RAHM EMANUEL IS NOT TOM DEMPSEY

7/30/11

As loyal readers know, I’ve not been Rahm Emanuel’s greatest fan. In fact, when Mr. Emanuel first threw his hat in the ring for mayor of Chicago, I didn’t think he had a chance of replacing Mayor Daley. Arguing that he had no organization on the ground here, no real experience in Chicago politics, and a reputation for toughness that was largely a fabrication of a consanguineous media and Washington political establishment, I contended that Mr. Emanuel would wither and fold when faced with the Machiavellian tactics of the real tough guys who hold the inside seats in the politics of our town. When it became obvious that Mr. Emanuel would win because the Daleys and most of the city’s political and business establishments had joined the media completely in the tank for this guy and the competition was composed of the political equivalent of Muhammad Ali’s “bum of the month club” from the 1970s (two not at all unrelated developments), I begrudgingly conceded that Rahm Emanuel would be our next mayor. When even the most powerful ward organizations either couldn’t or wouldn’t turn out the vote for Mr. Emanuel’s pathetic opposition (See my 2/22/11 post, “IT’S OVER, IT’S OVER!!!”), the deal was sealed and Rahm Emanuel became our mayor. I wasn’t happy about it, but for stylistic, rather than ideological, if indeed ideology has anything to do with running a city, reasons.

While I have no problem admitting I was wrong in my prognostications, I do have problems admitting I was wrong about the desirability and ability of people in leadership positions. But I must overcome those problems in this case. So far, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is doing a terrific job in running this city. He seems to have wasted little time in addressing the woeful fiscal mismanagement that has plagued our city for at least the last ten years. He shows little compunction about attacking the structural problems of Chicago government, many of which have their geneses in a sense of entitlement that has been imbued in some people by political connections that span generations and he is not afraid to stand up to the municipal workers’ unions that make lesser politicians either crumble or mutter with frustration. It’s early, but, so far, my hat is off to Mr. Emanuel, despite my many misgivings about his approach to politics and government. (See, inter alia, my 6/23/11 post “A WHOLE LOT OF SHAKIN’ (DOWN) GOIN’ ON”.) Whether his approach to addressing the city’s problems will result in his meeting his comeuppance from people who have spent their lifetimes feeding at the troughs he is seeking to dismantle is another issue, but so far, so good for Rahm Emanuel.

A second point on Mr. Emanuel…

Readers of my books who are immersed in Chicago politics like to approach them (The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, both available on Amazon.com, other online booksellers, at independents throughout Chicagoland and, on order, from any place that sells books) as puzzles in which the reader tries to determine which fictional characters are “really” which real characters. Ever since Mr. Emanuel became mayor, and even before, numerous people have come up to me, or written me, saying something like “Oh, Tom Dempsey (the ingénue quasi-reformer who became mayor, and one of the first book’s antagonists) is definitely Rahm Emanuel, right?” While one can see how people could make that connection, Tom Dempsey is NOT Rahm Emanuel for two very good reasons.

First, nobody in the books is anybody in real life. Every character is an amalgam of several, or many, real life characters. Just as Chairman Eamon DeValera Collins is not, as some have guessed, Ed Burke, Michael Madigan, Bill Banks, Ed Vrdolyak, or anyone else, Tom Dempsey is not Rahm Emanuel, Jane Byrne, Dan Walker, or anybody else. He is Tom Dempsey.

Second, Tom Dempsey was conceived in my head long before then Congressman Rahm Emanuel expressed any desire to become mayor of Chicago. At the time The Chairman was being written, Rahm Emanuel’s ambition was to be Speaker of the House. So Rahm Emanuel was not even among the legions of people that are reflected in the character of Tom Dempsey. But, rereading passages in the book about Mayor Tom Dempsey, it is easy to see how a reader could think Mr. Emanuel was his inspiration. Whether Rahm Emanuel will meet a fate similar to that of Mr. Dempsey is another issue; such an outcome seems nearly impossible at this point, but, again, it is early and strange things happen in Chicago politics. Ask, oh, Jane Byrne or Dan Walker.