BARACK OBAMA A CHICAGO MACHINE HACK?

7/17/12




Here is a note I wrote to Chicago Sun-Times Washington bureau chief Lynn Sweet in response to her Tuesday, 7/17/12 column “Romney’s ‘Chicago-style’ attack”:



7/17/12



Lynn,



I agree that Barack Obama is not the old time Chicago style political operator/ward healer that the rightward stretches of the media and the Romney campaign would have the American people believe. But to argue that



“…Obama vaulted from the state Senate to the U.S. Senate to the White House without coming up through the Chicago system of pinstripe patronage or ward politics”



is at best a half-truth.

President Obama started his political career as an independent and, one could argue, won his state senate seat as an independent. But when he ran for the U.S. House and got crushed by former Black Panther Defense Minister turned Machine regular Bobby Rush, Mr. Obama, being no fool, realized he had to make his peace with the powers that be in our fair city. He went about getting a political Godfather, in the person of then State Senate President Emil Jones, and started playing ball. It was, to a large extent, the support of Senator Jones and other elements of what is commonly, though exaggeratedly, referred to as the Machine that enabled then state Senator Obama to split the aforementioned Machine and defeat Dan Hynes in the primary for U.S. Senate. From then on, Barack Obama was a full partner, though in many senses a junior partner, of the regulars who run this city. How do you suppose, for example, a relatively obscure state senator got the opportunity to deliver the key note speech at the 2004 Democratic convention? Could he have done so without the support of the Daley family and other political operatives from Chicago?



Yes, Barack Obama is not the cigar chomping, vote stealing, contract dispensing, payroll padding pol that Ed Gillespie and Mitt Romney try to make us believe he is. But he is not the unsullied by Chicago politics, clean as a whistle independent his fans think he is, either. Barack Obama, like Bobby Rush, who administered the President’s first, and only, drubbing at the polls, or even the sainted Pat Quinn, is a very practical politician who was smart enough to know that any Democrat who wants to succeed in, or graduate from, Chicago politics must make his peace with the “Chicago politicians” who run this town.



Thanks, Lynn. And, by the way, my books, The Chairman and The Chairman’s Challenge, are much more accurate, and entertaining, “fictional” portrayals of Chicago Politics than is “Boss,” as good as the latter is.

CHAIRMAN COLLINS, MEET CHAIRMAN BERRIOS

6/26/12




Ever since my first book, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics, came out, most readers, but especially those attuned to the politics of our town, have been trying to determine who the title character, Chairman Eamon DeValera Collins, is in “real life.” Many names have been posited: Richard M. Daley, Richard J. Daley, Mike Madigan, Ed Burke, even Ed Vrdolyak. (See my 10/16/10 post, ED VRDOLYAK, MEET EAMON DEVALERA COLLINS for a treatment of this theory.) All these guesses are, of course, wrong, as would be any guess; Chairman Collins is a fictional character who is no “real” person but who has characteristics of many “real” people, much like another popular fictional character, Don Vito Corleone. (Both The Chairman and its sequel, The Chairman’s Challenge, are available at Amazon.com, Marathonbooks.net, the Irish Book Club, IndieLitWorld.com, and various independent book stores, most notably The Bookies’ on 103rd and Artesian in my old neighborhood.)

After a recent recommendation by the Cook County ethics board, another name will surely be thrown into the hopper as a possible “real world” Chairman Collins, that of Cook County Assessor, 31st Ward Democratic Committeeman, and Cook County Regular Democratic Organization Chairman, Joe Berrios. The ethics board recommended that Assessor Berrios fire his son and his sister from their mid-level jobs in the Assessor’s office but made no recommendation regarding Chairman Barrio’s daughter, who had worked in the Assessor’s office before he arrived (while Mr. Berrios was on the Cook County Board of Review, which hears appeals of property tax assessments made by the Assessor’s office…hmm…) but who has been promoted a few times since her father became her boss. The board has also assessed Chairman Berrios a fine of $10,000, $5,000 for each of the relatives it says he should fire, but, since the board has no enforcement powers, it has to go the Cook County Circuit Court to compel payment; good luck with that.



What really might make one suspect that Mr. Berrios might be Chairman Collins, or vice-versa, was Chairman Barrio’s response to charges that he is an “old-school politician.” To this surely groundless charge, Assessor Berrios replied



“If I was an old-school politician, I would have picked up the phone, had someone else hire them and I wouldn’t even be answering these questions.”



Despite such a statement, and the attitude that underlies it, Chairman Collins is NOT Chairman Berrios…nor is Chairman Collins anybody else but Eamon DeValera Collins. But such a statement might cause Diogenes to put down his lantern.