Books Book explores the great, flawed builder of Chicago
AMERICAN
PHARAOH: MAYOR RICHARD J. DALEY: HIS BATTLE FOR CHICAGO AND THE
NATION By Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor Little Brown &
Company, 614 pages, $26.95 |
By JASON BERRY
In laying the groundwork for his 1960 presidential campaign, Sen.
John F. Kennedy asked Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, Why dont
you run for governor? A reasonable question, from one Irish-American pol
to another. Illinois was a pivotal swing state. Dick Daley ran the Cook County
Democratic Party, by far the most powerful political machine in America, with
hundreds of thousands of votes at his command. A statewide campaign by the
mayor would mean big coattails for the partys presidential nominee. Or so
thought JFK.
Daleys terse reply, reported in American Pharaoh, the
stunning new book by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, speaks volumes about the
psychology of politics. Said the mayor: If we have two Catholics -- one
running for president and one for governor -- only one is going to win, and
its not going to be you.
This was not idle boasting. Daley knew that his mammoth
vote-grinder, oiled by patronage jobs, sweetheart deals for insurance
companies, contractors and others allied with the party, probably could hoist
him into the governors chair. He also knew that Kennedy would be tarred
by harsher-than-usual press coverage. Illinois Republican leadership and
the states major paper, The Chicago Tribune, would raise the
congenital issue of corruption, and in many minds that issue did have certain
religious overtones. Daleys Cook County drew its muscle from ethnic
Catholics -- the predominant Irish, Poles and Italians (with a key ward
controlled by the mob). The subdominant members were transplanted blacks in the
plantation wards of the South Side.
Pulling out all the stops
At Daleys behest, Kennedy made his campaign appearance in
Chicago very late in the campaign, after swings through the downstate
Republican strongholds and suburbs outside the city. The mayor didnt want
JFK overexposed in the city, where news stories were feeding off rumors about
possible vote-buying. On election day, Daley pulled out all the stops. Illinois
was the state that pushed Kennedy over Richard Nixon and into the White House.
He carried the state by less than 10,000 votes, and most of those were probably
stolen, according to research by Cohen, a senior writer for Time, and
Taylor, a former Time correspondent, now editor of The Chicago
Tribunes book section and Sunday magazine.
Nixon magnanimously chose not to contest the election, fearing
that a protracted struggle over an accurate tally would be so bitter as to
politically cripple a new president.
The authors write of a post-election joke that started circulating
in Washington. JFK, his secretary of state Dean Rusk and Mayor Daley are
stranded in a lifeboat, with only enough food for one. Two will have to jump
overboard. Kennedy says hes too important; Rusk says the same about
himself. Daley insists the only democratic thing is to vote. They do, and Daley
wins, 8-2.
Vote fraud and other forms of corruption made the big city
machines of yesteryear a perennial target for journalists and prosecutors. The
machines that shaped modern American politics were largely Democratic and tied
to the growth of cities: Boss Tweed in New York City; Mayor Erastus Corning of
Albany; James Michael Curley, the rascal king of Boston and model
for the mayor in Edwin OConnors novel, The Last Hurrah;
Frank Hague in Jersey City; Boss Crump of Memphis; the list goes on.
Of the scholars cited in American Pharaoh, political
scientist Arnold Hirsch makes the point that the big-city machine functioned as
a balance of competing ethnic interests.
The successful machine politician also made sure that the city, or
his piece of it, functioned well enough so that voters saw tangible results. As
Cohen and Taylor write: A [precinct] captain was expected to be able to
predict his vote almost exactly; missing by more than 10 or so votes could
result in a reprimand.
Boundaries of personality
The Chicago mayors before Daley, like other Northern big-city
bosses, were power-consumed, and yet they also understood limits, inherent
boundaries of personality. He dont like my name, the
challenger Anton Cermak said of the Chicago mayor he dislodged in 1931.
Its true I didnt come over on the Mayflower, but I came over
as soon as I could.
A ruler too wild or greedy or venal would clash with the
sensibility of the voting blocs who carried a sense of obedience as they knelt
in pews of the large neighborhood churches that helped lighten the load of
poverty.
Daley was a loyal husband and dutiful father of seven. He began
each day receiving Communion at Mass. When Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip
visited the city, he threw out the red carpet and held a lavish dinner in their
honor. When they left, he said: Come again and bring the
children.
Such simplicity had its charm, but there was a darker side.
Millions of Americans who knew little about Daley drew the image of a vulgar
bully from network TV coverage of the 1968 Democratic convention. After Chicago
cops wielding billy clubs mauled antiwar protesters and even reporters in the
streets, Connecticut Sen. Abraham Ribicoff chastised Daley in a prime-time
speech at the podium, denouncing Gestapo tactics. Daley shook his
fist at Ribicoff and bellowed back. Whether he said the f-word is a matter of
dispute.
Raised in the slum neighborhood of Bridgeport, Ill., Daley earned
a law degree, won a seat in the legislature, rose through ranks of the
sprawling Cook County Democratic Party operation. In 1955 when he was elected
mayor, Daley said: I shall conduct myself in the spirit of St. Francis of
Assisi. Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. He held the office
until 1976, dying on the job.
Daleys code of politics had its morality, though of a
personal sort. When he learned that an underling, adrift in his private life,
was out drinking after work, Daley telephoned the bar and told the guy to go
home to his wife.
The pre-Vatican II Catholicism in which Daley was raised
impressed on him a keen sense of mans fallen state, and of the
inevitability of sin, write Cohen and Taylor. And it was an
environment that left Daley with a lifelong skepticism of idealists of all
kinds -- whether they were reformers working to clean up machine politics or
civil rights activists hoping to change hearts and minds on the question of
race. These utopians all proceeded from an unduly optimistic vision of
mans perfectibility. Look at the Lords disciples, Daley
would later say in response to a charge of corruption in City Hall. One
denied him, one doubted him, one betrayed him. If our Lord couldnt have
perfection, how are you going to have it in city government?
Daley was the great builder of Chicago. OHare Airport,
expressways, convention centers and port projects were the better angels of his
legacy. But his vision was deeply flawed. Though not a bigot, his dealings with
black ward heelers were perfunctory; at root he was a segregationist. He
oversaw the construction of multistory towers to house the black poor, creating
vertical ghettoes that by the 1980s were plagued with crack, crime and
killings.
The housing strategy was to keep blacks out of ethnic enclaves
like Daleys own Bridgeport, which became stable, working-class and white.
Chicago remains one of the most segregated cities in America, largely because
of Daleys policies.
The catalyst in the erosion of the machines dominance was
the civil rights movement. Federal antipoverty programs that circumvented City
Hall threatened to siphon black support. A long campaign for better housing by
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. exposed the fault lines in Daleys housing
policies. The biography tracks the exquisite care the mayor took to avoid the
impression that he or his administration was racist. Controlled and adroit,
Daley participated in planning sessions with King and his allies in a show of
support for better housing. Some changes were implemented, but the core
approach -- maintaining segregated neighborhoods and ghettoes -- endures.
Death knell for machines
The 1970s sounded the death knell for the big-city political
machines. Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968 with law-and-order rhetoric
that in many ways symbolized the cultural chasm between cities and suburbs.
Race riots and court battles over desegregation fed the white flight
phenomenon. The Democrats tried to repair the damage of 1968 by drafting new
rules to broaden the base of party loyalists. The upshot was an internal battle
that saw Mayor Daley ousted from the 1972 convention, while antiwar protesters
found seats as George McGovern delegates.
When Daley died three years later, his influence in the national
party was still strong, although the Chicago machine was reeling from
prosecutions by Republican federal attorneys. A generation later, the
mayors son, Richard M. Daley, is mayor of Chicago. The neighborhood
loyalties are still there; however, the central issue is no longer whether the
party -- the machine -- remains dominant, but how to maintain the
infrastructure.
Another son of the late mayor, William Daley, stepped down as
Commerce Secretary in Washington to manage Al Gores campaign.
In an irony that Chicagos old warhorse would appreciate,
after two decades of bitter partisan divisions over social issues such as
abortion and gay rights, the polls now show that infrastructure has become a
major issue in the suburbs. The outer-city rings share needs of the old urban
core: sustainable growth, how to service the grid of streets, sewers,
playgrounds and schools that the old city machines, corruption and all, tended
rather well.
American Pharaoh guides the reader through the
neighborhoods and brawling politics of Daleys life with a wealth of
anecdotes and great flair -- an intelligent biography about the movement as
well as the man.
Jason Berrys books include Lead Us Not Into
Temptation and Louisiana Faces: Images from a Renaissance, with
photographs by Philip Gould.
National Catholic Reporter, January 19,
2001
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