American Pharaoh
Dear Jacob,
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUponI really want to return to your point about Daley recognizing that municipal services are at the core of any successful municipal government. Cohen and Taylor seem to grudgingly acknowledge that Daley made extraordinary improvements to the city's basic services. I say "grudgingly" because of the way they attribute motive to the mayor. "It is just as likely that his furious efforts to clean and repair were a manifestation of his extraordinarily controlling personality," Cohen and Taylor tell us. While most people who knew him would certainly acknowledge that Daley had a controlling personality (incidentally, most successful elected chief executives seem to share that trait), does anyone really believe that personality explains Chicago's budget priorities? Cohen and Taylor go on by suggesting that if it isn't Daley's personality that explains his policies, then certainly "Daley swept and paved for political reasons." Improving city services was simply good politics, since it helped expand the patronage system. If Daley had spent the city's tax dollars on services without any visible or positive effect, then that would be a good reason for criticism. By Cohen and Taylor's reasoning, any elected official who pursues policies that solidify their political support has done something corrupt or evil.
Cohen and Taylor also seem surprised that services were reported to be better in the downtown business district and those wards with strong political attachments to the machine. In this regard, Daley is being criticized for being responsive to his constituents and understanding that city governments are dependent for most of their revenue on those who contribute most to the tax base. Cities do not have the luxury of engaging in serious redistributive policy if they want to remain fiscally stable, because they are weak players in the federal system. As most mayors now understand, the business community holds the trump card. When businesses choose to leave, the city's tax base is weakened. Unfortunately, the poor do not have that power. In this regard, Daley was a 1990s mayor in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, the standard for evaluating city governments is generally based on the efficiency and effectiveness of their housekeeping services (a term Daley coined) and responsiveness to the business community.
What is the relationship between government and politics? The political system should function in a way that keeps elected officials responsive to the demands of their citizenry. At the same time, elected officials have a responsibility to set a policy agenda that the public can reject or accept. Daley understood both the formal-legal system of government in the city of Chicago and the informal power that could be gained from a loyal and predictable electoral base. Cohen and Taylor suggest that Daley remained chair of the Cook County Democratic Party organization after he became mayor because it was the more powerful position. This point really demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of the relationship between the power of the machine and the power of the mayor's office. Daley understood that these were mutually reinforcing positions. The mayoralty provided direct access to the jobs, which were critical to the machine's patronage network. At the same time, patronage jobs provided bureaucratic accountability in Chicago, something that most other mayors did not have because of municipal employee unions and civil service laws. The party also gave Daley clout in the state capital and in Washington. Most other big city mayors had been left fighting a losing battle with the larger suburban delegations in their state legislatures.
Daley is also criticized by Cohen and Taylor for forging bonds with labor and supporting Bill Dawson's efforts to create a black machine. It is certainly true, as Cohen and Taylor point out, that Daley brought participants into Chicago's government only if they accepted the rules of machine politics. But why should this be grounds for criticism when it is the only way mayors can win in the political arena of America's great cities. It is far more amazing to me that Daley's coalition actually included labor and business, white ethnics, and blacks.
Daley's early support may have come from traditional machine patronage networks, but by the end of his mayoralty his electoral victories depended upon the citizens of Chicago who were satisfied with city services. I was involved in a survey conducted at the University of Chicago during the 1975 mayoral primary. Daley had serious independent opposition and won the primary by 56 percent of the vote. He later won the general election by 78 percent. It is hard not to interpret that number as a popular mandate. Only 20 percent of our sample reported that they or a family member were employed by Chicago or Cook County. The strongest determinant of support for Mayor Daley in the primary was satisfaction with the way the city works, and this was true for all racial and socio-economic groups. The findings are reported in the June 1983 issue of Urban Affairs Review.
I think we would both agree that Cohen and Taylor tell an incomplete story of Chicago during the Daley years and provide a one-dimensional picture of Richard Daley as mayor. Perhaps, had the title of their book been "Daley, Chicago, and the Question of Race in American Politics," it would have been easier to be more positive about their work. Certainly, the book is beautifully written and reflects serious research. As it stands, the authors' subtitle implies a broader project. "Mayor Richard J. Daley, His Battle for Chicago and the Nation" suggests a volume that would grapple with the broad questions of race and the economic decline of America's central cities. Despite their aspirations, Cohen and Taylor provide us with little insight into what was unique about Daley's Chicago as compared with other American cities and the extent to which Daley's regime made a difference to Chicago's economic viability.
Finally, I have been considering your characterization of Daley as an ethnic separatist who was most comfortable in his exclusionary neighborhood. Cohen and Taylor describe Daley's ideology as "flinty conservatism." I think that Daley was a New Deal liberal. He was a champion of the ethnic working class and made political concessions to blacks only as part of a political calculus. Daley, like the father of New Deal liberalism, Franklin Roosevelt, never had a real civil rights agenda.
I have really enjoyed our correspondence. I look forward to reading your continuing insightful analyses of American politics in Slate.
Warmest Regards,
Ester
This week, a discussion of American Pharaoh: Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation, by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor (click here to buy the book). Jacob Weisberg is Slate's chief political correspondent. Ester Fuchs is director of the Center for Urban Research and Policy at Columbia University and teaches at Barnard College. She is the author of Mayors and Money: Fiscal Policy in New York and Chicago (click here to buy it). 
What It Will Cost You To Deny Illegal Immigrants Health Insurance
Stupid Drug Story of the Week: NBC's Today Show Discovers Huffing
Can the Government Call God Jesus? What About Allah?
How Twilight Made Goth Fashion Mainstream
Is Disney's The Suite Life Making Your Child Into an Evil Lothario?
The Blind Side: Illegal Use of Sandra Bullock
Response from the authors:
We are the authors of American Pharaoh. We've been reading "The Book Club", and we have to say: the book Jacob Weisberg describes bears little relation to the one that we wrote.
The authors "never really tell us," Weisberg asserts, what they think of Daley. Jeez. The book is entitled "American Pharaoh," and we state plainly in the introduction why we call Daley that. We say that he did a tremendous amount to build Chicago up into the successful city it is today (Pharaoh as builder). And we say that he did it at the expense of blacks, by building racial segregation into the very concrete of the city (Pharaoh as oppressor). That seems like a pretty clear take on Daley. And, ultimately, a deeply critical one.
Race is at the center of our book--and it pains us that the two (white) writers in this exchange fail to see its centrality. We make a very serious accusation against Daley: that he was one of the greatest racial segregators in U.S. history. And, again in the introduction, we lay a very disturbing legacy at Daley's feet. We write:
The blacks we know who have read our book have had no trouble seeing the utter importance of race to the Daley story, or of appreciating what American Pharaoh adds to the debate. William Julius Wilson--Professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, and perhaps the nation's foremost scholar of race and class in Chicago--saw just what we were up to. He called the book "a tour de force" and said that he had never read a more compelling biography than our "brilliant" one of Daley.
Weisberg dismisses the book's important discussion of racial segregation in Chicago as "oft-told." But that's nonsense. Far too few Americans know this story. That white mobs of more than 5,000 turned out regularly on the South Side of Chicago to stop a few blacks from moving into their neighborhoods? That the U.S. Secretary of Education impounded millions of dollars in school aid to Chicago because Daley was segregating the public schools as intentionally as Gov. Wallace or Gov. Faubus? That Daley used his clout to get the money freed up--and forced President Johnson to fire the poor Secretary of Education? And that Martin Luther King brought the civil rights movement north to Chicago in 1966 and was utterly defeated by a devious Daley? Weisberg may know a lot of this because he's written a book that touches on it. But we can assure you that most intelligent, educated people we've talked to in the years we've worked on this book know little of this important chapter in America's racial history. And keep your eyes and ears open next Martin Luther King Day: the talk is all of Montgomery, Alabama and Albany, Georgia. The "oft-told" story of Chicago is rarely told.
It's unfortunate for your readers that this Book Club is a discussion between two people who both seem to take a dim view of our book. It would not have been hard to find greater diversity of opinion, since the overall reaction to American Pharaoh has been gratifyingly positive. (The four trade journals--Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Booklist--all praised it highly in starred reviews. The Wall Street Journal picked it as an Editor's Choice last week. And David Broder, reviewing it in the Chicago Tribune, called it "splendid.") It would also have been nice, in a book about race in Chicago, to have had at least one black person in on the discussion.
And a final point. Weisberg admits from the outset of this discussion that he comes to it with some biases. He mentions a few that really aren't (ancient history about his views about Daley and his family's). And he buries down below one that really is: his mother is now serving in the current Mayor Daley's cabinet. Weisberg seems to subscribe to the fashionable but wrong view that if you disclose a conflict it isn't a conflict. In fact, that his mother is closely aligned with Richard M. Daley--and draws a paycheck from him--is the sort of thing that might well affect his take on our book. American Pharaoh is very tough on Mrs Weisberg's boss's father--and on her boss himself. (We recount, for example, how Daley, Jr benefited from questionable court appointments handed out by machine judges.) Does Slate have any rules at all about conflict of interest? And was there really no-one without a parent working in Chicago City Hall available to participate in this discussion?
Weisberg promises us some "thoughts about the ways in which Daley was good for Chicago" in his next missive. Fine. Chicago is nearly half racial minorities these days. We sure hope Weisberg will endeavor to include blacks--and especially the tens of thousands of poor blacks living in Daley era high-rise projects--in the Chicago that Daley was "good for."
--Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor
(To reply, click here.)
To the authors of the book:
When Richard Daley ascended to Mayor's Office in the middle 50's he was faced with a horrendous situation of spreading urban blight, a non existent black middle class (this wasn't Baltimore), and increasing black poverty and social pathology that threatened to drive every white family out of the Chicago with the exception of those living along the Gold Coast. And it continued to get worse. He had to take actions that would at least temporarily stabilize the growing turmoil. I wonder what Cohen and Taylor would have done 40 years ago without the benefit of 20-20 hindsight they enjoy today. So here's the central question. Would these ever so enlightened writers have toughed it out at 34th and Indiana or 63rd and Woodlawn? Maybe they tell us in the book.
Today they can live in an integrated neighborhood, in large part because of the Daley policies.
--Epicuria
(To reply, click here.)
To the authors of the book:
What interests me is the extent to which Chicago seems to have done better than other cities. For one, they had a way of assembling a long-lasting governing coalition. Mega-projects were one result; fiscal discipline another. Were those amongst the reason for Chicago's better survival in the face of change? I would like to know if the dynasty has lasted because Chicago was doing fairly well for other reasons (retail & transportation base vs manufacturing, or whatever), making the Daleys an anachronism surviving because the forces of change were much weaker. Or if the dynasty itself helped Chicago cope with change and hence gave benefit as well as the clear harms. On the practical level of considering what lessons to draw for other times & places, did the Daleys in short do much good? Or did they survive only because Chicago in some other way was advantaged?
On the moral level, I never heard of anyone defending a "machine" as a good thing in itself. I would be surprised if anyone did. The racial discrimination is certainly a sufficient charge to tar the machine morally, but it is not necessary: there are many other charges available. The 1968 police riots are nearly enough by themselves. So I don't see the use in morally debunking that which has so little moral stature to begin with. But it would be interesting to learn if any of the machine's basic strategies had useful results, and if so, which ones and why. If you care to write a book about that, I may buy it.
--John Wernecken
(To reply, click here.)
Further Response from The Fray:
Though Daley played a factor in his city's survival, Chicago avoided decline because it was far more economically diverse than other "rust belt" cities. Unlike Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Cleveland, Chicago grew on the strength of transportation (Great Lakes portage and the railroad) and commerce (retail, wholesale, and finance) rather than heavy manufacturing alone. Certainly, the city produced many goods--meat, steel, and harvesters are the best known. And it was the populations that worked in these industries that suffered most during the downturn of the seventies. This is why the South Side is so downcast today; the good times left when the steel mills closed.
--Andrew W. Cohen
(To reply, click here.)
I was born and raised in Mayor Daley's neighborhood of Bridgeport in Chicago during most of Richard J. Daley's term in office. It is my opinion that if an analyst does not investigate and understand the inner workings of the forces within that environment, the tenor of the times and the will of the vast majority of people in the city, there is no room to critique how and why certain decisions had been made and why certain actions had been taken.
The seventies radicals clamored for government 'by the people'. Upon reflection, one might notice that the working class world that Mayor Daley represented was the vast majority of 'the people' as first or second generation immigrants with little or no formal education. He represented a city run by the blue collar working man and woman in the ethnic (nationality as well as race) neighborhoods and not the minority of 'elites' on the north shore or intellectuals in Hyde Park who assailed his pragmatic meat and potatoes philosophy. He was in office because the vast majority of the city's population wanted him there--for one reason or another. And like it or not, the city worked and still does.
The Mayor did the best he could within the context of the circumstances. I did not understand that until I grew up. Perhaps the Mayor's critics would do well to do the same--grow up that is.
--Helen Marie Guditis
(To reply, click here.)
I recommend future Daley biographers focus on his background as an accountant and what impact having an Accountant-Mayor has on a city. So many of the political moves made by Mayor Daley are rooted in a mastery of budgeting and decision-making based on budgeting. When viewed with this in mind, his mystery and manipulation often become logical and sensible budgeting decisions. What other mayor had such a firm grasp on this vital political function?
Political biographers have painted a portrait of Daley using their skills and knowledge as political historians and journalists. But Daley's story is more than a story about a politician. It is also the story about how power is attained when one fully understands big city budgeting and uses it to advantage. Chicago's success has a lot to do with smart budgeting. The political turf battles often occurred when Daley spun the costs of maintaining big city government off to the surrounding governments in Cook County and Illinois, while keeping the decision-making within the city. Smart. Very Smart. Unlike New York, Chicago no longer has the costs of prisons, hospitals, transportation systems or housing, yet the city has the final word on all these expensive public budget-busters. This is only one example where Daley's accounting expertise and position as Chicago's mayor created a new political landscape.
--Al
(To reply, click here.)
Now that we've seen a smattering of commentary from apologists for the corrupt and racist Daley regime I guess we can stop being mystified at people in other countries who don't get rid of their corrupt and autocratic governments, disregarding the high ideals of people in the U.S. I guess we can expect new reassessments of Mussolini, the Shah of Iran, and Robert Moses in the same vein.
--Jack McCullough
(To reply, click here.)