Posted on 07/23/2012 2:21:36 PM PDT by Sir Napsalot
If I hear one more person accuse the Obama campaign of practicing “Chicago-style politics,” I'm gonna kick all his nephews off the park-district payroll. I’m gonna send some precinct captains over to straighten him out. Mitt Romney and his surrogates don’t understand what Chicago-style politics means. No one seems to have told them that it’s been gone for 25 years. And they don’t get that Barack Obama, in his Chicago days, never had anything to do with it.
Chicago-style politics, in common parlance, refers to the 1950s-1970s era of the Richard J. Daley machine. If you want to read a great, short book about that world, I recommend Boss by Mike Royko. The strength and durability of the Daley machine was its ethnically based patronage network, a complex system of obligations, benefits, and loyalties that didn’t depend on televised communication with a broader public. It was a noncompetitive system that in its heyday had a lock on urban power and the spoils that went with it. One of the most memorable phrases from that era comes from a story often told by former White House Counsel Abner J. Mikva, who described attempting to volunteer on a local campaign in the late 1940s.
“Who sent you?” asked the cigar-chomping 8th Ward precinct captain.
“Nobody sent me,” replied Mikva.
“We don’t want nobody nobody sent.”
....
Some Republicans seem to think Chicago politics is about brutal, slashing attacks on opponents—Al Capone with an ad budget. That’s what John Boehner was complaining about when he used the phrase in 2009 to describe the way the Obama administration was demonizing opponents of his health care bill, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But political aggression is hardly a distinctive Chicago trait. ....
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Education of Chicago-style Politics for non-Chicagoans, or non-Illinis.
I’d say the thug tactics Obama’s people used defame his opponents when he ran for the Illinois and U. S. Senate are Chicago style, writ large.
Corruption
Patronage
Nepotism
Authoritarianism
It cites that since 1972 over 1000 public officials and businessmen in Chicago have been convicted of public corruption.
The Obama administration fits these descriptors quite well.
Giving no show City jobs to Chicago constituents was the mildest form of Chicago corruption.
Chicago politics is street thugs, pay to play, voter fraud, theft of taxpayer money, extortion, lies and other slimy activities too numerous to list. It is Tony Rezko making millions off fraudulent maintenance contracts for City owned slum property. It is Tony Rezco then buying a house for Barack Obama as well as other bribes. It is Donald Young murdered and no police investigation. It is violent crime and murders and politicians looking the other way and doing nothing. It is payoffs to street criminals and street gangs. It is fraudulent City contracts where no one knows where the money went. It is high taxes and poor services. It is constant lies from politicians and no accountability. It is shakedowns and extortion of legitimate businesses. It is the large scale theft of taxpayer money and people afraid to say anything about it.
Chicago politics is more corrupt than it has ever been.
Yeah, we all understand that the Chicago politics of old Daley is gone, but it's been replaced by something different, and just as bad. If branding Obama as a "Chicago politician" is a way of avoiding calling him corrupt, then let's by all means drop the euphemism and call him corrupt. That's what Chicago is and that's what any politician who comes from here is. As far as Blago escaping to Springfield to do his dirty work, two things: 1. Blago was seldom in Springfield; and 2. how did Springfield get so corrupt to begin with?
This writer is full of crap.
What nonsense from this Slate moron! He may claim it ended with Daly, but the selling of the Obama senate seat shows otherwise.
aka; Rahm Emanuel, Mayor, Chicago IL.
He's the guy who called Fox News "Un-American" and called for a boycott.
He blamed Arizona for the Gabby Gifford's shooting.
Weisberg is not somebody who's opinion counts for very much.
My question is this, where does Valerie Jarret come in?
Seems to me the author did not cover a complete picture of the Chicago-Style Politics and machines.
I’m OK with switching to “Kenyan Tribal Politics” if it is more accurate. :)
Rod Blagojevich - IL governor 2003-2009. Convicted on federal corruption charges including conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery.
George Homer Ryan, Sr. - IL governor 1999-2003. Convicted on federal charges of racketeering and fraud.
Daniel Walker - IL governor 1973-1977. Convicted on federal charges of bank fraud associated with actions after he left office.
Otto Kerner, Jr. - IL governor 1961-1968. Convicted on federal charges (17 counts) of bribery, conspiracy, perjury, and related charges.
Crime’s persistence in Chicago politics was documented in Sept. 7, 2006 by the Chicago Sun-Times, which reported that at least 79 current or former Illinois, Chicago or Cook County elected officials had been found guilty of a crime by judges, juries or their own pleas since 1972. The paper provided this tally of the tarnished: three governors, two other state officials, 15 state legislators, two congressmen, one mayor, three other city officials, 27 aldermen, 19 Cook County judges and seven other Cook County officials.
It’s not clear that anything changed after the 1970s at the state or local level. But this spokesman for the criminal Democrat machine is welcome to claim what he was ordered to report. Free speech is not necessarily honest speech.
This ludicrous article is a modern variation on Mayor Richard J. Daley’s standard defense when asked about organized crime in Chicago. Daley used to say that the Outfit wasn’t in the city any more; the Chicago “pleece” department had chased them all out... to the suburbs.
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