal safety never stopped John from doing what he knew God wanted him to do…to damn the obstacles and do all he could for those who needed his help.   After all, he always felt he was living on borrowed time anyway.

 

 

I have been blessed with the opportunity to meet and to know many smart people in my life, but, more importantly, to have known far fewer genuinely wise people.   I couldn’t possibly begin to list them all here, but my Dad, Bill, and John stand out as the three wisest people I have ever known.   There is a wide gulf between what they tried to teach me and what I actually learned; I have always been a tough nut to crack due to that lack of humility that yet another wise man tried to teach me.   But I managed to pick up a little of what my dad, Bill, and John tried to impart, and my life has been immeasurably better for it.  

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT DO JESUS CHRIST AND DICK BUTKUS HAVE IN COMMON?

 

11/3/23

I would like to say that Jesus Christ is my icon, but writing that seems sacrilegious, especially when I think that my Catholic Church has gotten entirely too carried away with its iconography; it is Jesus Christ who saves us, not pictures, candles, gold vessels, or relics stored in churches that are usually entirely too ornate.   But I digress.   So Jesus is not my icon but is, rather, my Lord and Savior, and His Spirit is the guide of my life.   Through the Spirit, I, and all of us, can be more like Jesus every day.  I often fall short, but, as Jesus himself said  (Matthew 10, 25):

“It is enough for his disciple that he become like his teacher, for the slave the he become like his master.”

If I can simply follow Jesus’s admonition to be more like him every day, then my mission in life, my reason for existence, will be fulfilled.

 

 

What about my secular icons?

 

 

Richard J. Daley, the mayor of my hometown when I was born and, during his time, and probably for all time, the most powerful local politician in the country, comes immediately to mind.   The man knew what he wanted to do.   He served his citizens out of a sense of duty, a desire to retain and increase his power, or both.   He didn’t take guff from anybody, nor did he take much advice from anybody.   He had a plan and generally thought about nine steps ahead of everybody.   He had a huge role, some say the deciding role, in deciding whom the Democrats would nominate for president, and when, in 1972, the national party threw him over the side in a bacchanal of banality and self-destruction, they suffered a disastrous defeat.  There will never be another like him.  He was mayor of Chicago, and head of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization, aka “The Machine,” on the day I was born.  He remained in that post until he died when I was a freshman in college.  Some say that Mr. Daley was a benevolent dictator, some leave out the adjective.   I, however, would recommend benevolent dictatorship as the nearly perfect form of government.  At least as practiced by Dick Daley, it was far better than the turbulence, disorganization, and fecklessness that prevails in Chicago and in our country today.

 

 

Another of my icons was Winston Churchill.   Were it not for Mr. Churchill’s courage, single-mindedness, grit, and seeming inability to surrender, Nazi Germany, or perhaps the Soviet Union, might be alive and running Europe and much of the globe today.   Great Britain, and Western civilization, would reside only in the history books.   For that, I thank God for the indomitable Mr. Churchill.

 

 

Jack Bogle was the founder of Vanguard and the man who popularized the index fund, democratized investing, and broke up the clique of investment managers who charged outrageous fees for less than mediocre performance.   I met Mr. Bogle on several occasions and found him to be knowledgeable, amiable, and more than willing to share his time with a junior guy in the investment business.   Years ago, when I wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal decrying the fees charged by most actively managed mutual funds, Mr. Bogle wrote me a kind note thanking me for spreading the word.  I still have that note.

 

One of my childhood icons, Dick Butkus, died only a few weeks ago.  Mr. Butkus was the ultimate personification of what the Chicago Bears used to be.  I started following the Bears in 1965, when I was eight years old and Butkus was a rookie.   A tough kid from the southeast side of Chicago, Butkus was not only the meanest, grittiest, and hardest hitting, but also the most proficient, middle-linebacker of his day and maybe, of all time.    Every kid in my neighborhood wanted to be Dick Butkus.   Well, maybe not every kid; the faster kids wanted to be Gale Sayers, another of my childhood icons.   I was at the game in 1965 when Sayers, one of the Bears’ other rookie sensations that year, scored six touchdowns against the San Francisco 49ers, tying a Bear record.   He would have broken the record had George Halas not elected to have Rudy Bukich hand the ball to Jon Arnett when the Bears were on the San Francisco one-yard line for what would have been a sure seventh touchdown for Sayers.   Most people said Halas didn’t want Sayers to break the record because Sayers would then ask for more money the next season.   I believe it.   Today, George Halas is affectionately referred to as “Papa Bear.”   Players of the Butkus/Sayers era doubtless had other nicknames for Mr. Halas.

 

My brother Dick always was, and always will be, one of my icons.   He was the funniest, and most insightful, guy I ever knew.   He was my inspiration and my role model, for good and for ill, but mostly for good.   I sorely enjoyed, and so miss, our Friday evenings together.   He was, and always will be, my big brother and the coolest guy who ever lived.

 

Finally, my wife Sue is, and has been for 35 years of a wonderful marriage, my icon.   She is a wife and a mother beyond compare.   My kids and I adore her.   Everyone with whom she comes into contact respects, admires, and/or loves her.    She is a wife, a mother, and a lover like no other.   She was made for me and I for her.  I thank God for her every day, every hour, every minute.   She is the best thing that ever happened to me.

 

 

 

 

KEEP YOUR PLANES AND TRAINS…GIVE ME MY AUTOMOBILE!

 

10/23/23

 10/23/23

 

There is something about driving that I find compelling for more reasons than I can enumerate.  When I am driving, I am either alone with my thoughts, prayers, tunes, talk stations or the sound of my engine.  If I am not alone, I am, in most cases, with someone I love dearly, i.e., my wife, my kids, or, in the past, my brother who shared, and probably largely imparted to me, my love of cars and driving.   When I am driving, I am in control; I can go where I want by any route I choose.  I can see what my car can do or I can drive excessively cautiously.   And if the car I am driving is new, I can luxuriate in one of the greatest aromas known to mankind, the smell of a new car.    The entire combination, and maybe especially the latter, is intoxicating, thankfully figuratively rather than literally.   There are few things in life that I would rather do than drive.

 

While humanity is a varied lot, characterized by different tastes, wants, and fixations, I have a very difficult time understanding people who don’t like to drive.    I am incredulous when I hear people say things like “That’s a four hour drive; we’d better fly” or “I’d like to go to that restaurant, but it’s an hour’s drive away.”   Four hour drive?   I’d drive farther than that for dinner, and if somebody were to suggest a ten hour drive, right now, I’d respond with something like “Let’s go!”    One of the attractions of many of the restaurants my wife and I like, at least to me, is that they involve a reasonably long drive.   Years ago, my (now late) great friend Steve Haldi and I loved to go to a restaurant in Yorkville called The Bridge Street Café, largely due to its being about a 45 minute drive from our respective homes.   Sue and I grew to love the Bridge Street as well and would take the kids there with some degree of regularity when they were young, and why not?   The food was great, the prices were reasonable….and it was a relatively long drive for a meal.   What could be better? 

 

When my brother Dick was alive, I would go to his house nearly every Friday night to hang out and solve the world’s problems.    My brother-in-law would ask from time to time why Dick didn’t drive out to my house; why did I have to drive the hour or so to his house every week?   “Have to?,”   I would reply.   While Dick was one of the funniest and most insightful people I ever knew, probably half the fun of going out to Frankfort to see him every Friday was the drive out there…lots of nearly empty backroads, plenty of opportunities to see what my car could do.   There was at the time an especially interesting bend in Cedar Road that I referred to as “Dead Man’s Curve,” from the old Jan & Dean tune, that was an especially delightful part of the trip.   The kids probably remember my taking them to “Dead Man’s Curve” when they were little; “Let’s go to Dead Man’s Curve, Daddy!”   I was, of course, a bit more careful when they were in the car, but still made it fun for them.

 

When Sue and I take our annual winter trips to Florida, we drive.   Sue doesn’t appreciate the drive as much as I do, but I strongly suspect she likes the drives more than she lets on.   We get to see things, and not from 30,000 feet.   We get to experience the hotels, good and bad, and the restaurants, good and bad.   We get to see the backroads of Alabama and Kentucky.   We get that marvelous warmth one experiences as one gets farther and farther south in January, and the delight of that first rest stop over the Florida line.   It sure beats the hell out of an at least two hour wait at an airport, with its attendant hassles,  followed by a three hour flight in an over-stuffed tube, followed by the redux of the misery of the airport experience at our destination.

 

Flying is miserable.   Passenger trains?   While I have yet to experience the obscenely priced trial by ordeal that is Amtrak, I am reasonably confident that it is nothing like the train trip Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint experienced in North by Northwest.   Driving is the way for me.  Back when my cars were exclusively manual transmission machines, I thought that the joy of driving would end when I had to go to automatics, which I derisively referred to as slush boxes.   But when in 2015, due to family and health considerations, the time came to ditch my sticks for automatics, I found that the pleasure of driving had fallen only a tad.  Driving is driving, and if it must be done at the wheel of a car that shifts its own gears, it is still one of life’s grandest experiences.

 

About twenty or thirty years ago, there was an advertisement run by some kind of federation of all the car manufacturers who sold their products in the United States.  The tagline of this ad was

 

“Your car is your freedom machine.”

 

Truer words have rarely been uttered.

 

 

 

MOST CHICAGO VOTERS GOT WHAT THEY WANTED YESTERDAY; WILL THEY GET IT GOOD?

 

4/5/23

Yours truly was surprised (See 3/29/23’s  THE CHICAGO MAYOR’S RACE:   IT SURE LOOKS LIKE VALLAS), but not shocked by Paul Vallas’s dismal failure to win the race for Chicago mayor that seemed to be his to lose.  But perhaps there are few grounds for surprise.

 

Why did Mr. Vallas lose?   Vote wise, the reasons leap out at the reader:

 

·         Brandon Johnson clobbered Paul Vallas in the Black wards.  Mr. Johnson got 80% of the vote in nine Black wards.  In the rest, he was in the 60s and 70s.   Mr. Vallas’s efforts to reach out to Black voters, and his historical strength in those wards, counted for nothing.   Nobody expected Mr. Vallas to carry any of these wards, but many observers, including yours truly, expected him to do better than a convincing imitation of a man being flattened by a steamroller.

 

·         Turnout overall was down a bit from the dismal turnout in the first round election.  However, turnout among young voters was up slightly while turnout among older voters was down slightly.   The biggest increase in turnout was among voters aged 25-34, but all groups aged 54 and younger showed larger turnout.   The biggest decrease was among voters aged 75+, which may have been due to the miserable weather on election day, but all groups aged 55 and older showed decreases in turnout.  Mr. Vallas’s greatest strength was among older voters.

 

·         Mr. Johnson did very well in Hispanic wards, coming at least close in all of them and carrying a few with 60% or more of the vote.  This surprised yours truly more than anything else that transpired yesterday.

 

·         Mr. Vallas lost some serious ground in the JIFW (“Just in from Winnetka”) wards on the near north lake front.   Not to get too far into the woods here, but…

 

§  In the 42^nd ward, Mr. Vallas went from beating Mr. Johnson by a factor of 5 to defeating him by a factor of 3.

 

§  In the 43^rd Ward, Mr. Vallas beat Mr. Johnson by a factor of 3 in the preliminary but only doubled his vote in the run-off.

 

§  Mr. Vallas beat Mr. Johnson by 30% in the 44^th Ward in the preliminary but lost the 44^th by about 100 votes in the final.   Incidentally, yours truly knew Mr. Vallas had lost when retiring Alderman Tom Tunney of the 44^th looked really nervous during an interview and admitted, even before the votes were all in, that he didn’t do as well for Mr. Vallas as he had in the preliminary.

 

Those are the numbers, but why did they turn out that way?

 

First, people voted their race.   This is sad but not surprising in a country dominated by pols on both sides of the ideological divide who see great benefit in reinforcing identity politics.  The world has changed a lot from the ‘90s and ‘00s, when Richard M. Daley routinely carried large portions of the Black vote, against rather formidable Black opponents like Gene Sawyer, Danny Davis, Gene Pincham, Roland Burris, Bobby Rush, and Dorothy Brown in his bids to first win and then retain his perch on the 5^th Floor, or even 1987,  when Harold Washington carried a sufficient number of White votes to dispatch first Ed Vrdolyak and then Jane Byrne to coast, more or less, to re-election.    But things have changed in a world in which politicians see more personal benefit in dividing us than in uniting us and the, er, inattentive  electorate laps up the bait.

 

Second, even the most ridiculous charges against Mr. Vallas stuck.   The most salient of these was that, as a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, Paul Vallas is anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ rights.   To see the silliness of that charge, replace “Greek Orthodox” with “Catholic” and then replace “Paul Vallas” with “Nancy Pelosi” or “Joe Biden.”   Yet these charges seemed to give Mr. Johnson a boost, especially in the JIFW wards.  

 

There was also the silly charge that Mr. Vallas is really a Republican.  Yours truly, who is a member of neither party but who generally votes Republican, will doubtless be joined by numerous card-carrying GOPers in saying that we don’t want him, you can have him, the shameless panderer is too liberal for me.   Among Republicans, Mr. Vallas was simply the lesser of two evils.

 

Even the post-mortem charges against Mr. Vallas by members of the commentariat seem to have stuck.  The these is the canard that Mr. Vallas did nothing between the preliminary and the run-off elections to expand his base.   In reality, Mr. Vallas did little but try to attract Black and Hispanic votes in the crucial month between the two elections.   How many White churches did Paul Vallas visit on the Sunday before the election?

 

 

Will the outcome be good for Chicago?    No.   Mr. Johnson is anti-business, anti-police, anti-taxpayer, and anti-anybody he can net a vote or two by being against.   The analogy to Harold Washington’s 1983 victory rings hollow.  The opposition to Mr. Washington from within his own party arose from race and, at least equally but not as saliently, from concern regarding the division of political spoils .   Mr. Washington, as a Congressman, a former state legislator, and, as Ralph Metcalf’s protege, a guy who had been around politics, both inside and outside the Machine, was clearly as qualified to be mayor as either of his opponents.  Mr. Washington didn’t go around arguing that standardized tests have “roots in eugenics to prove the inferiority of Black people,” as Brandon Johnson did in the March 21 debate.   Certainly Mr. Washington, a veritable wordsmith who was the most articulate mayor in Chicago’s history (the latter an admittedly low bar) would never be caught dead saying anything like “I was polling at 2.3% in October.    No one had thought I had a chance.  Yet here I be.”  (Emphasis mine), as Mr. Johnson said in the March 28 debate.

 Unlike Mr. Washington, Mr. Johnson is inexperienced politically and inexperienced in general.   He brings only one perspective, that of a long time operative in the Chicago Teachers’ Union.   He doesn’t understand business.  He doesn’t understand economics.  He doesn’t understand that the city is in crisis and that its best years are certainly NOT ahead of it if we force people and businesses out of the city.   He doesn’t understand the police officer or the firefighter; he talks as if they are the enemy when they are the only people standing between chaos and the populace, especially the Black populace who are the primary victims of crime and whom Mr. Johnson purports to represent.    He doesn’t understand that, despite the “we are the world” naivete of his new supporters on the near north side,  the city remains a city of disparate groups that must somehow arrive at, if not consensus, at least peaceful coexistence. 

While Mr. Vallas was no prize, Mr. Johnson gives every indication that he will be a disaster for the city of Chicago.  I hope that we will not soon be yearning and pining for the days of Lori Lightfoot.   But I suspect we might.

THE CHICAGO MAYOR’S RACE: IT SURE LOOKS LIKE VALLAS

 

3/29/23

 

Three major points on the upcoming Chicago mayoral election:

 

THE TECHNOCRAT WILL PROBABLY BE CHICAGO’S NEXT MAYOR…

 

Many months ago, when this campaign started, yours truly thought Paul Vallas had about a 0 (zero) chance of winning the big office on the Fifth Floor.   I thought that Mr. Vallas would make a fine, or at least an acceptable, mayor, and I suspect most people shared that assessment before the passions of this campaign superseded rational analysis.   However, I also thought that Mr. Vallas’s clumsiness as a politician, abundantly displayed in his former campaigns for governor and mayor and still present in this campaign, would prevent him from ever assuming the chair of Richard J. Daley.  

 

My prognostication regarding Mr. Vallas’s ability to be elected was wrong, but not because Mr. Vallas suddenly acquired the campaigning skills of, say, Bill Clinton.  Paul Vallas won because his hapless opponents left the tough on crime, pro-police lane wide open for two candidates, Mr. Vallas and Willie Wilson.   Given that public safety is THE issue in this campaign, there is no way Mr. Vallas could have missed the run-off unless Mr. Wilson made substantial inroads into Mr. Vallas’s base in the police and fire wards.   Mr. Wilson failed to do so; hence, Mr. Vallas not only made the run-off but led the entire field, taking nearly a third of the overall vote.

 

A cynic might say that Mr. Vallas won simply because he was the only White candidate in a nine candidate field and, in always racially charged Chicago, where the population is split among Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics in roughly equal proportions, that is all he needed.   Such an analysis, sadly, might be correct, but yours truly would like to think that this over-simplification misses the nuances of at least the White vote in this town and the overlapping interests of members of those three racial groups.   But that is grist for another mill.

 

It is likely, perhaps highly likely, that Mr. Vallas will win next Tuesday’s run-off for a number of reasons: 

 

·         Mr. Vallas’s opponent is the myopic and scantily talented Brandon Johnson, whose message was once limited to his being from a family of ten kids and Paul Vallas’s being some kind of gun toting right-wing loon.  As the campaign winds down, Mr. Johnson is turning to arguing that Mr. Vallas talks down to him because he is Black and that standardized testing is some kind of eugenicist plot against the Black race.  Such tactics confirm the easily-acquired impression that Mr. Johnson is in way over his head.   I would not feel nearly as good about Mr. Vallas’s chances were he facing Chuy Garcia or the bumbling, yet still incumbent, Lori Lightfoot in the run-off. 

  

·         Mr. Vallas will hold onto his rock solid support in the police and fire wards and his less solid support in the JIFW (“Just in from Winnetka”) wards on the near north side that he carried in the first round election.

 

·         Mr. Vallas will get more support in the Black community than is commonly thought.   Note that, while he did decently with Black voters in the first round, Mr. Johnson did not carry any Black wards on the south and west sides; those wards went to Mayor Lightfoot.   Mr. Vallas retains an at least modestly deep well of support among Black voters who recall the Lazarus act he did with the public schools back in the ‘90s.   Further, as the primary victims of Chicago’s out of control crime problem, Blacks voters are probably more receptive to a tough on crime, pro-police message than those who presume to speak for them suppose.   Finally, Mr. Vallas has garnered the endorsements of some heavyweight Black politicians (See below.)  

 

·         Some commentators have declared that the Hispanic vote will determine the election.  For reasons outlined above, yours truly doubts that the Hispanic vote will be as crucial as these observers suppose.   However, if that vote turns out to be decisive, that should help Mr. Vallas.   While Mr. Garcia carried most Hispanic wards, Mr. Vallas beat Mr. Johnson in every one of those wards, and clobbered him in most of them.  Hispanic voters are at least as receptive to Mr. Vallas’s tough on crime message as Black voters and are also at least as supportive of the type of school reform Mr. Vallas espouses as are Black and White voters.    Further, what is increasingly becoming Mr. Johnson’s closing argument, i.e., that Paul Vallas is White while he is Black, is not all that compelling in Hispanic wards.

 

·         The 10^th Ward, tucked in the southeast corner of the city bordering Indiana, is instructive.  The ward is heavily Hispanic but remains an ethnic microcosm of the city.  As yours truly has said on more than one occasion, the 10^th has everything but the JIFWs.   Mr. Vallas, to yours truly’s mild surprise, carried the 10^th, squeaking by Mr. Garcia by 58 votes but, more relevant to the run-off, more than quadrupling Mr. Johnson’s vote.

 

·         If you don’t agree with any of the above, remember that Mr. Vallas beat Mr. Johnson by about 13% of the vote in the first round.   That is a high wall to surmount, especially for one with the limited abilities of Mr. Johnson.

 

All that having been written, never overestimate the intellectual or practical acuity of the typical voter in Chicago or in the country at large.   Mr. Johnson could still pull this off because a disturbingly high percentage of our voters make its decisions based on yard signs, 30-second commercials, and imagined yet concocted affinity.   But it sure looks like the election is Mr. Vallas’s to lose.

 

 

…BUT IT PROBABLY WON’T MAKE MUCH DIFFERENCE

 

While Tony Cermak, Ed Kelly, Richard J. Daley, Richard M. Daley, and Rahm Emanuel never got the proverbial memo, technically, the city of Chicago has a weak mayor, strong council constitution.   The aforementioned mayors made a mockery of the city’s constitutional niceties, turning the City Council into a nearly 50 strong collection of marionettes dancing on a string.   But now that the hapless Lori Lightfoot has shown the Council what it can do with a weak mayor, the esteemed alderpersons now smell blood and are determined to assert their authority over the mayor.   While the current thinly veiled efforts of Ms. Lightfoot’s praetorian guard to entrench themselves under the guise of reform will probably fail, the ongoing efforts of the Council to show the current and next mayor who’s boss will continue.   So, regardless of who wins on Tuesday, he is not going to be even a pale shadow of the likes of Messrs. Daley or Mr. Emanuel.   He will have to do more than listen; he will often find himself obeying.

 

Further, there are currently 18 members of the Council’s Progressive Reform Caucus.   Admittedly, some of those alderpersons joined the Caucus because, in Chicago, it sounds good to call one’s self “progressive,” but some are seriously “progressive.”  Five of those 18 are self-declared Democratic Socialists.  The ranks of both of those caucuses are likely to increase in the upcoming run-off elections.

 

Given the increasing power of the City Council vis-à-vis the mayor and the Council’s increasingly leftist tilt, the election between Mr. Johnson and Mr. Vallas could amount to a choice between the fast track or a slow boat to political hell.

 

 

SPEAKING OF HELL, IT’S STARTING TO GET A LITTLE CHILLY DOWN THERE

 

In supporting Paul Vallas, I am joined by the following local politicians:

 

·         Congressman Danny Davis

·         Congressman Bobby Rush

·         Alderman Sophia King, chair of the City Council’s Progressive Reform Caucus

·         Former Governor Pat Quinn  (no relation)

·         Community organizer  Ja’Mal Green

·         (most wondrous to say) Senator Dick Durbin

 

Yours truly has been a conservative since I was about fifteen.   Now that the term “conservative” has become more of a Rorschach blot than a description of a coherent philosophy of  government or the conduct of one’s life, I’m not quite sure what I am.   But I am sure that I do not share a philosophy of government with those listed above, who would sooner be called something that would send the sainted Sister Monica into a rage than be called a conservative.

 

Not to get all “We are the World”y on you, my loyal readers, but maybe there is some hope here.   If I and (Saints preserve us!) Senator Dick Durbin can agree on a mayoral candidate to support, maybe we can agree on other things.   Perhaps the deep chasm that characterizes politics and government in this country can be closed at least a little bit.

 

Probably not, but I just thought I’d throw it out there.