Letter from Chicago The Daley Show

Dynastic rule in Obama’s political birthplace. by evan osnos

efore Barack Obama considered run- secretary, Jacquelyn Heard, warns him ning for the U.S. Senate or the Presi- when he might get a question about a story. Bdency, he wanted to be the mayor of Chi- One morning last summer, Heard was sit- cago, a city so riven by race that the Wall ting in the front seat of Daley’s town car Street Journal called it Beirut on the Lake. when she turned to capture his attention. Obama left for Harvard Law School, where “Mayor, one of the things in the paper he confided to friends his desire to occupy today is about the C.T.A.”—the Chicago City Hall, but by the time he returned Transit Authority—“voting to extend the from Cambridge, in 1991, something im- red, orange, yellow, and blue lines. The portant had happened: Richard M. Daley question is, Why are we doing that?” had been elected mayor of Chicago. “Well, you need vision,” Daley said, but Despite a famous name, Daley was he was more interested in peering out his not an obvious political powerhouse. In window to scan for run-down buildings his first run for mayor, in 1983, his cam- and dirty lots. He held a manila folder in paign hired Irving J. Rein, a communica- his lap, and whenever he saw something tions professor at Northwestern Univer- he didn’t like he noted the location in large sity, to hone the candidate’s delivery. Rein loopy script. That fixation on details has concluded, as he wrote later, that Daley earned him praise as a leader with granu- had a “tendency to misstate the obvious, lar knowledge of his domain, as well as invent words never imagined by linguis- occasional ribbing from rivals. Edward tic researchers, introduce irrelevant mate- (Fast Eddie) Vrdolyak, a former alderman rial, and demonstrate anger at seemingly and longtime opponent, years ago nick- uneventful moments.” Daley lost; the named him Mayor Rain Man. At sixty- Chicago columnist Mike Royko noted seven, Daley looks like a healthier version that he had “all the charisma of a plate of of his father: short, ruddy, and jowly, de- corned beef and cabbage.” spite regular gym visits and a breakfast Chicago, however, forgives syntax; regimen of grimly nutritious shakes. Daley’s father, Richard J. Daley, who died The car pulled up to the Destiny Wor- in 1976, was elected six times, despite the ship Center, a storefront church in the habit of musing about riding a “tantrum Austin neighborhood, a rough patch of bike” and of explaining, as he did when Chicago’s West Side. Daley was there to his police attacked protesters at the 1968 promote his annual Gun Turn-In, a ritual Democratic National Convention, that in which citizens receive gift cards of ten, “the policeman is there to preserve disor- fifty, or a hundred dollars for turning in il- der.” The younger Daley was elected in legal firearms, no questions asked. The 1989, and then reëlected five more times, church was packed with reporters and Mayor Richard M. Daley, at Manny’s. “Rich with breathtaking dominance. Unseat- cameramen, who were standing around a ing him, as the Obama biographer David table holding handguns, an AK-47, and Chicago was paralyzed by infighting and Mendell put it, looks “akin to dethroning ammunition. Daley joined a lineup of mismanagement. In 1987, William Ben- a king.” A Daley has ruled Chicago for local politicians and ministers, almost all nett, the Secretary of Education, said that forty-two of the past fifty-five years. The black or Hispanic, and Alderman Emma Chicago had the worst school system in dynasty endures in part because many Mitts introduced him as “the finest mayor the country—“an education meltdown.” voters remember what the city was like in the world.” The center of the city was a desiccating without them: in the thirteen years be- In the city that Martin Luther King, museum of masterpieces by Mies van der tween Daley I and Daley II, Chicago Jr., called the Birmingham of the North, Rohe and Louis Sullivan. Infant mortal- churned through five mayors. Daley has presided for two decades dur- ity in remote neighborhoods was com­ Daley no longer reads the local pa- ing which race has receded, if not into the parable to levels in the Third World. pers—“I don’t take their guff, and they background, then into the din of city pol- In the years that followed, Detroit, don’t like that,” he told me—so his press itics. He took office at a moment when Cleveland, and other former industrial

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TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 38—133SC.—live art—r 19383—extremely critical photograph to be watched throughout the entire press run—please pull kodak proof for press color guidance Daley is a tough son of a bitch,” one politician says. “Not in a bad way but in a very good way.” Photograph by Martin Schoeller.

powers continued to wither, but Chicago and L2O, where the chefs Grant Achatz where the Mayor’s father sent police to did not. It has grown in population, in- and Laurent Gras are among America’s arrest antiwar and civil-rights protesters, come, and diversity; it has added more jobs highest priests of the chemically complex Barack Obama celebrated the election since 1993 than Los Angeles and Boston food known as molecular gastronomy. that had made him America’s first Presi- combined. Downtown luxury condos and Chicago is a post-industrial capital of inno- dent from Chicago. He had campaigned lofts have replaced old warehouses and vation from house music to fashion—the with Daley’s endorsement, and with the office blocks. New trees and flower beds Milan of the Midwest, as the Washington benefit of fund-raising by Daley’s brother line the sidewalks and sprout from the roofs Post put it last year. Diverse neighborhoods Bill, a lawyer and Democratic power bro- of high-rises. (Chicago has significantly are so flush with new immigrants that ker who was Secretary of Commerce in more green roofs than any other city in Mexican politicians running for office jour- the Clinton Administration, and who America.) Diners and pizza joints have ney all the way to Chicago to campaign. became a member of Obama’s transition given way to daring restaurants like Alinea In November, 2008, in the same park team. In the White House, Obama is sur-

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TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 39—133SC.—live art—r19383—extremely critical photograph to be watched throughout the entire press run—please pull kodak proof for press color guidance rounded by people connected to Daley’s isolated in what they can do. Everything Turn-In, a secretary leaned in to say that City Hall: Michelle Obama once worked is run by formulas and rules and regula- Bloomberg was on the phone. Daley for Daley as a planning official; Valerie tions. They have no discretion!” picked up and boomed, “Mike, how are Jarrett, a special adviser to the President ya?” Bloomberg was arranging an event and an Obama-family confidante, rose hen Michael Bloomberg be- to promote volunteerism, and he wanted through senior posts in the Daley City came mayor of New York, in Daley to come to New York for the an- Hall, including deputy chief of staff, 2002,W he made a point of moving his nouncement. “Yeah, I’m all for it. When’s planning commissioner, and head of the desk out into a bullpen shared by his it gonna be?” Daley said, before drifting transit board; David Axelrod, Obama’s staff, in order to promote exchange. into family talk. Bloomberg and Daley,

Daley has said that, after his father died, “I had to seek not my own identity, maybe, but the things I wanted to take on personally.” chief campaign strategist and now a se- Daley’s office is more like a bunker. despite radically different biographies, are nior White House adviser, was for nearly Visitors to the fifth floor of City Hall united by a fervent love of unobstructed twenty years the Mayor’s political consul- must navigate a series of waiting rooms and authority. “Richie Daley’s philosophy, tant; Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, secretaries before being ushered into the I’ve always thought, is ‘Beg for forgive- was in charge of fund-raising for Daley’s Mayor’s office, a baronial sanctum with ness, not for permission,’ ” Bloomberg first successful run for mayor. wing-back chairs and the vast mahogany told me recently. “He goes and does it.” Moreover, the deeper ranks of the Ad- desk used by his father. The Mayor is rarely In one instance, Daley got sick of de- ministration are as rife with Chicagoans as there. He prefers a windowless unmarked bating the fate of Meigs Field, a small those of its predecessor were with Tex- conference room next door, at the center of waterfront airport that he wanted to turn ans. The morning after Obama’s election, which is a giant table laden with books, into a park. Preservationists and pilots Daley permitted himself a flicker of satis- magazines, and newspapers. His tastes are had filed a suit to keep it open. Late one faction. “It was a homecoming,” he said. erratic: he cites the Financial Times and night in March, 2003, Daley sent bull- “It was a baptism. It was a bar mitzvah.” Scientific American in equal measure. Along dozers under police escort to the runway, On the ride back to City Hall from the one wall is a saltwater fish tank, a gift from where they gouged a line of giant X’s gun event, I asked Daley if he’d ever con- his staff. “It adds much needed tranquil- into the tarmac. When Chicago awoke sidered seeking a job in Washington. “No, lity,” an aide says. The room, whose pri- to discover that Daley had destroyed his no, no,” he said. “I respect people going mary occupant has a ferocious temper, is own airport, editorialists compared him down there, but, if you look at the Presi- known to some as the Woodshed. to the generalissimo of a banana repub- dential appointments, they are much more When Daley came back from the Gun lic. (Daley explained that he did not have AP

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TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 40—133SC.—Live art r19377—Critical photograph to be watched throughout the entire press run time to alert the federal government in ing along the Chicago River. “People want calls “the New Yorks and L.A.s and all advance, because he was concerned that to live here!” he added, with wonder in his that.” A few years ago, he was visiting terrorists might be planning to use the voice. Did Singer ever expect this from the Beijing, and I trailed him to some events, airport to attack his city.) son? “Not in my wildest dreams,” he said. including tea with Beijing’s mayor at the Behavior like that, alongside Daley’s time, Wang Qishan. Wang, in an attempt radical efforts to improve Chicago schools aley is an unreconstructed old- at small talk, mentioned that when he and the city’s forward-thinking environ- school pol: rarely glimpsed without visited Chicago, in the eighties, violent mental policy, is the envy of politicians aD suit jacket, fluent in the ancient politi- crime was soaring and he didn’t dare go who enjoy less latitude. “He’s treated al- cal rituals. He is especially good at going out. Daley replied, “I was not the mayor most as a rock star—I’m not exagger­ to wakes. “He has a style—he gets there then, and a lot has changed.” Then he ating,” Joe Moore, a Chicago alderman, a little early,” John Schmidt, his former mentioned that he had been especially said of the scene at meetings of the Na- chief of staff, said. “It lets you get in and nervous before his visit to China, because tional League of Cities. “It is fascinating out, because no one else is there.” The of the threat of “civil unrest.” The meet- to see. They shake his hand, get auto- Mayor is intensely wary of outsiders, and ing did not last long. graphs, just express their admiration.” Ed has a small circle of confidants: his broth- Whatever Chicagoans think about Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania ers—Bill, John, and Michael—and a few him, Daley seems to have seeped into the and a former mayor of Philadelphia, told buddies from the old days. His sport— city’s cerebral cortex. In a trial a couple of me, “He’s the best mayor in the history of cycling—is solitary. “He’s really one of the years ago that looked at city hiring prac- the country, I think.” shyest people I’ve known in public life,” tices, a manager under oath said that he Some local environmentalists say that David Axelrod told me. “He could be in was in charge of insuring that toll booths Daley favors flashy projects over sub- a room full of friends and stand in the cor- were heavily staffed along the route to stance—recycling, for instance, lags be- ner uncomfortably.” Daley’s weekend house, to prevent the hind programs in other cities—but Al Politics is the family business. Bill, six Mayor from being subjected to undue Gore told me that Daley’s environmental years younger than the Mayor, is involved traffic. When reporters asked Daley about initiatives are “an incredibly impressive in national Democratic circles; John is a it, he guffawed—“It’s silly, silly, silly,” he world-leading effort. He gets that in his powerful county commissioner who still said—and, indeed, there is no evidence bones. It’s not a P.R. trip; it’s not green lives in the South Side neighborhood, that he ever asked for such treatment. Or varnish.” Gore added, “He has an im­ Bridgeport, that is the Daleys’ traditional needed to. pressive way of twisting arms—or what- power base, and where he also runs the Shortly after talking to Bloomberg, ever body parts he has to twist—to get it local Democratic organization. (Though Daley was at a table with officials of the done.” the Mayor’s three children, Nora, Patrick, Department of Streets and Sanitation. In Shortly before Christmas, Daley will and Elizabeth, have stayed away from a city where a mayor once lost an election officially surpass his father and become politics almost entirely, his nephews Peter because of lousy snowplowing, this might the longest-serving mayor in Chicago his- and Patrick Thompson, sons of the May- as well have been his war room. He flipped tory, a prospect that invites attempts to or’s eldest sister, Patricia, are prominent through a briefing packet, past sections on reckon with the Daley legacy. “I think he Democratic fund-raisers.) alley sweeping and street lights, and lin- uses political muscle in many good ways,” Daley is a devout Roman Catholic gered on “Rodent Control.” “What about Andy Shaw, the director of Chicago’s with a punitive sense of moral clarity: Dunkin’ Donuts?” he asked, referring to a Better Government Association and a among his early uses for the Internet was recent case. veteran political reporter, told me. “But, a Web site dedicated to posting the names “Fly infestation,” the rodent-control on the other hand, he’s a bully, and he ter- and mug shots of johns picked up for boss said. rorizes a lot of people, and he truly never soliciting within the city limits. A bad “Who is the head of Dunkin’ Donuts?” tackled corruption and patronage and all sleeper, he frequently badgers his aides Daley demanded, his voice squeaking. of its negative tentacles head on.” with midnight phone calls. (“He couldn’t “Why don’t we send a letter to the presi- Daley’s record has impressed even send e-mails if his life depended on it,” dent, and—who owns these?” he asked, of some of the most ardent opponents of the Bill Daley said.) Before the sun is up, the local franchises. “Do we know who Old Man, as his father is known. “Rich Daley begins clipping—a never-ending owns these? Absentee landlord?” Daley is a tough son of a bitch,” Bill Singer, accumulation of ideas and names and He scoured the pages before him and a lawyer and former alderman who ran snippets, culled from magazines and trade landed on another case—more flies, this against the father for mayor in 1975, told journals and newspapers—and sends the time in a Starbucks at the airport. “Send me. “I’m saying ‘tough son of a bitch’ not clippings on to staff people and friends, a letter to Starbucks!” he said, poking the in a bad way but in a very good way. He often without comment. “If he doesn’t air with his half-glasses. “To the chair- will do what he has to do to succeed, and write a note, you’re supposed to know man of the board!” he’s indefatigable.” Singer swivelled to what he means,” Lois Weisberg, his cul- On his way home that night, Daley face his office window, and swept his arm ture commissioner, told me. stopped at a reception, at the Chicago Cul- across miles of the West Side. “That’s a If there is one thing on which his sup- tural Center, to mark India’s Independence new building,” he said. “That’s a new porters and his critics agree, it’s that Daley Day. The Indian consul-general met him building. That’s a new building. All those is fanatically proud of Chicago and ever outside and ushered him toward a gantlet over there.” He pointed at tour boats drift- vigilant against disrespect from what he of six young women who tossed rose petals

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TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 41—133SC. cial call to the White House. (In contrast to the prevailing lore, historians have concluded that the Old Man did not steal the election for Kennedy. Chicago’s vote was riddled with fraud, but Richard Nixon would have lost Illinois anyway.) As a teen-ager, Daley watched his fa- ther confront a city that was ailing like “a jukebox running down in a deserted bar,” as Nelson Algren put it. Middle-class white homeowners were fleeing to the suburbs, replaced by poor black migrants streaming up from the South. The elder Daley decided on radical treatment: to re- tain corporations and tax dollars, he do- nated a city block to make way for the Sears Tower, the world’s tallest skyscraper, and annexed swaths of the suburbs to ex- pand O’Hare International Airport. The perils of inaction, in his view, were on dis- play in Detroit, which by the nineteen- “And one with no bun.” seventies had lost a third of its Fortune 500 companies, and had become the na- tion’s murder capital. •• He was far less equipped to handle the other great drama of his day: the civil- in the Mayor’s path; he regarded the petals of the Cook County Democratic Central rights crusade. He took office the same with pleasant surprise, and then strode Committee. The family lived in a red year that Rosa Parks refused to move to across them, chin held high, into the party. brick bungalow built by Daley’s parents. the back of a bus, but he never truly com- I wandered out into the early-summer There was a large picture of Jesus on the prehended the movement that she em- evening, across Michigan Avenue and into living-room wall and seven bronzed baby bodied. He adhered to what Cohen and Millennium Park, Daley’s signature de­ shoes on the mantle. Taylor call a “flinty conservatism,” which velopment in the city center—a twenty-­ The family had deep roots in Bridge- was shared by working-class ethnic whites: five-acre site for art, music, and recreation port, a heavily Irish enclave beside the “Daley believed that poor people should that replaced a wasteland of tangled rail Union Stock Yards. The Daleys were de- pull themselves up by their bootstraps, as lines. There was a free concert under way scended from potato-famine refugees his Bridgeport neighbors struggled to do.” in the Frank Gehry-designed band shell, who had settled in Bridgeport in the nine- From cradle to grave, Daley lived within and thousands of people in T-shirts were teenth century, when it was better known a few blocks in a single neighborhood, stretched out on blankets across a spectac- as Hardscrabble. The father entered pol- and, as his adviser Edward Marciniak ular lawn. It was a diverse crowd, and I was itics as a teen-ager, through the Hamburg later put it, his position was “If you grew reminded that in the fifties restaurants in Athletic Club, a mixture of fraternity, po- up in a place, why do you want to come this part of town refused to serve blacks. litical organization, and street gang that into mine?” He opposed desegregation in The park opened in 2004, four years late guarded the neighborhood’s racial bound- schools and affirmative action in the po- and hundreds of millions of dollars over aries. When the teen-aged Langston lice department, and used urban-renewal the original budget. The city howled Hughes wandered into a white section of funds to build public housing. Though he about waste and corruption in public con- the South Side, in 1918, on his first Sun- voiced concerns about building high-rises, struction; the Tribune wondered if Chi- day in Chicago, he was beaten by an Irish he went ahead with the construction of cago was now, officially, “the most cor- gang who, as he put it, “didn’t allow nig- towers that eventually became “filing cab- rupt city in America.” And then people gers in that neighborhood.” inets” for the poor, as one federal commis- moved on. In the intervening years, the Daley’s mother, known as Sis, ran the sion put it. park has helped boost tourism to Chicago house. His father was imposing but The younger Daley believes that his by nearly fifty per cent and has become attentive, and often home for dinner, de- father is “very misunderstood.” He said to one of its most important public spaces. spite being “the most powerful local pol- me, “Remember, he got elected by black itician America has ever produced,” in voters—1955 all the way to 1975.” In- ichard Michael Daley, the fourth of the judgment of Adam Cohen and Eliz- deed, Daley’s machine benefitted from seven children, was thirteen when abeth Taylor, the authors of the biogra- the support of a black “submachine,” Rhis father was first elected mayor, in 1955, phy “American Pharaoh” (2000). When which received patronage jobs and access after serving as a state senator and rising John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, in to welfare and public housing—and voted through the machine to become chairman 1961, the Daleys made the very first so- the straight machine ticket. But beneath

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TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 42—133SC.—live art a14724 that support lay a vast bitterness, accord- later to DePaul University—his father’s thousands of dollars. When asked about ing to Michael Dawson, a University of school—where he studied history and it, the Old Man said, “Kiss my ass,” add- Chicago professor of political science. law, with difficulty. “I flunked the bar ing, “If a man can’t put his arms around Dawson’s late great-uncle William L. twice,” he told me. “I was going to quit, his sons, then what kind of world are we Dawson was a Chicago congressman and but I was convinced I could pass, so I living in?” one of Daley’s staunchest black allies. “I passed it.” He added, with an edge in his At a Christmas party in 1970, Daley grew up in a political family in Chicago,” voice, “I remember they used that against met Maggie Corbett, the twenty-six- Michael Dawson told me, “and I knew me in the state’s-attorney and the mayoral year-old daughter of a suburban Pitts- that a lot of his black allies had nothing races. I just laughed at them, because, you burgh auto-parts dealer. They married but contempt for him by the sixties, even know, they always said, ‘Richie, the May- fifteen months later, and, at the age of though they publicly supported him.” or’s son,’ or ‘He’s not that smart.’ They al- thirty, Daley moved out of his parents’ ways did that.” house. He was craving his father’s old or high school, Daley enrolled at his The summer he graduated from law State Senate seat and went to visit him at father’s alma mater, De La Salle In- school, in 1968, Daley stood with his fa- City Hall. As Daley recounted it, “He Fstitute, a training ground for the city’s po- ther at the Democratic National Conven- said, ‘You mean, all the opportunities I’ve litical élite. It had integrated in the for- tion as Senator Abraham Ribicoff, of given to you, all the things that you’re ties—it was the first Catholic school in the Connecticut, took to the lectern to decry doing today! You make three times as city to do so—and had a handful of black the “Gestapo tactics” of the Chicago po- much money as I’m making! Your deci- students. “For most of us, it was the first lice. The Old Man scowled and waved sion cannot be my decision or your moth- experience we had with black kids,” Ron Ribicoff off the stage, shouting what some er’s decision. When you make the deci- Gralewski, a classmate of Daley’s, told heard as “fucker” but which his supporters sion, you go back and talk to your wife. me. It was an uneasy mix. “Did you ever maintain was only “faker.” In photo- You never, ever talk to me about your de- see a movie called ‘A Bronx Tale’?” he said. graphs, the younger Richard Daley is vis- cision, or your mother. Or complain about “There’s a scene in which a black kid’s rid- ible at the Old Man’s left shoulder, hands your life. That’s your decision.’ ” Daley ing his bicycle through, and they’re throw- cupped around his mouth, his face twisted paused. “He scared the hell out of me.” ing stuff at him. I’m going to be honest in rage. Daley says that they were taunt- Daley ran anyway, and after a landslide with you: that would happen if a black ing Ribicoff only for grandstanding: “My victory arrived in the legislature with a person rode through our neighborhood.” father said ‘faker’ because the night before crop of new senators, including Dawn At one point, the activist Dick Greg- was a big fund-raiser for him.” Clark Netsch, a liberal rookie. When ory led black marchers down South Lowe Having passed the bar, Daley went Netsch chose a seat in the chamber, she Avenue, where the Daleys lived. Resi- into private practice with his brother Mi- recalled, “I heard gasps, but I didn’t know dents turned on sprinklers to shower the chael. At one point, the press learned why.” It turned out that she had taken the marchers and chanted, “Two, four, six, that the brothers had been appointed by Daleys’ customary chair. A senator pulled eight, we don’t want to integrate!” When local judges to handle cases worth tens of her aside and said, “You gotta give the kid I asked Daley what he recalls of sixties ra- cial politics, he grew vague: “Everyone says, ‘There was tension.’ It’s interesting. The riots were the tension. . . . It was fear of crime—not fear of blacks, just of crime. That’s why they fled.” At De La Salle, Daley played on the lightweight basketball team, and though he did little to attract attention, he couldn’t really avoid it. In a bookkeeping course, Gralewski and Daley were caught talking in class and the teacher called them to the front. “Everybody knew what was coming,” Gralewski recalled. “ ‘Bend over, grab your knees.’ And he’d give you a smack with the paddle. And it stung.” Afterward, the teacher asked Daley, half jokingly, “Your father’s not going to get me in trouble, now, is he?” In the year- book, Daley’s nickname was Mayor, and in the space where he was to list his am- bitions he wrote, “Become a great lawyer and politician.” Daley enrolled at Providence College, “On Wall Street today, the stock market corrected its previous in Rhode Island, but transferred two years correction, and is pretty sure it’s got it right this time.”

TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 43—133SC.—live art a14693 his seat.” “I said, ‘What are you talking patients. “He certainly had never spon- candidates, turning the power of the ma- about?’ ” She kept the chair for the next sored a major piece of social reform,” chine against the Daleys. “I went up and eighteen years. Schmidt recalled. Daley convened months down this town,” Daley said. “I went to Daley joined the Senate Judiciary Com- of hearings and impressed even his oppo- every birthday party and bat mitzvah— mittee, where he made no secret of his de- nents with his mastery of arcane legal and ‘Hi, how are you?’ ” Bill secretly per- termination to kill legislation introduced medical detail. “It was the first time I suaded him to take out a second mort- by opponents of the machine—the “phony think he had ever been involved with gage on his house in order to jump-start liberals,” as he called them then. “They something that had no partisan, no polit- his campaign. “He never told Maggie,” made sure to defeat almost every bill that I ical, no clout element to it,” Netsch said. Bill said. “She read it in the paper.” sponsored,” Netsch said. One day, she “And I think he realized he enjoyed it.” Daley won by two-tenths of a per cent mentioned to a reporter that one of her ini- Daley followed the mental-health bill of the vote, and, once in office, he took tiatives had succumbed to a “dirty little with campaigns for nursing-home reform steps guaranteed to appeal to voters: he trick and little Richie did it.” A nickname and against a sales tax on food and medi- quadrupled the number of drug cases pur- was born: Dirty Little Richie. Even so, cine, coöperating with groups that the sued and tripled the number of black Netsch couldn’t help but feel sorry for machine had previously ignored. “Before prosecutors. But in other ways he was pas- Daley, who lived, she thought, “in a glass my father died,” he later told the Tribune, sive, and his failure to act stained his leg- cage.” He was an uncomfortable heir, a “I had to be very careful about what I did acy. On February 25, 1982, Chicago’s po- big-leaguer’s son who could barely bunt, and what I said, because everything I did lice chief wrote to Daley with news that a known for little more than his famous ended up as ‘Mayor Daley’s son this, and doctor had examined a murder suspect at name and his wardrobe of mismatched Mayor Daley’s son that.’ After he died, I the county jail who appeared to have been plaids. After he’d spent five years in knew I had to seek not my own identity, burned and subjected to electric shock in Springfield, the magazine Chicago called maybe, but the things I wanted to take on police custody. The chief said that he him one of the ten worst senators, saying, personally.” would do nothing until Daley told him “If he were named Richie M. Schwartz, he In 1978, he and Maggie had their how to proceed. Daley never replied. He wouldn’t even be in the legislature.” third child, Kevin, who was born with referred the case to a Special Prosecutions spina bifida. He required constant care, Unit, but it went no further. n December 20, 1976, the Old and the Daleys hired nurses and set aside In retrospect, the persistence of torture Man, after complaining of chest part of their bungalow for his care on the of suspects in Chicago police custody— Opains, collapsed and died at his doctor’s days that he was not in the hospital. and the repeated failures to stop it—is as- office. Daley rode with his father’s body in “Maggie taught him to communicate tounding. From 1973 to the early nine- the hearse to the funeral home, in Bridge- with his eyes,” Daley told me. Kevin died ties, Commander Jon Burge, a South Side port. Tens of thousands of people filed after thirty-three months. The years in detective, allegedly oversaw the coercion past the coffin at Nativity of Our Lord, the the hospital, with other parents, left a pro- of confessions by means of beatings, same stone parish church where he had found impression on Daley: “None of the burns, suffocation, mock execution, and been baptized, seventy-six years earlier. people were complaining. Everyone had electric shocks to the face and genitals. Even amid grief, there was politics. issues and they just wanted their child to (Burge was said to favor a cattle prod and The Old Man had been the committee- live another day, another week, another a hand-cranked device similar to an Army man—the boss—of the mighty Demo- month, a year.” Eventually, the Daleys left field telephone.) After years of com- cratic organization in Bridgeport, and his the bungalow where Kevin had been plaints, in 2002 a special prosecutor began eldest son was expected to take over. “My treated and, in 1993, moved to a modern an investigation and found more than fifty dad was buried on a Wednesday,” Bill re- town house in the South Loop, beyond credible cases of torture. By that time, called, “and Rich was going to have a pre- the Daleys’ customary political fiefdom. It however, the statute of limitations on the cinct captains’ meeting the following made front-page news. “My son died in abuse had expired; Burge had retired to week. Everybody was obviously still in ’81, and we should have moved out then,” Florida with his city pension. Though he shock.” But, in her mourning, the widow Daley said. “That was the worst mistake I maintains that he is innocent, he has been Sis Daley gathered her political wits and ever made in my life.” He went on, “I charged with lying under oath about tor- warned her sons against waiting a full should have moved then, because, just ture and is awaiting trial. week to rally the faithful. “ ‘Move quickly thinking about your child—dying and Daley was the chief prosecutor for on this, Richard. Don’t wait,’ ” Bill recalls suffering . . .” He trailed off. eight years during which complaints went her saying. “And, about twenty-four hours unheeded. He later told reporters that he after he was buried, an old captain came to n 1979, Daley decided to run for Cook could not recall reading the police chief ’s Rich and said, ‘Rich, a guy named Buddy County state’s attorney, the chief local 1982 letter or what his response had been. Finley is making a move on you for com- Iprosecutor. “Everyone said it was stupid,” “Do you think I would sit by . . . that I mitteeman.’ ” The Daleys thwarted Fin- his brother Bill recalled. There was an en- had knowledge about it, and I would ley’s challenge, but the political lesson was trenched incumbent, and the new mayor, allow it? Then you don’t know my public clear. “The world had changed,” Bill said. Jane Byrne, had decided that Rich Daley career,” Daley told reporters in 2006. When Daley returned to Springfield, was the biggest threat to her political fu- He offered to “apologize to anyone.” In he startled colleagues by sponsoring a ture, so she had installed her own people 2008, the city agreed to a $19.8-million high-profile bill to protect mental-health in city jobs and supported competing settlement with victims, but Daley re-

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TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 45—133SC.—live art a14908—Please pull kodak approval proof for press color guidance jected, with irritation, the suggestion On the day of the primary, Daley rod considered other candidates before that he bore any responsibility, telling re- prayed at his father’s grave. He came in backing Daley. “I pretty much made a de- porters, “I was not the mayor. I was not third. Washington won, and went on to cision that Daley had the best chance to the police chief. I did not promote this win a brutal general election; a Polish- win and the best chance to get the city out man”—Burge—“in the eighties.” Danny American church that he visited on Palm of the morass it was in,” he told me. Davis, who represents part of the city’s Sunday had “Nigger die” scrawled on the Rahm Emanuel, a brash young opera- West Side in Congress, told me that the door. Shortly after the primary, Daley was tive with the Democratic Congressional Burge case is “a sore that has festered in in a toy store with his son when a man ac- Campaign Committee who was a friend the hearts and minds of many people.” cused him of splitting the white vote, and of Axelrod’s, wanted the job of campaign The writer Scott Turow was a federal thus clearing the way for the election of a manager, but Bill Daley installed him as prosecutor in Chicago at the time and black mayor. They fought. “He is rolling finance chair instead. (“I knew that he brought civil-rights charges against police around on the floor getting punched out could raise a shitload of money, and he officers in the western suburbs. He is not by some guy,” Bill Daley says, “and the did,” Bill said.) Emanuel’s mother was not surprised that Daley’s office didn’t muster guy’s punching him, and his son Patrick’s pleased; she’d spent years pushing for in- the will to pursue such cases. “The big there screaming, ‘Hit him, Dad!’ A cou- tegration and opposing the Old Man’s problem in those kinds of investigations— ple of old women were hitting the thug administration. “I said, ‘I’m different than and I did them—is that the cops all with their purses. So that was kind of a you, and the son is different than the fa- dummy up. It doesn’t matter what the hell low point post-election.” ther,’ ” Emanuel told me. the defendant looks like and he’s obvi- Chicago politics sank into a racial The campaign also hired Ned Ken- ously been beaten up. You can interview stalemate known as the Council Wars, nan, a social psychologist, who did in- everybody in the station; they will not which pitted a block of white aldermen depth interviews with voters. He expected support any kind of a prosecution.” against Washington and his supporters. to find as much racial polarization as ever, Even as he was reëlected state’s attorney, but he discovered, instead, that Eugene n 1983, Daley ran in the Democratic in 1984, Daley was preparing to get out of Sawyer, an African-American who had mayoral primary against Byrne, the in- politics. Then, in November, 1987, been selected by the City Council to serve Icumbent who had tried to crush him, and Washington died suddenly, of a heart at- out Washington’s term, was not energiz- Harold Washington, a charismatic con- tack. It was Daley’s opportunity for re- ing black voters. “It became very clear that gressman seeking to become Chicago’s demption. To prepare for a mayoral race, if we can avoid having black people get ex- first black mayor. The race was bitterly di- the Daleys hired David Axelrod, the son cited, they are not going to go to the vided: Byrne played to the worst instincts of progressive New York Democrats. He polls,” Kennan recalled. The strategy be- of the Bungalow Belt, while Washington had graduated from the University of came “the absolute avoidance of any racial drew impassioned black support that had Chicago and covered politics for the Tri- tension or overtones,” Schmidt said. Daley been stifled for decades by the machine. bune before leaving journalism, in 1984, to campaigned heavily in black neighbor- Daley was caught in the middle. “Black work for the reëlection of the Illinois sen- hoods, even though he expected, and re- and white—I’d march in one parade and ator Paul Simon. He was known in Chi- ceived, few votes. “It was important to they’d boo me, and in the other parade cago political circles as a phlegmatic tacti- send a signal to the rest of the city,” Axel- they’d boo me,” he told me. “It was, like, cian with a loose-shirttail style that his rod said, “that he was going to govern as a what am I doing wrong?” mother likened to an unmade bed. Axel- healing force and not as a divisive one.” Daley won, and took office on his forty- seventh birthday.

ne Wednesday a month, Daley pre- sides over a meeting of the City Council,O a body that conforms to Chica- go’s idiosyncratic conception of democ- racy. The elder Mayor Daley never lost a council vote in twenty-one years, a period in which one member was best known for regularly shouting “God Bless Mayor Daley!” If a controversial measure was likely to draw a protest, the Old Man called in the Rulies, city workers who mo- nopolized public seats to box out anyone who might be unruly. These days, the Rulies are gone and the younger Daley has lost some votes, but he enjoys extraordinarily little opposi- tion, in part because the law allows him to fill council vacancies by appointment. (He

TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 46—133SC.—live art a14883 has appointed seventeen out of the fifty council members.) “In many respects, it’s akin to a feudal state,” Joe Moore, a coun- cil member, explained. The City Council is a pleasant gig, perhaps too pleasant: during the nineteen-nineties, more alder- men went to prison (nine) than to higher office (eight), according to Greg Hinz, a Chicago political writer. Daley has never shown much interest in the niceties of checks and balances; he once had the microphone of an alderman he considered out of order cut off. That has not stopped people from trying to op- pose him. In 2007, thirty-six-year-old Scott Waguespack was an outsider with the long-shot ambition to be elected al- derman in the Thirty-second Ward, on the near Northwest Side—the old strong- hold of Daniel (Rosty) Rostenkowski, a congressman who in his heyday—before “Officer, that couple is just walking away from their mortgage!” being convicted of mail fraud—was so powerful that he reportedly had a twelve- lane expressway diverted in order to pre- •• vent the demolition of his church. (He still lives in the ward.) Waguespack, a slim, be- down.” Waguespack has some idea of what proved more than seven million dollars in spectacled Colorado native who served in that means for his reëlection campaign next taxpayer money for a cultural center that the Peace Corps in Kenya, cited “scandal year. In his first race, voters received mail- was to be her signature project, and his after scandal” in City Hall as a reason to try ings accusing him of pretending to be a supporters began donating to her cam- to oust the incumbent, Ted Matlak, a lawyer, doing political work on govern- paigns. “He can pick up a phone and raise Rosty protégé who was endorsed by Daley ment time, and living with his parents; the more money for you with one call than and Emanuel. Waguespack appealed to a accusations were untrue. “I survived that,” you can raise in six months,” William wave of new yuppies in the neighborhood, he said, with a faint smile. “So I say, ‘You Grimshaw, a political scientist at the Illi- and won. He was such a fresh face that can do it again.’ ” After a pause, he no lon- nois Institute of Technology, told me. By when he showed up for his inauguration ger bothered to mask his frustration. “To 2006, Tillman was voting with Daley two- the cops at first refused to let him in. be honest, some days I feel like I’m beating thirds of the time. (The next year, she lost A few months later, Daley was push- a dead horse, because no one is listening.” her seat to a challenger who accused her of ing the council to approve a plan for a new Daley practices what might be called abandoning her constituents.) museum in a park, which sounded innoc- big-tent dictatorship, in which everyone is Daley’s political success in the black uous except that Waguespack and some welcome at the table, as long as nobody community is indisputable: in 1989, he other aldermen believed that it would il- forgets who the host is. He assiduously received seven per cent of the black vote; legally occupy public open space. The courts black ministers who opposed the in the most recent race, he won seventy issue ballooned into a test of Daley’s au- machine. He promoted a program that per cent. Among Hispanics, he is even thority, and Waguespack watched as his sells vacant lots to churches for a dollar. more popular, having won nearly eighty wavering allies were summoned, one by He has won over outspoken critics in the per cent of the vote in the latest election. one, to the council’s back room. There, black community. Dorothy Tillman, a In 1999, facing his strongest African- according to the Tribune, Daley aides dis- longtime South Side alderman, had been American challenger yet, the South Side pensed promises or threats in the form of a firebrand ever since the Council Wars, congressman Bobby Rush, Daley barely parks and schools and other local pork. when white aldermen dispatched the ser- needed to break stride; he won more than “They would return with the ashen look geant at arms to make her remove her hat half of all black votes in the city, including on their faces,” Waguespack told me. “I’d upon entering the chamber, a standoff in Rush’s own ward. go over and ask them, ‘Are you still with which she prevailed. Shortly after Daley us?’ And they would say, ‘You know, I re- was elected, Tillman said that he was “fos- t was once said of the Old Man that ally can’t do that.’ ” tering racism in the city,” but eventually his idea of affirmative action was nine Waguespack and his allies lost the vote, she and the Mayor reached a détente: she IrishmenI and a Swede. When his son and afterward a city worker whom he be- began voting for his budgets and other reached City Hall, one of the first things lieved to be a Daley loyalist poked a finger measures, and he backed her effort to re- he did was appoint a black spokeswoman in Waguespack’s chest and said, “We’re quire companies to acknowledge any his- for the Mayor’s office and Hispanic lead- coming after you. We’re going to take you torical ownership of slaves. He also ap- ers for the police and fire departments.

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TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 47—133SC.—live art a14828 poor that it is known to public-health specialists as a “food desert,” because nu- tritious sustenance is hard to find. De- spite the problems outside its walls, how- ever, the school was humming with vitality. The students, mostly black and Hispanic, tested their way in and com- mute from around the city. Chicago schools have created the largest Chinese- language program of any public system in America, and I sat in on a Lindblom class in which students were giving pre- sentations in Mandarin about their fa- vorite movies (“Purple Rain,” “American Gangster,” “The Princess Diaries”). Daley has encouraged experiments. In 2001, he promoted Arne Duncan, a little-known thirty-six-year-old admin- istrator, to C.E.O. of the school system, “It was romantic during dinner, but now it’s getting kind of creepy.” and Duncan focussed on the city’s most chronically troubled schools. He pro- posed a “turnaround” concept, in which •• the city and nonprofit groups would re- move teachers, install high-performing He issued an executive order announcing that of his father—than his attempt to principals with specially trained faculties, an affirmative-action policy, and that refashion Chicago’s public schools. For and provide extra money for inventive summer he marched in the city’s Gay and decades, the Old Man was criticized for programs. Daley approved, but the pub- Lesbian Pride Parade after he pushed allowing the schools to deteriorate. When lic did not. “World War III,” Duncan through a bill extending benefits to the the son took office, the district was in told me. “It was brutal.” same-sex partners of city workers. In all finan­cial disarray and test scores were Parents worried that their children my conversations with Daley, he never among America’s worst. Alan Mather, an would be excluded from the reconstituted criticized his father. And yet he has spent English teacher at Farragut High School schools, teachers feared for their futures, much of his career doing what his father at the time, taught in a classroom with and, in one case, a rumor swept through a would not or could not do. In 1999, he gang symbols scrawled on the carpet. school that it was going to be carved up announced plans to demolish all of Chi- Members of the Vice Lords and the into condos. “These were communities cago’s public-housing towers, a colossal Latin Kings brawled in the hallways, and that had been lied to and mistreated for- undertaking equivalent to relocating a union rules protected senior teachers who ever, so there was tremendous skepti- city of more than fifty thousand people. were just going through the motions. cism,” Duncan said. When he went to ed- Today, stretches of the city that once “Every night I cried,” Mather recalled. ucation conferences, administrators from housed icons of American urban poverty, “What the hell was I doing?” other cities were baffled by the scale and such as the Robert Taylor Homes and In 1995, Daley asked the Illinois legis- speed of the change. “They all said, ‘We Cabrini-Green, are wholly transformed; lature for control of the schools, and Re- couldn’t begin to do that,’ ” he said. “They many of them are eerily empty grass lots publican leaders agreed—in no small part were stunned. It was almost like they or have been filled by low-rise mixed- because they were happy to watch the thought I was lying.” income developments. The process has Mayor take on such an albatross. “When Daley’s changes have been controver- been far from perfect: replacement hous- you’d go to a school where eight per cent sial—some critics say that gains have ing that was promised for the poor is five of students read at their grade level, no been overstated and parents’ input has years behind schedule, and housing advo- one was upset—no one was alarmed,” been marginalized—but dropout rates cates point out that many residents have Daley told me. Since then, the city and have consistently declined and test scores simply been shunted out of sight, to the nonprofit groups have trained thousands have improved. Duncan is now Obama’s fringes of the city. Nevertheless, it is of new teachers, closed failing schools, Secretary of Education; he is attempting difficult to overstate how toxic the old opened new ones, and revitalized the to adapt a similar model to a thousand projects were to their occupants and to the image of the system in order to attract schools nation­-wide. William Julius Wil- city. They constituted nine of the ten promising students and teachers. son, the Harvard­ sociologist, who spent poorest census tracts in America, and One morning, I visited Mather, years studying Chicago’s poor black their disappearance is an unmistakable who is now the principal of Lindblom neighborhoods, credits Daley with giv- step forward. Math & Science Academy, one of the ing Duncan a chance to experiment. “It None of Daley’s decisions, however, city’s élite public high schools. It is in was a brilliant appointment,” Wilson told have done more to define his legacy—and West Englewood, a neighborhood so me. “Daley recognized this guy’s gifts.”

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TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 48—133SC.—live art a14616_RD He added, “He’s been criticized for not cation tests and interviews to make sure cases and they were corrected,” he said. being concerned with the conditions of that political allies succeeded; in one case, Why doesn’t he do more to stop it? the poor. Based on my experiences with a city job as an equipment dispatcher was He was brought up in the system, he him, I think that criticism is bogus.” awarded to a man with an impressive in- has thrived in it, and, for all his modern- terview score, even though, on the stated minded changes to the city, he is a conser- or all the changes that Daley has day of the interview, he was in fact dead. vative man. Most of all, perhaps, voters ev- wrought in his city, he has made In Bridgeport, the cases felt like an as- idently couldn’t care less. In his most Fscarcely a dent in Chicago’s breathtaking sault on the customary spoils of politics. recent reëlection, corruption scandals and capacity for corruption. In 2004, the Sun- Sorich—a Bridgeport native—was re- the investigation into police torture had Times investigated the city’s Hired Truck garded by many neighbors as a hero; to left pundits declaring that Daley looked program and discovered that the Daley cover his legal bills, friends held a fund- vulnerable for the first time in years. He administration was spending forty million raiser in the same church where the Mayor went on to win with more than seventy- dollars a year to hire private dump trucks had been baptized. (In comments to the one per cent of the vote. for city work, except that many of the Tribune columnist John Kass, a priest trucks were doing virtually nothing; some compared Sorich to Jesus Christ.) he unsavory side of Daleyism is one were owned by felons or reputed Mob Like his father, Daley has not been ac- reason that for many years Obama associates like Nick (the Stick) LoCoco, cused of personally profiting from the maintainedT a wary distance. When, in the a bookie and juice collector. Among the city, but he has done little more than take summer of 1991, his fiancée, Michelle workers who were taking bribes to dole pro-forma steps to stop others from doing Robinson, told him that she had been ap- out trucking contracts was John (Quarters) so. His efforts to reduce the kind of quasi- proached about a job in City Hall, he in- Boyle, a member of a pro-Daley campaign legalized bribery known as pay-to-play sisted on learning more about who would group who had been hired despite having have been halfhearted; he stopped taking be watching out for her. The couple went been convicted of stealing four million political contributions from companies to dinner with the recruiter, Valerie Jar- dollars—in nickels, dimes, and quarters— that do business with the city, for in- rett, who eventually became one of their while overseeing toll booths. When Quar- stance, but has continued to accept con- closest friends. Michelle was already ac- ters was busted for taking bribes—one of tributions from firms that do business quainted with Chicago politics, because forty-seven people eventually convicted in with the city’s giant pension funds. Mean- her father had been a precinct captain the trucking scandal—he protested, “Ev- while, his brother Michael’s law firm during the Old Man’s administration. eryone else was doing it.” handles numerous zoning cases involving When Obama entered politics, in Hyde Long before Daley took office, Chi- the city, and his brother John sells insur- Park, the liberal enclave that is home to the cago had established itself, in A. J. Lieb­ ance to city contractors. Daley’s nephew University of Chicago, where he worked, ling’s words, as “the only completely cor- Robert Vanecko in the past signed mil- he did little to involve himself in local zon- rupt city in America.” Since 1972, Illinois lions of dollars’ worth of city-related de- ing issues—the sort of issues that might has convicted three governors, two con- velopment and service contracts, and in draw him into kinship or conflict with Da- gressmen, nineteen Cook County judges, 2004 Daley’s son Patrick was discovered ley—and the Mayor had little reason to no- and thirty aldermen. Daley grew up in a to have a small piece of a sewer-inspection tice him. In 1999, Obama was preparing to system in which much of government contract with the city. (He sold it.) challenge Bobby Rush for his seat in Con- was for sale and a popular tactic on Elec- Whenever a case comes to light, Daley gress, and he got in touch with Axelrod. tion Day consisted of shuttling winos and has a standard response: he denies any They had known each other socially, but drifters to multiple polling places and personal knowledge of wrongdoing, and now Obama was formally seeking to hire paying them fifty cents for each ballot points out that he doesn’t micromanage him as a consultant. Axelrod said no. “I cast. (The practice was known as “Hobo the city’s thirty-three thousand workers. had just helped Daley get reëlected,” he floto voto.”) Rod Blagojevich, the former He fires people and proposes new proce- said. “Obama was running against Bobby governor, is no friend of Daley’s. Since dures, such as an inspector general’s office, Rush, and it would look as if it were a vin- Blagojevich’s arrest, on charges that he to prevent further abuse. But there is con- dictive campaign, that somehow Daley was tried to sell Obama’s Senate seat, Daley spicuously little outrage—no sense that trying to purge Rush. That wouldn’t have has taken to describing him as “cuckoo.” he will attack corruption with the same been good for Daley, and it frankly wouldn’t (Blagojevich refused to comment.) But, intensity that he displays toward flies at have been good for Obama.” even by Chicago standards, Daley’s recent Dunkin’ Donuts. Obama went ahead with his challenge tenure has been notable for a relentless se- “Unfortunately, there’s corruption all to Rush, and received a vivid education in ries of investigations into public corrup- over—private sector, public sector, all the perils of running without a powerful tion. Federal prosecutors came closest to that—so you do everything possible,” he patron. The race was a lonely slog. I was implicating the Mayor himself in 2006, told me. “We are much ahead of most assigned to cover it for the Chicago Tri- when a jury convicted his former patron- cities on this issue.” But, when you talk bune, and when Obama met me for an in- age chief, Robert Sorich, and other de- to Daley, it seems clear that he is betting terview at a diner I sensed that I had a bus- fendants of handing out city jobs and pro- that the best parts of his legacy will out- ier schedule than he did. He lost by an motions to political supporters in order to weigh the worst parts. “If you look at it embarrassing thirty-one points, and when strengthen Daley’s campaign operation. over all, look at it over the years, look at it the results were in Daley phoned him— The defendants had been rigging appli- all the way back to ’89 . . . there were some not to console him but to explain why

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TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 49—133SC. Obama had screwed up. “I said, ‘Why did you run against him?’ ” Daley told me. Obama replied that Rush’s loss to Daley The Thunder Shower in the mayoral race had suggested that Rush was vulnerable. Daley went on, “No, A blink of lightning, then an election doesn’t show you’re weak. The a rumor, a grumble of white rain other person just got more votes. So there growing in volume, rustling over the ground, is not weakness in your opponent. Maybe drenching the gravel in a wash of sound. it taught you a good lesson.” Drops tap like timpani or shine As his prospects rose, Obama charted a like quavers on a line. careful line with the Daleys. In an inter- view in late 2003, Obama’s biographer It rings on exposed tin, David Mendell asked him to describe his a suite for water, wind and bin, relationship with the Mayor. “Cordial, not plinky Poulenc or strongly groaning Brahms’ close,” Obama replied. Mendell pushed rain-strings, a whole string section that describes him to say whether it would have been the very shapes of thought in warm wiser to spend hundreds of millions of dol- self-referential vibes lars on improving Chicago’s public schools or developing poor neighborhoods rather and spreading ripples. Soon than on Millennium Park. Obama winced the whispering roar is a recital. before replying, “How do you really expect Jostling rain-crowds, clamorous and vital, me to answer that? If I told you how I re- struggle in runnels through the afternoon. ally felt, I’d be committing political suicide The rhythm becomes a regular beat; right here in front of you.” steam rises, body heat— Within months, Obama was edging closer to Daley’s realm. He endorsed the and now there’s city noise, reëlection of Dorothy Tillman, the former bits of recorded pop and rock, agitator who was by now a Daley convert, the drums, the strident electronic shock, even though it irritated his liberal friends a vast polyphony, the dense refrain in Hyde Park. Now Axelrod approached of wailing siren, truck and train Obama about running for office. They dis- and incoherent cries. cussed a number of options, including the mayoralty—after Daley retired, of course— All human life is there but quickly settled on the U.S. Senate. The in the unconfned, continuous crash Daleys were supporting Obama’s oppo- whose slow, difused implosions gather up nent, Daniel Hynes, the son of their ally car radios and alarms, the honk and beep, Thomas Hynes. And yet the Obama cam- and tiny voices in a crèche paign noticed that the Daleys’ support for piercing the muggy air. Hynes was minor by Chicago standards. “They didn’t have any bodies out there pushing,” Dan Shomon, Obama’s cam- Mendell recalled.) In addition to show- Mayor was running against Dorothy paign manager at the time, said. When it casing Axelrod’s unique place in Ameri- Brown, a long-shot African-American seemed clear that Obama was going to win can politics, the meeting underscored the challenger, whose supporters hoped that the primary, he wrote a private note to Bill fact that, for all their differences of style Obama would join them. Within weeks, Daley, saying that he understood the Da- and speech, Obama and Daley shared a Daley made a rare intervention in a pri- leys’ loyalty to Hynes. “I hope after the pri- basic approach to politics as a constant ne- mary and endorsed Obama. Soon after- maries that you will support me,” he wrote, gotiation of interests and ideals—Chica- ward, Obama endorsed Daley for reëlec- according to Bill, who responded, Axelrod go’s brand of Realpolitik. Both had ad- tion, less than two years after Obama had says, reassuringly: “If it worked out in our vanced by capitalizing on the prevailing said that City Hall corruption gave him favor, he would be helpful.” power structure, not by dismantling it, “huge pause” about Daley’s administra- Obama and Daley made their alliance and they were united, above all, not by tion. In his endorsement, he focussed in- public that October: Axelrod arranged a ideology but by pragmatism. stead on the fact that the city had “blos- highly visible lunch for the two at Man- In the winter of 2007, as both entered somed so much” under Daley’s control. ny’s Deli, a venerable political eatery. a campaign season, Obama and Daley They ate corned-beef sandwiches in front met at City Hall, this time with no cam- arely a year after Obama’s celebration of a scrum of photographers and report- eras or outsiders. There was a distinct mu- in the park, at a moment when the ers. (“They wouldn’t let anybody close tual benefit at stake. Obama was trailing BAdministration’s drive for health-care re- enough to hear what they were saying, but far behind Hillary Clinton, who had a form appeared to be foundering, David Obama was doing most of the talking,” good relationship with the Daleys. The Brooks, in the Times, faulted the Admin-

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TNY—2010_03_08—PAGE 50—133SC. pressures on him at home. In December, Maggie Daley underwent a round of ra- diation treatments for a tumor in her leg, a setback in an eight-year fight against Squalor and decadence, metastatic breast cancer. All the specu- the rackety global-franchise rush, lation seemed only to reinforce the con- oil wars and water wars, the diatonic sensus that there is nobody in Chicago crescendo of a cascading world economy politics who has remotely the power or are audible in the hectic thrash the money or the recognition to defeat of this luxurious cadence. him. One afternoon a few days before The voice of Baal explodes, Christmas, the Mayor emerged from the raging and rumbling round the clouds, Woodshed and took a seat in a confer- frantic to crush the self-sufcient spaces ence room in a circle of visiting students and re-impose his failed hegemony from Orr Academy High School, one of in Canaan before moving on the city’s most troubled schools. Much of to other simpler places. the student body had been expelled from other schools or spent time in jail, and At length the twining chords only thirteen per cent of the junior class run thin, a watery sun shines out, last year could read at grade level. But the deluge slowly ceases, the guttural chant Orr had a new principal, new teachers, subsides; a thrush sings, and discordant thirds and six million dollars in special funding diminish like an exhausted concert over five years. One year into the process, on the subdominant. attendance rates were up and student misconduct was down. The angry downpour swarms This was Orr’s Reading Club, in for a growling to far-fung felds and farms. book talk with the Mayor. The students, The drains are still alive with trickling water, in gold-and-black uniforms, ate pizza a few last drops drip from a broken gutter; and talked about John Cheever’s story but the storm that created so much fuss “Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor.” has lost interest in us. After a few minutes, they had forgotten about Cheever and were grilling the —Derek Mahon Mayor, who looked at ease for the first time in days. “Do you plan to retire or something?” No. “You say you want colleges to be cheaper. Can you take power and actually make that happen?” Not immediately. istration for a “voracious pragmatism” maintains that the deal, which netted “What’s the best gift you’ve ever re- that had driven it into too many issues at the city a billion dollars, “was sound.” ceived on Christmas?” once. Some reports speculated that Rahm Moreover, after Daley spent two years Children. Emanuel might take the fall, a rumor rallying a wary city around a bid for the Then one of the students got to won- fuelled by talk that he could be planning 2016 Olympics, Chicago lost in the first dering just where the Mayor came from. to return to Chicago to run for mayor. round. While he was in Copenhagen “How do you become the guy?” she asked. Emanuel dismissed that talk and encour- for the Olympic vote, a video surfaced “I mean, how did you get to where you’re aged Daley to run again. (When I spoke online that showed a high-school brawl at now?” to Emanuel on the afternoon following on the South Side, in which an honor- For a moment, Daley looked stumped. the Massachusetts­ Senate election, he roll student named Derrion Albert was “Well,” he said, “my dad was the mayor was subdued and spoke wistfully about beaten and stomped to death by other from 1955 to 1976.” Jaws dropped, the his home town. “I can’t wait to get back,” teen-agers. kids gasped, and for an instant Mayor he said.) Daley’s approval rating had dropped Daley savored the fact that nobody Daley, meanwhile, was having one into the thirties, and reporters began to around him had ever heard of anyone else of the worst spells of his career. A City talk about whether he would run for a named Mayor Daley.  Hall deal to privatize Chicago’s parking seventh term when he faces reëlection meters, in order to plug a budget gap, next year. He hasn’t decided, he says, newyorker.coM/go/china quadrupled parking rates downtown and and has chided reporters who have “al- sparked intense public criticism. Daley ready put me in the grave.” There are Evan Osnos’s blog, Letter from Beijing.

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