Personal Asides: Somebody Tell Me What Bush Sees in Daley?

That’s right: I wish somebody would fill me in. Undeniably the mayor has ordered the beautification of the city—but at a cost that enriches his personal army of supporters. The idea that a patronage army is required to govern effectively is ridiculous. I’m been guilty of propagating that mistaken view in my early, formative years (during my 40s and 50s). Why, the very state I served as a top aide to a governor, Minnesota, has been governed very effectively through echelons of Republican and Democratic-Farmer-Labor governors with only a relatively tiny crew of policy appointees, the remainder civil servants. This nation gets along very well and presidents are enabled to push their programs effectively with 1,300 or so political appointees (of which I was one) and 3 million civil servants.

Yet the idea has gained currency in the city that only political favoritism can enable this city to run effectively: that’s because since Anton Cermak the view has triumphed over logic that only this city can be run by feudalistic measures. To an extent both Daleys have been the beneficiaries of a large-scale hoodwink to that effect. It’s nonsense. We can have every bit as effective a municipal government as mythology maintains Daley has given us with probably only 150 employees who are designated as political because of their policy involvement. Ridding Chicago of the fat patronage system and supplanting it with a clean civil service should be the main agenda for reformers. And I don’t mean a civil service that should be prostituted by political employees who serve political ends with a wink and a shrug. As a matter of fact, a very left-leaning civil service in New York City was overcome by a determined mayor named Rudy Giuliani and a handful of political employees who enforced his will on a shapeless mass.

Why in the world this president, whom I very much admire because of his willingness to hold firm positions on an array of issues against an overwhelming tide of liberal media current…why this president should believe that Richard M. Daley is the best mayor in the nation…why this president should behave like a lovesick calf or mooning schoolboy about Daley is the biggest unsolved mystery about him—one, evidently, that the media have not pursued or he is unable to answer. Perhaps it’s something about presidents. Richard Nixon, who pathologically envied so much about the Kennedys and the Democrats, behaved like a tongue-tied suitor concerning John Connally who had been shot with JFK, even to the extent of thinking of putting him on the national ticket and pushing him for president. At least Bush isn’t that moonstruck about Daley—but he’s pretty bad.

Does the president realize that on the very day he dined with Daley, his top United States Attorney had served indictments on two of the mayor’s patronage people while issuing warnings to “stay tuned”? Aside from the urgent need to improve the tone of government here, what in the world does Bush think Daley has done for Bush? Daley collaborated with Illinois’ all-time worst governor, George Ryan, to carry Illinois for Al Gore in 2000. Nothing he did in 2004 could be remotely seen as friendly to Bush. If anyone who reads this Blog has the faintest idea of what has prompted this, so far as I can see, unrequited love affair, please let me know.

Flashback: The Minnesota Legislature of 1957 Tussles with the Democratic Governor to Little Effect as Humphrey Manages a Comeback—Yet Slowly but Surely, a Republican Becomes Mayor of Minneapolis

[More memoirs for my kids and grandchildren

Having elected one state constitutional officer to join with a holdover, the Republicans, controlling the state treasurer and state auditor and managing a slow but perceptible return, went to the biennial legislative session in the minority in the House but controlling the Senate. My job was to run a very modest facsimile of what the national Republicans were doing with the Democratic Congress—setting up a publicity bureau for members, seeing their photos were taken with constituents and managing a daily radio interview with lawmakers. The GOP bought time on WCCO radio (CBS) for a daily fifteen minute drive-time interview which I ran. In those days—unlike now—major stations allowed the political parties to purchase time even at strategically important slots when the legislature was in session. The DFL didn’t bother expending any money for this purpose because it had the governor who could command the airways and a host of constitutional offices: attorney general and secretary of state notably.

The more senior Republicans who controlled the state Senate disdained the party radio program; they were run by a chillingly autocratic group who represented what the party was always accused of: aristocracy but at the same time were decidedly and laudably thrifty on spending. Since then I have always wondered at a species of Republican lawmaker who emerges with control of spending and taxes. They very much resemble the late Robert Taft of Ohio: authoritative, brilliant, cold even to the point of haughtiness. Such a person was Gordon Rosenmeir of Little Falls, acknowledged leader of conservatives, authority on the law and a paragon of fiscal integrity; another was Donald Wright of Minneapolis, chairman of the committee on taxation. I asked both to be on my program which would amount to free time to publicize their activities.

“Young man,” said Sen. Rosenmeir, a wealthy corporate lawyer, then fifty years old, “the work of the Senate is too complex to try to elucidate in fifteen minutes time.” Sen. Wright just waved me off. Imagine. Too complex to explain in fifteen minutes.

Accordingly, I decided to feature younger and newly elected lawmakers on my program as well as some progressive Republicans who were eager to be publicized. Of a good number of them, one was outstanding—State Senator Elmer L. Andersen (no relation to the former governor named C. Elmer Anderson who had been our losing candidate for secretary of state). This Elmer Andersen was stunning.

He had been born in Chicago in 1908, had lost both parents to pneumonia during the great flu epidemic in World War I. He moved to Muskegon, Michigan where he was reared by an aunt. He landed a job in a glue factory, believe it or not, owned by the H. B. Fuller Company where he worked on the assembly line, then was transferred as a promotion to the company’s headquarters in St. Paul. He became its top-rated salesman, went to the University of Minnesota at night, got promoted to vice president, then general manager. He married well, was elevated to president of Fuller when he was barely forty. In addition to being a success in business, Elmer had three goals: one to be a state senator, the second to own a farm and the third to be a journalist. He became a state senator, representing the suburbs of St. Paul and, by age 45, a multi-millionaire, bought a farm. The journalist part he had not realized when I met him.

In the conservative Republican state senate, Elmer L. Andersen was a distinct anomaly. It had been usual with those born in poverty and tempered by hardship who became successes to extol the individualist life and idealize entrepreneurship. While he was undeniably a great entrepreneur, this Andersen became immersed in social welfare and, as chairman of the Welfare committee, gave the state an enormous reputation for progressivism. He had the ability to get along with the Old Guard and yet wangle out of them appropriations for his projects which included a nationally-known center for the treatment of emotionally disturbed and psychotic children. He instituted the first metropolitan planning council in the nation in the 1940s, linking the goals of the suburbs to the needs of the inner city. A gifted writer and eloquent speaker (who struggled manfully to overcome a terrible stutter), a brilliant administrator yet dedicated Republican leader, he seemed in 1957 to be head and shoulders over all in the party.

At the moment, Elmer Andersen sought attention for his legislation. I put him on the air so often that I began to be criticized by the Senate’s Old Guard to whom I responded that perhaps they had better wise up and use the party’s free radio services as well. Some did. I even inveigled Sen. Rosenmeier to deign to come to my studios in the Capitol basement to broadcast—but primarily because he feared that liberal Andersen was gaining so much attention that he would one day become governor (a fear that was realized).

Another state senator of progressive mien who loved to get on the radio with me was Albert Quie (whose name was pronounced “quee” which is Norwegian means pregnant heifer. Quie whose name proved a political handicap for him because even most Norwegians didn’t know how to pronounce it, was a moderately wealthy farmer in his early 30s, with a crew cut and a former Navy pilot in World War II. He was also feared by the Old Guard which worried that he would try to use the radio to his own effect, to run for Congress or maybe governor (a fear that, again, was realized as he became a congressman and later governor). But neither would ascend the steps right away. Nineteen fifty-seven was a year where DFL governor Orville Freeman struggled head-on with the conservative Senate. He faced a reelection contest in 1958 which some people believed could spell his doom.

But Hubert Humphrey was back in the saddle, having repaired the rupture over the presidential primary of 1956, and he had plans for his party that were exciting.

First, Humphrey looked at his colleague, Republican U. S. Senator Edward Thye, a Stassen compatriot, and saw a man who could easily be beaten. In his sixties and a farmer, Thye was ill-educated which was of little concern since most Minnesotans of his age were. But Thye tried to make up for it by terrible affection, by using big words he didn’t fully understand and to which he applied in terrible malapropisms. Once a plain farmer, he went thoroughly eastern in his clothes and affected pronunciation, even to the extent of putting on a kind of high-brow eastern seaboard accent. Aware of the extent his affections were hurting him but determined to show his stature as a Senator, particularly eager not to be shown up by Humphrey, Thye was a great trouble. For a time his case work and constituent service was lagging, but he hired a tremendously capable administrative assistant, Robert A. Forsythe, who perfected constituent service to a high gloss working in tandem with the Eisenhower administration—to a point where Thye was out-pointing Humphrey in that area. Still, Thye’s problems were caused by himself, in qualities no one, not even the ingenious Bob Forsythe, could rectify.

It was at that time that Humphrey looked around and decided that the old era of anti-Catholic bigotry in Minnesota had ended and that Catholics, whether they knew it or not, would be excited if one of their number were to run for the Senate. Minnesota’s history had been geared to Protestant accession by politicians, analysts believing that Catholics would drag down a ticket greatly, hearkening back to the presidential campaign of Al Smith. Humphrey knew better. He privately encouraged Congressman Eugene McCarthy of St. Paul to run for the Senate but was careful not to dissuade the wealthy Eugenie Anderson of Red Wing, an early ambassador to Denmark and heir to a fortune that had been built up by her late husband’s father who invented puffed wheat and puffed rice by blowing them up with a makeshift cannon, a process he later sold for many millions to Quaker Oats.

Mrs. Anderson wanted to be the first woman Democratic senator and had a right to expect her credentials would top McCarthy’s who was a mere Congressman. She also had lots of dough. Humphrey privately went to the very man in the country who had an interest in seeing Catholics do well in politics—Joseph P. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Kennedy saw to it that McCarthy received funding to make the run for the nomination in expectation that if an Irish Catholic would do well in Minnesota, the case could be all the easier made for his son John to run for president. That battle was to come down the road. I yearned to run a campaign against McCarthy whom I knew but as the only Republican Catholic in the GOP bunch I thought I might supply expertise to help Thye. But then there came a great crisis of a sort for me, which was entirely of my doing and for which I fully expected to pay a great price.

Personal Asides: State Sen. Jim DeLeo (D-Chicago), Assistant Senate Majority Leader and Paul Caprio, Director-Family PAC on Sunday’s “Shootout”…Yet Another Switch on the County Board with the Jesse Jackson’s Aligning Behind Bobbi Steele and more...

Sunday’s Shootout.

Sunday’s WLS-AM “Political Shootout” will pair State Senator Jim DeLeo (D-Chicago), assistant Senate majority leader with Paul Caprio, conservative movement strategist and director-Family PAC. That’s at 8 p.m. this Sunday.

County Board Dem Switch.

The old order changeth on the Cook county Board presidency. Once the job belonged to party regulars: John Stroger, George Dunne, Dan Ryan, Dick Ogilvie et al. Now the post is about to fall to the influence of black movement leaders, the Jesse Jackson’s and Rep. Danny Davis, who have declared for Commissioner Bobbi Steele while old regular war-horse John Daley decides not to bid for interim board chairman. Is the transition from regulars pol Stroger to one supported by movement leaders, bad? I don’t think so, particularly. Indeed, it’s hopeful because movements are far more malleable than static political forces which don’t represent change. Movements are far more dynamic, more democratic, more susceptible to change. This change should be celebrated! I would think that an accession of Bobbi Steele to the interim presidency and indeed the Democratic nomination would be bad news for the Republicans’ Tony Peraica. Maybe I’m wrong. Your views solicited.

Stylistic Change in Chicago Journalism.

Leave it to the astute David Brooks, the New York Times’ token conservative guy (neo-con, actually), one of the brightest analysts in journalism, to mark the changes in Chicago newspapering which this city’s writers haven’t been sufficiently aware of to note. Brooks, in yesterday’s Times, pointed out the difference which this Blog had earlier registered. It is not long since Mike Royko died, but in his era newspapering recorded the gritty workaday style of the blue-collars and patronage hacks. Now with middle class affluence and the growth of the suburbs, both so-called major newspapers reflect the trends of affluent, college-educated classes. That’s with only one exception which Brooks failed to note: John Kass of the Tribune is the only residual member of the working press to keep faith with the working class Chicagoans. Who else is there? Debra Pickett? Lynn Sweet? Richard Roeper, the oldest surviving 20s swinger kid-type who is in his 40s without the guts to get married?

McSweeney.

When this political season started, the smart money was on Peter Roskam to capture the Hyde seat for sure and David McSweeney to be a long-shot. Roskam still is a good bet to win but he does have a tough go against Tammy Duckworth, the legless female ex-helicopter pilot who was critically wounded in Iraq: but fortunately she is veering to the left with a rapidity that puts her out of the district (not only geographically but philosophically). But McSweeney has captured state-wide attention with his unpragmatic, term-limited tough-minded conservatism. Does the addition of a third party candidate help him? Probably not as much as many think. The candidate is so far left as to notch only a few points off Melissa Bean. But with the changing tide in favor of Republicans anent immigration and the fatalistic loser stand the Democrats are taking on “cut and run” from Iraq, GOP fortunes are definitely improving. McSweeney, though, has the work ethic and luck that marks him a winner—and a leader in the next Congress along the lines of Tom Coburn, all the more so because McSweeney has embraced term limits which insulates him from the temptation to be a careerist.

Chicago Priests Coffee Klatsch Reveals Wide Differences in Seminary Training Between the Old Days and Now. Did Relaxed Discipline Produce the Permissiveness We Have Now?

[A recent story from the nation’s oldest Catholic weekly newspaper, The Wanderer].

By Thomas F. Roeser

CHICAGO—Not long ago, I was a layman mouse in the corner as a group of Chicago priests discussed the structure of the archdiocese which, compared to the era of George Cardinal Mundelein, appears to be governed so loosely as to resemble a rope of sand. Given that I had nothing to say, merely observed and changed the names to protect the innocent, I was asked to return to another coffee klatsch—this time with an expanded membership.

The subject was the state of seminary training—contrasting the discipline of a bygone era and the flaccid tolerance of today. Again the names are fictionalized, although the views are not.

The group, ranging in age from 34 to 78 with the median age in the fifties, met in the assisted living quarters of an elderly priest, retired and in a wheel-chair, Fr. Desmond McInerney, 78. He gloried in telling the group the routine the seminarians followed when he attended St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein.

“Don’t regard this as a war story or an exaggerated yarn to impress you that the snow was much deeper when I was a boy,” he said in a voice that had a hoarse quaver to it. “Old Cardinal Mundelein had long gone when I left Quigley [the pre-divinity minor seminary] and came to the seminary in the late forties and early fifties but his ghost lived on. His successor, Cardinal [Samuel] Stritch carried on the same drill. A U.S. flag and the papal banner were flown whenever this Prince of the Church was in residence. Everybody followed a regimen based on a military drill: we found it difficult to find a few minutes during the day for un-programmed activity. We had to wear a Roman cassock, buttoned from head to toe with a collar. In the winter we wore a zimarra, a coat that looked very much like the cadets at West Point wore. That was a vestige of the Mundelein era: Mundelein had been considered for West Point but he chose the priesthood instead. But he made sure when he became archbishop that seminarians hued to the military line.”

“Far different than when I went there in 1964,” said a middle aged Fr. Richard McGuinness. “I began that year and was ordained twelve years later, in 1976. After Quigley there was the Niles college seminary, affiliated with Loyola, now called St. Joseph’s seminary still affiliated with Loyola.”

“God help us, ” commented another oldster, Fr. Casmir Stoupolski, as he stirred his coffee. “--given what Loyola has become.”

“If I could finish--,” said Fr. McGuinness with affectation of sarcasm. “Niles college was followed by four years in the major seminary at Mundelein. Let me tell old-timers like Fr. McInerney this: We didn’t have to go to bed at night; we didn’t have to get up in the morning. Not long ago I challenged several of my classmates to name one rule—one rule—that we had. I can’t remember any.”



“What about the Ten Commandments?” rasped the white-haired Fr. McInerney from his wheel-chair.



“We rarely heard even about them, Father. We were not required to pray the Hours or go to Mass except perhaps on Wednesday. I daresay every major seminary was similar. Interestingly enough, men, someone would have to calculate from the list the archdiocese has handed out how many priests who skipped [left the priesthood either by resignation or were pulled due to problems] went to the older more rigid seminary. I’ll bet right now that as many or more went to the old seminary.”

“That’s rubbish,” interrupted Fr. McInerney. “I’ll have more to say about that when you finish.”

“Fair enough,” said Fr. McGuinness. “Perhaps the old structure of discipline was an element but I rather suspect that there was a longstanding network of problem priests who in key roles in the archdiocese recruited and groomed like-minded men whom they sensed would lean their way. And they corrupted them! To tell you the truth, it may well go back as far as St. Peter Damian [bishop and monk who lived from 1007 to 1072 who preached against laxity in the Church].”



They laughed uneasily.

“Of course problem priests have held sway since about your time and until today—but my point is that these potential problem people—the likely bad apples—were weeded out in my time by the very regimentation, which I insist was very good,” said the old priest. “Look—Mundelein was right. The priesthood should be regarded as a military life. Listen to this: we had to get up every morning at 5:25 a.m. and would have to be in the chapel at 10 minutes to six for morning prayer. Then after morning prayer we’d have meditation for a half-hour. At 6:30 there’d be Mass. Mass would be over at about 7 a.m. and we’d spend fifteen minutes in thanksgiving after that. We’d go to breakfast at 7:15.”

“I don’t believe--,” said Fr. Michael Moore.

“I’m not through yet! After breakfast we’d have a short time to regroup until 8 a.m. Then we’d have to go to our room. . By 8:55 we’d have to be in the lecture hall. We’d be in class to 10. From 10:15 to 10:45 we’d be in our rooms. Class would resume at 11 to 11:45. From 11:45 to noon we’d be in the chapel for what was called particular examen.”

“What?” asked Fr. John O’Neill, the youngest at age 34.

“You wouldn’t know what that means, my son, because it’s Latin,” said the ancient priest acidly. “Look it up somewhere. Then from noon to 12:15 p.m. there’d be a break.”

“Nice of them,” said Fr. Moore.

“We treasured those fifteen minutes, let me tell you! Twelve-fifteen was lunch which was hurried so that we could work in a visit to the chapel to be completed by 1 p.m. From 1 to 1:30 we had free time. From 1:30 to 2 we studied in our rooms. Class resumed at 2 and lasted to 3:55. From 4 to 5 we could take off our cassocks, play a bit of basketball or swim. From 5:15 to 6 we had chapel. Six p.m. was dinner. Six-thirty, a visit to the chapel. From 6:45 to 7:15 p.m. we had free time. From 7:15 to 9 we had to study—and I mean study because the academic work was rigorous. From 9 to 9:30 p.m. we were back in the chapel. By 9:30 p.m. we had returned to our rooms and lights out at 9:45 p.m. when we were so exhausted we fell immediately to sleep. No time for morally corrosive thoughts there. You tell me whether or not that wasn’t good not just for the mind and body but the soul. You see, the potential problem priests to whom Fr. McGuinness refers who were active corrupting the younger ones in his era, had been weeded out with that regimen. And I must say it was an exhausting day, exhausting years, but the military style prepared me for an active life in the priesthood and I never regretted the schedule.”

“There’s no doubt,” said Fr. Moore, “that old George Mundelein believed the old adage of an idle—what is it?”

“Idle time is the devil’s workshop,” said Fr. McGuinness. “There’s much to be said for that. Let me ask you, Father” addressing Fr. McInerney, “whether there were cautionary strictures about what used to be referred to as particular friendships or--.”

“Not just particular friendships, by which was meant other young men,” said Fr. McInerney. “But—and this was more healthy—even more stress was placed against not putting ourselves in positions with attractive young women, perhaps girl friends of our sisters. Our summer vacations were usually taken up by our recruitments as Andy Frain ushers at sporting events, where again we wore uniforms. Our holiday vacations were spaced differently from those of other colleges so we didn’t fraternize much. But even more than that, there was an attitude inculcated which I particularly valued and have never seen or heard since those days until I found those thoughts in a book that has just been published.”

Everyone seemed to say at the same time: Really!

“Yes, really,” said the old priest. “It’s really priceless. I have it here. I like it very much but for the garish title: After Asceticism: Sex, Prayer and Deviant Priests, published by The Linacre Institute. The Linacre Institute, let me say, is I believe an adjunct to the Catholic Medical Association here in Chicago and was founded to provide research on sexual ethics and the treatment of disturbed priests. It’s head is a physician I value highly as a friend, Dr. Eugene Diamond. You should all send for it. Let’s see, the address is Catholic Medical Association, Box 214, Oak Park, Illinois 60303 and its phone number is listed here as (708) 383-5353.”

“I hope you’re not saying that we are disturbed!” said Fr. Moore. “That we’re all meeting together and are of the same authenticist mind is proof enough that we are not!”

“Come off it, Mike,” said Fr. McGuinness, “just because you’re the baby robin here doesn’t mean you’re not goofy.”

Fr. Moore’s smile vanished. “I really sort of resent that, you know.”

“Oh come on,” said the old priest. “Half the joy of life among priests in my time has been kidding! Can’t you take a little ribbing?”

The young priest reddened and grinned a bit.

“Listen to this book,” said Fr. McInerney. “I quote: Religious devotion nourishes the psychological state of hope and hope is the indispensable support in the arduous task of maintaining chastity…Sensuality is the fermentation for loneliness and confusion and…persons with elevated sex drive, including the homosexually inclined, are particularly susceptible to sexual preoccupation and other forms of sensuality. The enemies of hope, and therefore the enemies of chastity, are found in the contrary states of despair, presumption and spiritual sloth. The attacks on hope are advanced by sensuous indulgence in food and other creature comforts and, because of the great strength of its pleasure, by sex. This, gentlemen, is a general paraphrase of the lessons on chastity that were taught in my years at Mundelein—and which, I daresay, have not been taught in yours.”

“Who is the author?” asked Fr. McGuinness.

“A man I know quite well, actually. Dr. Patrick Guinan of Chicago who is not only a renowned surgeon but a fine Catholic, an authenticist. In fact he volunteered to go to Vietnam as a medical doctor and was there from 1969 to `73. Now if we had clout with the Cardinal or his chancellor, the man who was christened Jimmy not James Lago—and whose twin brother we read in a laudatory article in the Tribune was named Timmy (official names Jimmy and Timmy)--we could get this into the seminary. But since we don’t have clout—since we as pastors have been term-limited by our liberal fellows while liberal favorites have been kept on in pastorates in perpetuity such as our esteemed colleague Fr. Pfleger who has threatened to start his own religion if he were to be removed from St. Sabina’s—well, all we can do is try to send copies to seminarians we know and hope they read it. Anybody can get it by going to www.amazon.com ”

“You’re really in tune with the times!” said Fr. Moore. “Amazon and all! Rather catchy title. If I put it in the reading rack at my church it’d be gone in a minute—with that title, After Asceticism: Sex, Prayer and Deviant Priests.”

“Which gives me an idea,” said the old priest. “I don’t know if they read books any more at Mundelein, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to slip a few copies into the library out there. With so much time on their hands as you have pointed out, Dick [referring to Fr. McGuinness] we could make a few converts to chastity in no time if they started reading it.”

“Great idea!” said Fr. Moore. “I’ll smuggle a few copies out there, knock on their door and when they appear say, `pssssst: I’ve got a book here you might like to read—about sex, prayer and deviant priests. Don’t tell them where you got it. Goodbye!”

They all laughed, looked at their watches and were gone leaving the ancient priest, sitting in his wheel-chair, smiling broadly at the thought.

Personal Asides: Emanuel’s Troubles Began with Dean’s Run for National Democratic Chairman…Moderate Party Candidate Getting on the Ballot Should…Should…Elect McSweeney…A Film of No Redeeming Social Value is Still Fun to Watch: “The Devil Wears Prada”

Emanuel

Rahm Emanuel’s career as an expectant national Democratic leader may well be torpedoed by an event he had nothing to do with—the strategy devised by Howard Dean that led to his election as Democratic National Chairman, key Democrats told this Blog. Dean deduced that he could not get elected chairman without the support of Democrats in red states, since the blue-state regulars were on to his radical peace program which had been repudiated in the primaries. Therefore, Dean cut deals with Democrats in outlying states which never can score Democratic presidential victories i.e. Utah, Nebraska, states like that. He promised to bring funding to these outlying states to assist their campaigns, something canny Democrats know is a waste of money. These red states helped elect Dean and he’s bringing home the bacon, spending monies in all fifty. Emanuel, who is not beloved by this Blog, is nevertheless right in arguing that the money should be pooled for use in states the Democrats have a shot of winning. But Dean says no. Thereupon, Emanuel knows he can’t do very well without sufficient resources particularly for political organization. Therefore, wisely, he has said that he will not seek a second term as chairman of the House Democratic Congressional Committee. Good news for Republicans that the flaky Dean has stymied what ordinarily would be a good strategy…

Moderate

Liberals call him moderate but he’s anything but. Bill Scheurer is evidently going to stay on the ballot in the 8th district congressional race. An outspoken foe of the Iraq War, Scheurer has evidently weathered the storm and is the third choice for Congress, rating with Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean and Republican David McSweeney. Why state Democrats didn’t see that Scheurer got knocked off the ballot is anybody’s guess. It may well be a breakdown described in the above paragraph in the national Democratic party. This wouldn’t have happened if Rahm Emanuel were alive.

The Devil, You Say, Wears Prada

It’s a film that’s highly entertaining, granted it has a few deleterious scenes but even they are modulated: The Devil Wears Prada. Already feminists are weighing in, saying that the intrigue of high fashion world behind the scenes of what is meant to be Vogue magazine, makes the struggle for female dominance trivial. I say yes and the hell with it. Meryl Streep, my favorite actress, is memorable as the domineering editor who shows us that being sixty can also make a woman beautiful. But Streep does not command the film alone: I particularly liked her assistant, actress Anne Hathaway, who took the job as assistant at Vogue in order to build experience for a later post at The New Yorker. Probably the most engrossing act is put on (I hope it’s put on) by the resident gay swish, Streep’s second in command, Stanley Tucci, whose pungent observations are infallibly correct as he rescues Hathaway from frumpiness by scouring the magazine’s huge wardrobe room for a Chanel jacket and boots and a Kristina Ti skirt.

Understand the film means nothing but is a-swirl in mascara-running tears, clicking stiletto heels, silver and black Mercedes sports sedans and the spectacle of clawing feline cats scratching out their eyes over clothes by Bill Blass, Dolce & Gabanna as well as Prada. Lillian and I went on a boring July 3rd afternoon in which I devoured only one small box of unbuttered popcorn. We both enjoyed it but it had as much intellectual nutrient as the popcorn. But go see it and tell me what you think.

Flashback: Minnesota Republicans Concentrate on the Governorship With Humphrey in Temporary Decline…Judd Explores Running for the Senate…Augie Shows How it Was Done in the 19th Century…and Fritz Enters the Scene

[More memoirs from fifty years ago—1956--for my kids and grandchildren]

With Hubert Humphrey desperately striving to re-unite his fractionated party which he divided in the 1956 presidential primary by endorsing Adlai Stevenson and trying to ram him down the throats of his grassroots workers, we thought it would be advisable to concentrate on trying to elect a Republican governor against Orville Freeman, Humphrey’s cohort who had been trying to build a boss-type organization in a state that deeply resented those tactics. Also to take advantage of Humphrey’s weakness and try to find a good Republican candidate to oppose him in 1960, when Humphrey would try for his third term.

The governorship was too big a meal for us to swallow in 1956 although Augie Andresen gave us a hot tip which we used to effect. Augie was riding in his car turning the pages in his hometown newspaper, the Red Wing Republican Eagle when he came upon an AP dispatch of a speech Governor Orville Freeman made in the hard-pressed northern part of the state. He was stressing the hardship of the farmers caused by the Ezra Taft Benson program and in a moment of complete excess pronounced that state farmers were living in a condition of “misery and terror.” Augie knew farmers better than any other group and told me that this was an insult, not unlike comparing U. S. farmers to serfs in the USSR. I was doubtful that the comparison was that strong but we turned out a speech for our candidate, Ancher Nelsen, condemning the quote. The reaction among farmers were terrific. “Misery and terror” seemed to them to equate them with the underclass of peasantry. Emboldened by the response, we started to drive it home and mention it in every speech. Freeman started to back up. Once again, Augie Andresen was astute. He helped us in the southern part of the state by using the quote.

Good as it was, it wasn’t enough. Farmers were definitely hurting and not impressed with the Ezra Taft Benson program. With Nelsen stuck in the ratings, I did several other things: one of which was to visit with Congressman Walter Judd, now on the upswing in the 5th district, to see if he would be interested in running against Hubert Humphrey in 1960. It turned out he was. Judd’s predicament was that he would always have a tough go in Minneapolis which was growing in labor union intensity but he might very well be more popular across the state with his international reputation as medical missionary to China, a humanitarian and an expert on foreign policy. It turned out that he was definitely interested in seeking the Senate and I was thrilled. Here was the one candidate who could debate Humphrey tro a draw. But he had to adjust in order to be a statewide candidate.

I suggested that now was the time to start distancing himself from the Benson farm program which he supported as an urban congressman but which he needed to amplify into a more liberal program if he were to run across the state. Then I came cheek to jowl with Judd’s intransigence in support of principle. He said no, he believed in the Benson free market approach and that he would stand with it do or die. I said, “Com’on, doctor, can’t you give a little bit? You can continue with your admirable foreign policy stand which would be a tremendous contrast to Humphrey’s ultra-pragmatic foreign policy—but can’t you give us a little leeway?” He said, “I beg your pardon?” and acted as if I had invited him to visit a bordello. But I left with the attitude that even so, espousing the Benson program and all, he’d be a terrific candidate. And in a presidential year, given that we would have a good candidate and the Democrats a bad one, Judd could win. That would preclude Humphrey being the nominee for president which would deliver Minnesota hogtied for a favorite son. But I had the idea Humphrey wouldn’t make the cut. I certainly didn’t imagine that John Kennedy would, but I thought perhaps Stuart Symington of Missouri would be a candidate. Far wrong.

With Nelsen seemingly going nowhere running for governor, I turned the media over to a subordinate and went downstate to see how Augie, my favorite, was doing. I knew he would be doing fine but I hankered to savor his rural wisdom. I’m glad I went. This was an invaluable opportunity to see the last of the old time great Congressmen campaigning person-to-person in a style that had characterized House campaigns for one hundred and fifty years including the one waged by one Abraham Lincoln of Springfield, Illinois. There were very few differences. Augie did use television but very sparingly (and inexpensively). He had still photos of himself with a recorded voice-over. No films whatsoever. He had a few radio spots where an announcer read his bio and a few words. Otherwise the campaign he waged that year was entirely town-by-town. And the way he did it was intriguing.

He had the trunk of his second-hand used car (not his but one he used) filled with black and white placards reading “Reelect August H. Andresen”—catchy title, huh?—with a photo of him taken probably twenty years ago when his black hair was truly of his natural color (the black hair he had now was dyed, effecting a marked contrast with a weather-beaten old face with wrinkles like a road map). He had a quanity of handout cards for distribution saying the same thing with the same photo. He stacked the placards in the trunk and, with a driver armed with a map, headed down the highways with no definite schedule. He would come into town and drive to the main street, where they would park it and Augie would hightail it down the street, handing out his small cards to whomever he met. Quickly the word shot around town that he was in town. He would head for the central part of time—probably either a drug store or hardware. He would amble in and the proprietor would get excited, introducing him to all his customers. Quickly the word would spread through the town that Augie was in Finlayson’s Hardware Store so lots of people would crowd in there. Then Augie would conduct a colloquy with farmers and small businessmen about the condition of the country and the Congress.

As people jammed around him, some of shorter stature standing on their tip-toes to catch a glimpse of him, they would hear first-hand his views of the farm economy, how he was dissatisfied with Benson but not with Eisenhower…him ranging the spectrum through farm policy, economics, foreign policy (at which he was very good, by the way) and our challenge with the Soviet Union.

Then came the important part for Augie. He said to the proprietor that he had come to ask permission to put his placard in the store window. He asked very deferentially if he would be allowed to do so. The proprietor blushed and said, “of course!” Then Augie asked the proprietor and the crowd for their opinion as to where to put it up. Should he put it in the front window near, say, the other placards announcing the forthcoming speakers at Rotary? No, the proprietor would say, it has too much competition. Why don’t you put it on the other side of the front window? But, a woman would say, that’s where all the people look so the best place is with the other placards.

Someone else said, why don’t we take down the other placards and just put Augie’s there? No, Augie would say, that wouldn’t be fair. The discussion would go on for at least 20 minutes. I thought it was a terrible waste of time—but I was wrong. The townspeople were hugely involved in helping him put the placard where it would best be seen. And the word swiftly got out about the town meeting in the hardware store or pharmacy.

With the argument unresolved, Augie would walk slowly to his car at the curb, get out his key and open the trunk. He had about 1,500 placards in the truck which no one could see, but he took one out and held it lovingly in his hand as if it were a priceless artifact. Then he would gingerly carry it into the store where the owner would receive it tenderly. Augie said that on reflection he would leave the decision as to where to put the placard with the proprietor and the audience. He would then doff his fedora to the women, bid all goodbye and leave with the admonition, “Don’t let the sixth of November be the last of August!” It was the line they had waited to hear and had heard since his first race in 1934.

All the time he had runners racing through other stores and posting the signs with much less deliberation—but Augie made this central store the focal point. Then he’d go to the towns’ weekly newspaper, pull up a chair, cough up an asthmatic lunger and visit with the country editor, tilting the chair back and shoving the fedora to the back of his head as he would give the editor an inside view of the Congress which the editor would scribble down as the photographer would crouch and take a photo of him in the editor’s office.

There were no press releases. Augie hated them and thought they would give his campaign a canned effect, which of course they would. The question was, of course, were press releases more efficient—dropping one off town-by-town? I thought they were but Augie calculated that it was far more beneficial—and more conducive to better coverage—if he would do things his way. Frankly, the old gent was right for a press release would not have fit this icon from a bygone age.

At my insistence, Augie would add the radio station and consented to do an interview either on tape or live with the station manager or news director. He had not considered doing this until I got there but he was glad he did when as we were driving around, he would hear himself expounding on agriculture. He would move his lips silently to himself as he heard his voice and his face showed that a bit of ego was coming through the calculated humility. As that was the beginnings of television coverage, he would allow me to take him to the two stations there were in the district—in Rochester and Austin. I had called ahead and the news directors would film him or put him on live. Actually, to my amazement, Augie came across very well on television—just as good as Everett Dirksen did. Television respects one who is entirely himself and doesn’t put on airs and Augie was too wise an old man to try to make of himself something he wasn’t.

That was the beginning part of Augie’s campaign. The windup on the last week before election was a 14-car caravan with automobiles festooned with Augie posters, with local candidates riding along and Augie in the central closed car. They would go town-to-town in each county, the process taking several weeks…Augie getting out and walking through the town, volunteers circulating through the towns handing out fliers. In that one campaign I served with him, he delegated me to take my car and go ahead to the next town, the car outfitted with a loudspeaker. I would slow up and go through the town announcing, “See and hear! Meet and greet! Your Congressman, August H. Andresen! He’s due to be in the town square in five minutes!”

By the time he got there either I would introduce him with a statesman’s buildup, which he preferred, or if not a local candidate would insist on doing it, which he hated because he recognized that local candidates had their own enemies which he didn’t want to gravitate to him. So he would say, “why don’t you just go ahead, hurry up and do it before somebody suggests he do it. Forget the local guy and if he gets mad he gets mad at you but what the hell.” Many were mad at me but Augie got a good introduction from a stranger without a lot of homegrown enemies clustered around.

****************

When election came around, Ancher Nelsen lost but not by all that much. It was an encouragement for the future when, with the farm issue behind us, we might win. We did take one state constitutional office, State Treasurer with Val Bjornson who had held the office earlier and who had given it up to run against Humphrey: meaning we had two state offices out of five. The election for Treasurer was close but decisive. The DFL though, insisted on a recount, which was done to put the victory in some public doubt. That was to be expected and we would have done the same thing. We hired lawyers, they hired lawyers and for the beginning of the hearing in court to decide whether or not there should be a recount (these were the days of paper, hand-marked ballots) the two parties had spokesmen to meet the media while the lawyers haggled backstage. I was the spokesman for our side and the DFL put up a young, newly-minted lawyer who had passed the bar earlier that year. He was the same age as I (six months older, actually) had been born in Ceylon, in southern Minnesota and had been the head of the College Republicans before he saw the light and signed up with the DFL about which he staunchly Republican father was displeased . The fact that he was drafted to be the spokesman was seen that he was “in” with Humphrey and Freeman. His name was Walter F. Mondale whom everybody called Fritz. He was a law clerk for the Minnesota Supreme Court.

The negotiations lasted several days during which we had coffee and sweet rolls a number of times. I found Fritz to be engaging, very witty with a gift of mimicry and a wholesome irreverence—qualities that were never captured by the media in his long public service. If he had been able to wrest free from the frozen-faced Norwegian standoffishness which controlled him in public, he might have gone farther—not that he didn’t anyhow: state attorney general, U. S. Senator, Vice President of the United States, Democratic presidential nominee and ambassador to Japan. Running as nominee against Ronald Reagan was a terrible thing to happen to him. Later, at an advanced age, he tried a comeback but lost to a conservative Republican Senator, Norm Coleman: Jewish, Brooklyn-born, former Bobby Kennedy worker and mayor of Democratic St. Paul turned pro-life.

The idea of a Humphrey protégé, a former vice president of the United States losing to a St. Paul conservative Republican mayor was the final chapter in the end of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor liberalism, an unthinkable political occurrence as it seemed in those days—but done because Minnesota, always religious, embraced evangelical Protestantism along with tax cuts and put it to the service of the Republicans because the party of Hunphrey disdained conservative social issues: something Humphrey would not have done. It is significant to note that social conservatism when allied with tax cuts have been snuffed out in Illinois by Big Jim Thompson, Jim Edgar and George Ryan who embraced an alliance with the Democratic party and its social liberalism. A victory of social conservatism can and will come here as it did in Minnesota: but only when the last vestiges of Thompson-ism, anent Judy Baar Topinka, are wiped out.

Fritz and I intersected at various points in positive and negative capacities which I’ll talk about later.

A Strange Turn of Events Bedevils and Depresses Democrats: What Happens if Blagojevich Wins?

When the news came down from U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald that Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich may have been fooling around with state hiring practices, many liberal Democrats were thrilled—because they see it in their interest that Judy Baar Topinka, a liberal Republican, gets in. Gets in and serves only four years, agreeing to take the heat for raising the income tax and other assorted taxes and getting out, leaving the field to Lisa Madigan, the Speaker’s favored step-daughter. Thus cheered, Ms. Topinka, almost assured that she will have sub-rosa Democratic support, decided not to woo conservative Republicans, believing that she did not need them to get elected—and furthermore that any concessions she made would endanger her support by liberal Democrats. So they were cheered, having two liberals Democrats running, one under the name Republican…the one named Republican would be vastly preferred.

Then the liberal Democrats who hope for Topinka’s election, began to become depressed because of Patrick Fitzgerald’s glacially slow track record in moving from orchestrated media leaks to actual indictments. It was calculated that Topinka’s major ally would be an indictment but one would have to come very quickly to be of help in the current campaign—and it is unlikely. So the liberal Democrats calculated, it will be a very close election and they will have to work very hard under-cover to help Topinka all the while maintaining the fiction they as loyal Democrats they support Blagojevich. Lisa Madigan’s poppa is, after all, Blagojevich’s campaign chairman. With Topinka having no ground game at all—no conservatives to work the townships—the question became: how can the Democrats maintain the fiction of supporting Blagojevich but giving solid ground support to Topinka without the charade being so obvious it becomes a laughingstock? They resolved that they could do this with the aid of a compliant media. But then a second thought hit them with laid them low.

Their horrific nightmare: Suppose as is predicted, Blagojevich with a huge war-chest overcomes the liberal Democratic ground-swell for Topinka and gets reelected? And then an indictment comes? He will have to resign the governorship. This leaves Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn as governor. No one should imagine that Quinn, who has a popular, grass-roots goo-goo image, will not resolve to stay in the governorship. He has charms and is highly electable no matter what the regulars think. Lisa Madigan might have to wait through nearly 2008 before Blagojevich is indicted given Fitzgerald’s slow pace. Then an indictment would produce a Blagojevich resignation which will be served-out by Quinn and then possibly a term which Quinn wins himself and even possibly another term.

Or look at it this way: Fitzgerald takes so long at everything, suppose he’s not indicted Blagojevich by the time the next presidential election comes and a Democrat wins the presidency! Do you think a Democratic DA would indict a Democrat? Do you think all-but-baptized Democrat George Ryan, who helped Daley so much, would have been indicted if Scott Lazar had continued? This awful realization has redoubled the liberal Democrats’ intention to go all-out to elect Republican Topinka and flip the kimono. At this point, Quinn’s supporters argue that Quinn is to be preferred as a Democratic governor who might well be in office during congressional redistricting. But strong liberal Democratic Topinka supporters say no-no that is too far ahead to worry about. Elect Topinka, have her serve four years, give us the tax hike, allow her to retire at age 66 as a heroine and then we’ll elect Lisa. That is the conclusion right now. I’ll tell you, this Lisa fixation spurred by her fanatically ambitious step-Daddy is getting to be somewhat wearying.

Comment on Reader’s Response.

1950s Quiz

Let me ask you to re-pledge fealty to your own brains and not go to search engines. O.k.? O.k. Now here are some snippets of a popular song from the 1950s. Tell me it’s title and for extra credit the performers who recorded it.

Keep-a-movin’ Dan, don’t you listen to `im Dan/

He’s a devil not a man who spreads the burning sand with—

What’s the correct title? And what group by singing it became nationally famous? Communicate on Reader’s Response.

And It Came to Pass that Saint Obama Told His Party There is a Vaguely Attractive Way to Make Use of Religion: And Mr. Cruickshank Agreed

[Fragments from the “Here and Now Newest Testament” to be discovered four hundred years hence in the rubble of the Apparel Mart wherein remnants of a long-forgotten tabloid called the Sun-Times were unearthed].

And in those days it came to pass that a tall, angular man by the name of Barack Obama, His eyes closed in prayer at strategic times, came to exhort multitudes who looked to Him as a possible liberal Democratic political savior. Before He had ascended to the senatorial mount, He had been among them and they knew Him slightly and disdained Him when He ran against Bobby Rush, saying, “He is not a man of the people like Bobby” and defeated Him. And when He ran for the U. S. Senate nomination, many scoffed but others stayed. Then it came to pass that the leader of the group, Blair Hull, was sorely embarrassed by disclosure of a divorce record wherein it said that he had struck his wife on the shin in order to get her to stop punching him but she made the shin-strike public which enabled Blair to donate to her some of the treasure of his work, twenty thousand drachms of gold and two thousand two hundred pounds of silver but this was not enough. So she continued to bewail and he lost the primary. And thus the Democratic party electorate said unto Barack Obama, Arise, bless the Lord your God and make a case for yourself as the future Senator.

And Barack Obama arose and many white liberals and all the blacks along with the media afflicted by guilt for past misdeeds of prior generations sought to gain absolution from this man and they elected him to the Senate. And from that day onward He needed to say little of significance, just mouth the usual platitudes but because of this and in particular because he was civil and un-angry, Democrats saw in Him a man to save them from the hands of their enemies. They noted there was a slight twist to his words that made him sound different from the multitude of other liberals. A black man, he would give ever-so-slight emphasis on patriotism and godly manners: with the result that he sounded somewhat conservative but acceptably so: thus they hailed him. His address to the Democratic convention in 2004 was no more unusual than had it been given by others at different times but it had a tad of conservatism that caused favorable reaction—as the thought that we are not divided by race but united as Americans.

Because it was not liberalism-filled but merely relativism with no obligations placed thereto on conduct or belief, it would sound cliché-filled if delivered by a white. But liberals seized on these words that were said by a black man, ceasing their mourning and sorrow and were turned to mirth and joy, believing that these should be days of feasting and gladness in which they should send one to another portions of the taxes of the bedeviled rich from which should be given gifts to the poor. Amen, they said, Obama has occupied and commands the center.

And in Chicago both newspapers saw in His words things that had never been perceived and promulgated them widely so that the people who had thought the words banal re-read them and said, “Behold since the newspapers think them significant, who are we to deny?” So His words became as seen anew and regarded as Deep. And had they come from a Bush they would have been dismissed as banal but since they came from one who should be expected to mouth extreme liberalism as his colleague Dick Durbin had uttered to everyone’s unutterable tedium, they said: “Listen to Him! He has expressed words that may have been said often but that He says them at this time when we are looking for a political Savior, He should be recognized.”

Then speaking from in Washington a convocation of the Trinity United Church of Christ in a gathering of the National City Christian Church, Barack Obama told the gathering of Democrats that they need to repair to God and the people cheered and said, “Behold, He is right. The enemy, those who go regularly to church as most of our people do not, are the stronger and the polls which say those who go often to church tend to vote for the enemy show those who have defended the right of innocent unborn are lording it over us who believe unborn life can be discarded at the whim of the mother, but who are they to be so high and mighty and get elected while we have not been? They who hail abortion as a sacrament should not be disparaged by those who don’t for those who don’t are hypocrites: they must sin as much as we. Therefore we need not change our ways but merely get a new leader who will get us in good with the Lord who in turn will lift up all that fall and sit up all that are cast down.” They cried: “let all hear His words!”

For to them His words conveyed a thrilling relativism but with a tad of mild conservatism to them. But it was the relativism that convinced them he was humble. Written down by a Ms. Falsani of the Sun-Times, herself a relativist, He said: “…I’m not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I’ve got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others” which caused great joy among the liberals who did not subscribe to absolutes since this made them feel comfortable in doing what they wanted without guilt. Further to Ms. Falsani He said, “I think that religion at its best comes with a big does of doubt. I’m suspicious, too, of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding.” This they took as enlightenment and they gathered unto Him.

He told them, “I think I have an ongoing conversation with God. Throughout the day I’m constantly asking myself questions about what I’m doing, why I am doing it.” And they who love one asking questions instead of one who prescribes answers were pleased with Him. For they dislike all who say they have religious answers. Thus they were enamored of Him who celebrated that He had doubts and questions, not answers.

Wisely, though, He gave conservatives small concessions that were seen a magnanimous such as his view that it is permissible to say the Pledge of Allegiance and still refer to God and that when a gang-banger kills someone “there is a hole in his heart that government programs along cannot fix.” The liberals cheered immediately and said this man is proof we are not a cursed seed which is fated to lose elections to time immemorial on social issues because of angry black militants crying out or by secularists decrying religiosity. They said among themselves, “truly this man can win by not conceding much to the religionists but merely seeming to do so. Let us therefore ride with him because we cannot gain victory frontally as all despise our views.”

Then there rose up one Lynn Sweet, chief political scribe of the Democratic newspaper of record in Chicago whose views were unashamed and never separated from the flow of the news—a laudable practice. And she wrote of her evident boredom with those who stress merely the Ten Commandments when they talk of religion and not “the morality of budget choices Congress makes every day” and she wrote of them who hailed Him as Savior of the Democratic party which to her was all-encompassing. Thereupon she promoted His forthcoming book called by an intriguingly vague title which means anything one wishes to all men but of particular value to intellectuals who pose with forefinger deep to cheek in furrowed-brow thought, the title of which is The Audacity of Hope, about which some asked among themselves “the Audacity of Hope? What does this mean?” To which they were told, shut up: it means this man will get elected. Whereupon they were satisfied and did shut up. And hoped very much.

Thereupon to prove the point that Barack Obama intended to run for president, His press secretary came forth and said that this was not the truth but “the speech reflects His desire to welcome more people of faith to into the Democratic party. Viewing this speech—and everything Barack does—through an `08 lens does a disservice to the message of the speech and His work in the Senate.” Those words caused those in the know to say yea, yea, He is running because His spokesman has so eloquently denied it.

And all the while others exulted saying, “His words are free of the hard strictures which involve the salvation of innocent lives from abortion or the repugnance of homosexuality which we say is a physical condition and they a sin. It is the style and pleasantness of the speaker that blurs all unpleasantness, hear ye Him!” And so He continued: “We first need to understand that Americans are a religious people, 90 percent of us believe in God…I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturers’ lobby but I also believe that when a gang-banger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels somebody disrespected him we have a problem with morality…”

And they cried out as if no one had ever conceived that before, crying out “Huzza! He says what we have heard but now hear again with new ears because it is comforting to hear banal words often uttered by the non-thinking now uttered by a freshman Senator who may become the man to get middle American votes to become our president and install us in the thrones of power.” And they declared further: “That this man is black is significant because he is of a different, more moderate political hue than his more demonstrative fellows such as Charlie Rangel and others.” And Saint Obama continued: “No matter how religious they are or may not be, people are tired of seeing faith used as a tool to attack and belittle and divide, they’re tired to hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon!” By which he meant horrid traditional moral absolutes which had made the liberals feel downcast. But now his words gave them new hope.

So they hailed Him, thinking when someone black who sounds this good says it, it is different than when others including those who are white say it and perhaps this may trump those who have been using social issues against us and depriving us of our rightful inheritance of power. He will cause our enemies to be cowed and not use against us that we are the party of abortion, that we—and He—will fight against confirmation of judges that may spare unborn life. Verily, He will lay asunder all the divisions that have come upon us and He will change the subject to who will support the fatherless and the widow and the ways of sinners will soon be seen as that of those who dare to assume they are better than we! And when they attack him verbally it will be seen as an attack on his race no matter how they say it so our liberal cause will be advantaged.

And so in those days at the Sun-Times, the publisher John Cruickshank caused to be issued an editorial in the department headed by scribe Steve Huntley who in turn commissioned the publisher’s wife by the name of Jennifer Hunter, a feminist, to write an editorial that would proclaim that with the righteousness already expressed by Saint Obama and that through the newspaper’s support of same-sex marriage and abortion on demand, there is a higher morality which is malleable to accommodate exigencies at one particular time and not the next. And Cruickshank ordered, “Thus let not the conservatives defeat us because of what we support but let us espouse this man’s style because it supplies a tad—just a tad—of conservative-sounding rhetoric. But it is relativistic religion for good purpose.” And Huntley agreed, saying, “Righto! Let it an editorial be done.” And Ms. Hunter set immediately to work and completed it.

And so Jennifer Hunter wrote and it was published that religion should apply also to the Democratic party. And those who had cast about for a way to get out of the trick bag with strings drawn tight in a noose because of liberals’ own invention thought they may be saved by an earnest-appearing young black man. Thus they were filled with the hope that those who were deceived electorally in past years may be mis-led again by the same devices that beguiled their ancestors, with words like New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier and Great Society. And they believed He would be spared from criticism because to do so would invite retaliation that the enemy was racist. Racism was one remaining crime that liberals had not excused as choice, the one crime that shrank from hurled accusation of its name.

Therefore, with Him protesting He was not a candidate, Saint Barack Obama was led to the Here, unfortunately, the fragment breaks off but you can devise the end for yourself can you not? Try on Reader’s Response.

Personal Asides: Lucky Sperm Club--All Rise for John Stroger As He Picks His Son…Nice Note from Dan Kelley…Andrea Zenger vs. Mike Noonan Were an Excellent Match…The Answer to the Poetry Quiz

Stroger

Cook county board president John Stroger has just done what Irish and Polish Democrats have for generations—chosen their own sons to succeed them. These scions may belong to the lucky sperm club but it is clear that they haven’t always inherited the wisdom that goes with the clout. The man likely to become interim president, John Daley, looks like a distinct throwback to far beyond the lineage of the late Richard J. Daley. And Alderman Eddie Burke, for example, must be going through a kind of long-delayed menopause with his issuance of strictures on what restaurants should serve to patrons which would have appalled the Irishmen of his father’s generation. The only reason he is an alderman is because father Joe, started out as bailiff to Criminal Courts judge Big Jim McDermott, the former alderman of the 14th. Joe Burke’s big job was to shout, “All rise! The Honorable Judge James McDermott now presiding! God save this honorable court!” Joe would then clap his fedora on the back of his head head for an anteroom and play cards. An edifying lineage that.

Old Joe became alderman of the 14th thanks to Big Jim McDermott, a Democratic party king-pin and big brother of the legendary Father Ignatius McDermott (Father Mac). When Old Joe died, his kid Ed didn’t even have to yell, “All rise!” to became the alderman without any effort at all and has remained such, never having had an opponent (the only time he did, running for states attorney he lost). Using his aldermanic connections, he has a law firm that has made him a multi-millionaire, is chairman of a party panel that picks state judges and levies stipends that prospective candidates must pay to the party and who has named his wife as state Supreme Court justice. The fastidious, preening Edward, his white hair in a blow-dry pompadour, his chiseled face held high at a jaunty angle, wearing a flowing $150 green tie from Stuart’s on Michigan avenue, acts as to the manor born as he strides up to the altar in a $3,000 suit at St. Peter’s each noon in Lent to receive the sacrament to which he believes he is thoroughly entitled as a Burke.

For Eddie Burke’s monument, just look around you when you dine in a restaurant. With Chicago struggling to maintain its dwindling status as tourist attraction, he has added immeasurably to its burdens. The theory that it is possible to in-breed among the Irish until IQs decline is proved by his ordinance which would make Chicago the first city in the nation to ban restaurants from using artery-clogging trans fat oils. Were it were to pass, Chicago would align with Denmark, a formidable combination, to prohibit such oils while the tourist trade would continue to gravitate elsewhere.

As Burke surveys his own greatness from his council desk, presiding above and looking down is Richard M. Daley who were his name not Daley would come hustling in answer to the buzzer in the Jewel frozen meat department when you ring for the butcher. Earlier we had the distinguished Chairman of the U. S. House Ways and Means committee, Dan Rostenkowski, who was slated for Congress as a tadpole because his father had been alderman, an adviser to President George H. W. Bush (whose father, a Senator pushed his career and who in turn propelled George W. and Jeb). But Rostenkowski needed no help to go to jail which he accomplished on his own. Now we have the robotic human skull, the Honorable Dan Lipinski who looks like the starving Armenian shown in our old eighth grade history books, named to his congressional seat by his father even though he was teaching in a college out-of-state.

Then there is Dan Hynes, the state comptroller, as magnetic as a lead nail, installed there by his powerful ward-boss father, Tom. Of the group of paterfamilias chosen probably the smartest is ultra-social liberal Lisa Madigan, step-daughter of the House Speaker, with whom this Blog disagrees but recognizes her political skill. It is no more a nepotistic outrage for Stroger to name his son, than the preceding white fathers to push their own.

To those who say young Todd Stroger is shallow, I respond: let him be equated in that department with all the Chicago fore-mentioned especially Eddie Burke who in the sweep of history will rate far below his poorly educated but plain-spoken father who would never have considered regulating trans oils. All rise!

Kelley

I’ve been dealing with attorney Daniel Kelley for a good number of years now. He writes to congratulate this Blog and says he thinks what I turn out here is better than the stuff I used to put in the Sun-Times. I agree: it is. He suggests some possible reasons: “My conclusion is that you may have been victimized by poor editing”—nope, that’s not the reason: my editors especially Michelle Stevens, were very good. He tries another: “Or you engaged in self-censorship to pacify your squeamish Chicago newspaper bosses.” Bingo. Self-censorship is the worst kind.

News from Minnesota got him to read the Blog since he went to St. Mary’s, a Christian Brothers college, in Winona. He mentions that Stearns county, where I lived and worked on the newspaper there, was the ancestral home of Sinclair Lewis. Yes, he lived in Sauk Centre, the town about 40 miles north of St. Cloud which he converted into the site of the Pulitzer prize-winning novel “Main Street.” Lewis antedated me, of course. There’s a fascinating story about Lewis’ burial which I’ll tell some time—which was assisted by a small town newspaperman who preceded me.

Dan mentions that when he went to school there the state was entirely Democratic-Farmer-Labor and St. Paul was the bastion—which it was during the time I was there. Now to show you how times changed, the state has an evangelistic Protestant Republican governor and St. Paul has had a series of Republican mayors including a man who rose from that job to become U. S. Senator, a Brooklyn-born Jew, one-time liberal disciple of Bobby Kennedy, who became a conservative Republican, then an earnest pro-lifer, finally the conqueror of Walter Mondale: Norm Coleman. It very nearly became a red state in 2004 for president and will in the near future.

Zinga and Noonan

Republican congressional nominee Andrea Lane Zinga, a former TV anchor, who is running in the 17th district to succeed the retiring Democrat Lane Evans discussed her campaign with me and Democratic strategist Mike Noonan on “Political Shootout” at 8 p.m. last Sunday on WLS-AM (890). We were to have had political analyst Russ Stewart, attorney and writer for Nadig newspapers but a serious last-minute illness in his family precluded his appearance. I’m deeply appreciative of Mike Noonan for stepping in at the last minute: a real hero!

Zinga lost by 22 points to Evans in 2004. His name is an old established commodity in the 17th. Her TV celebrity didn’t help her nor did it another TV anchor, Republican Mark Baker who tried several times. But as it turns out, Evans’ first victory over Baker was pock-marked and after five years was ruled, by the Federal Elections Commission, as assisted by a fraudulent use of financing by the husband of Rep. Jan Schakowsky who was later indicted and found guilty of a number of illegal activities.

Zinga, a hardy survivor, won her second nomination by only 325 votes. But Evans’ sudden decision to withdraw because of ill-health (severe Parkinson’s) changed the topography. Her opponent is Evans’ administrative assistant, Phil Hare who is a total unknown among many in the district. Congressional Quarterly rates the race close because of Evans’ inability to run.

The downstate 17th includes the Illinois portion of the Quad Cities (Rock Island) plus several rural counties to the south: all of the Mississippi border with Iowa and south, almost to St. Louis. In 2001 redistricting the district lost counties north and directly west of Rock Island and Moline. Added was a strip of land along the Mississippi and the lower Illinois rivers—and connected to that is a narrow band that includes rural Macoupin county plus an eastern tentacle along with a very thin strip of land that takes in central Springfield (but not the State Capitol building), extending to include a portion of Decatur. To drive from one end of the 17th to the other takes more miles and much longer than to drive from Chicago to downstate Cairo. The geographic monstrosity was gerrymandered by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and the 3rd district’s then Congressman Bill Lipinski.

Zinga impresses me as a tough-minded, savvy but principled conservative whose long experience as a TV reporter and anchor in many locales including Atlanta where she anchored for CNN, has given her a jaunty confidence. She’s no kid at 57, but with a world of experience in communications in big towns and small, she has a media-centric authority when she takes over a microphone. Nor is it just media savvy. I watched her shaking hands at the Dick Cheney event last week and as a greeter she is superb. She’s far from a society lady, country club Republican candidate but is a kind of working woman’s candidate with a particularly attractive feminine (notice I didn’t say “feminist”) confidence that came from succeeding in a male work which media indubitably is. She’s quick-witted, possibly was possibly a little too deferential to Mike Noonan but on the whole she enthuses me as a well-tutored candidate who can return the 17th to its original Republican moorings. It helps that she has Charlie Johnston as her general consultant because I think he’s one of the best. In short, I think it’s distinctly possible that Illinois could elect Peter Roskam in the 6th, knock out Melissa Bean with David McSweeney (another Johnston candidate) in the 8th and with a bit of luck and Zinga’s phenomenal energy, elect her in the 17th. I’d vote for her in a minute.

She’s Illinois-born, with a master’s in communication with a kind of soft twang that probably bespeaks her work in southern states rather than an Illinois accent—but it’s attractive. She’s great on all the issues: pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, has prudently followed the proper course by supporting the House immigration bill. Her support for marriage between a man and a woman is acceptable although she opposes a federal amendment—which I disagree with but it’s not of great importance. When she spoke of the need to bring more jobs to the district—which is a very definite need—she spoke first of all about federal assistance: I was a little disappointed that she didn’t wax a little more eloquently at first about incentives to growth…which she ultimately got around to: lessened regulation, tax policy etc. On the issue of the Justice Department’s right to go into a congressional office to find bribery money (as in the case of William Jefferson, D-La.) she sides with Denny Hastert which I don’t: I buy Justice’s view that Congressmen shouldn’t be treated differently than us. But what the hell, she’s got style and is feisty. All in all she’s outstanding and I’d give her an A-. Much higher than I thought I’d rate her.

Poetry Quiz Answered

When I insisted that nobody use a search engine to find the answer to the snippet of poetry last time, it proved that everybody is (a) honest and (b) not overly influenced by early 20th century poetry. The author of the poet cited was Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest who rinsed the worn-out poetic vocabulary of the mid-Victorian period leading to the discovery of what literary experts call “sprung rhythm” which he exploits with great success in the poem quoted, “The Windhover,” a fancy name for a cruising hawk.