“THIS…IS…MY KIND OF TOWN”

12/11/08

Just when I’ve written a piece about national reporters’ displaying their ignorance of Chicago politics in the wake of an national attention garnering story emanating from my hometown, largely because of their eagerness to look at our politics through an ideological prism, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal provides abundant evidence supporting my argument.

In a 12/11/08 Opinion piece in the Journal, Mr. Fund, always eager to go after Mr. Obama and any other liberal Democrat, argues that President-elect Obama ought to speak out against corruption in his home town and lambastes him for being largely silent about its sordid politics. That might not be a bad suggestion, but it is the background that Mr. Fund uses that shows his typical national reporter innocence regarding the politics of the great metropolis on the southern shores of Lake Michigan.

Mr. Fund states that “House Speaker Michael Madigan drafted a memo on why Democrats should impeach Mr. Blagojevich” in the Spring of 2006. But Senate President Emil Jones, an Obama and Blagojevich ally (mentor, in a sense, especially to Mr. Obama) opposed the move, saying that it was wrong for Mr. Madigan to “promote the impeachment of a Democratic governor.” Mr. Obama, shamefully, in Mr. Fund’s estimation, kept silent on the matter rather than stand with Mr. Madigan.

So there you have Mr. Fund’s view of Chicago politics: crusading reformer Michael Madigan seeks to excise corruption from the governor’s office (and presumably Illinois politics) by impeaching Mr. Blagojevich, but the corrupt Emil Jones thwarts his every move while Barack Obama acquiesces to Mr. Jones’ evil designs by his stunning silence.

Hmm…Mike Madigan (who lives in St. Bede’s Parish on my beloved South Side, walking distance from Vito and Nick’s, perhaps the foremost purveyor of the thin crust pizza South Siders prefer to the deep dish stuff (which is by no means bad, just different) that national reporters insist on calling “Chicago style pizza”) is some sort of reformer? Mike Madigan is perhaps the smartest politician in Chicago and one of the most powerful. He runs the most efficient and effective ward organization (13th) in the city and commands the State House of Representatives with an iron fist. He has many admirable qualities, but he is, first and foremost, a Chicago Machine politician in every sense of the word. He has never been in the federal trouble that has plagued so many of his colleagues because he is clean and very smart, the former in a relative sense. Emil Jones has the same exact attributes without the superlatives and a few of the specifics. The two disagree on few things, and one of them is, or was, Mr. Blagojevich. But Mr. Madigan’s longstanding problem with Mr. Blagojevich arises not because of some kind of disgust on Mr. Madigan’s part with corruption per se, but with Mr. Blagojevich’s irresponsible style, lack of anything resembling restraint or subtlety, audacious greed, and unwillingness to play ball with the powers-that-be in the Machine. (That Mr. Madigan’s daughter, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, has long been considered a rival of Mr. Blagojevich has something to do with it, also, but not as much as most national reporters suppose.) Mr. Jones was willing to overlook these attributes of Mr. Blagojevich primarily because Mr. Blagojevich was willing to play ball with Mr. Jones, primarily in a bid to drive a wedge between white and black elements of the Machine in order to weaken Mr. Madigan and other elements of the old guard.

Again, trying to view Chicago politics in anything resembling an ideological light, which we are seeing in abundance of late, primarily from the “conservative” punditocracy, is a huge, hubristic mistake. In my home town, politics is a business, pure and simple. Words like “conservative” and “liberal,” even “Democrat” and “Republican” mean nothing.

And another thing for the national media (though not necessarily Mr. Fund): Mr. Jones, formerly my state senator, pronounces his first name “EE ml” not “u MEEL.” No self-respecting Chicago politician would trot around with a name that makes him sound like a French artist.