Flashback: Building a Corporate Government Relations Program.

[Fifty-plus years in politics for my kids and grandchildren].

Although I was hired to be a political assistant to Robert D. Stuart, Jr., the then president of The Quaker Oats Company, my feeling from the standpoint of corporate self-preservation was that I should do something to earn my keep and begin a government relations program, although no one really mentioned this when I was hired. Stuart, obviously, was occupied with running the company when he wasn’t involved in state Republican affairs as the national Republican committeeman for Illinois and could devote minimal time to the project (and didn’t have the time to really provide definitive guidance as to what he wanted for government relations) …my immediate supervisor was a public relations exec who, frankly, didn’t have the first inkling of what a corporate government relations program should be…and his boss was a vice president-employee relations who really didn’t either and always gave me the idea that I should just keep it from becoming controversial. “And forget about getting people to wear buttons.”

The latter statement was mystifying. Moreover, as soon as I had been hired, a definite coolness about my employment wafted a chill breeze to me. The murmurs varied from complaints that I was going to politicize the company “once again”—whatever that meant…and that for some unaccountable reason I was going to “reprint buttons and make us wear them.” No one seemed to explain adequately. Finally my immediate boss did.

In the mid-1950s…fifteen years before I started, during the administration of Dwight Eisenhower…Quaker brought on board a tiny, feisty little grandma type of lady from Cedar Rapids to move to Chicago and handle the company’s community relations. Her name was Kay Metz and she had been a fiercely conservative Iowa state legislator. She melded into Quaker when John Stuart, the company’s CEO and uncle of Robert, had been inducted into the Hoover Commission, a citizens’ group called together by President Harry S. Truman and headed by the Iowa-born Herbert Hoover, the former U. S. president. The project acquainted John Stuart with the phenomenal waste that was—and still is—part of government expenditures. And it was duck soup to Kay Metz who became a kind of unofficial personal assistant to the man fondly known as “Mr. John.” She convinced Mr. John that the company should enlist its personnel to play a role in cutting expenditures by encouraging them to write letters to Congressmen and Senators. So far so good.

Enter the administration of Dwight Eisenhower who recruited the then CEO of Quaker, Donold Lourie, to be under-secretary of state for administration under John Foster Dulles. In his first term, Eisenhower launched a rather expansive spending program for foreign aid which may or may not have necessitated a hike in taxes; it is still unclear. His treasury secretary, George Humphrey, was privately opposed to expanded foreign aid but, in loyalty to his chief, could not come out and oppose the expansion. But he contrived to be asked a question in testimony before a House committee about whether or not expanded expenditures might necessitate a future hike in taxes. He said he didn’t think so but if taxes were raised unduly “you’ll get a recession that will curl your hair!”

The statement caused a mild furor with conservatives. Humphrey and John Foster Dulles were at polite odds as they sat in cabinet sessions over expanded foreign aid. Meanwhile, back at Quaker, with Lourie gone and Stuart coming up fast there was an interim president and c.e.o. but “Mr. John,” with retirement time on his hands had more energy to spend on the Hoover Commission. Which meant more attention for the firebrand Kay Metz. After one meeting of the Hoover Commission, Mr. John came back to be thrilled by a program that had been developed for his approval by Ms. Metz. It was to be a company-wide program to encourage federal thrift and in order to gain attention, centered on the prospect, vague though it may have been, of hiked taxes. Her program was called IGKAHT which stood for “I’m Going to Kick About High Taxes.” With her new clout she rammed her program through the company, signing up people from top to bottom in the company…from executives to those who worked in the mills…to wear IGKAHT buttons and write their Congressmen and Senators to hold down expenditures and fight a tax hike.

Pretty soon it was adjudged through her fervor…while the senior executives were busily running the company…that if you wanted to continue to get ahead at Quaker, you’d damn well better agree to wear an IGKAHT button and write letters of protest to your Congressmen and Senators. And if you were working in a Quaker plant and the manager wore an IGKAHT button, you’d better jolly well wear one as well. People began appearing on the streets of the small towns where Quaker plants were wearing the IGKAHT buttons which prompted news stories. And letters from Quaker employees to Congressmen, Senators and to the White House.The letters flowed in like an avalanche and photos of Quaker employees attending employee meetings and raising hell with the Eisenhower administration began to get covered by newspapers where Quaker had plants: Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Rockford, Illinois, Shiremanstown, Pennsylvania and so on.

The letters really produced a tide fooding into the White House. One day when Secretary of State Dulles was conferring with his chief, Eisenhower said, “Foster—don’t you have a man from Quaker Oats on your staff as under-secretary?” Dulles said yes. “Well,” said Eisenhower, “the Congress and the White House is getting flooded with letters all sounding somewhat alike zinging me for a subterranean attempt to raise taxes. And we checked. The letters are all traced to Quaker Oats in Chicago and the great flood of them come from Quaker employees in every town in which the company has plants. I don’t mind anybody having a say about taxes in this democracy but I would appreciate it if you’d have our employee, Don Lourie, schooled that we’re not going to raise taxes and to call off his dogs!”

Of course Dulles zoomed back to the State Department as soon as he could. The mailings, traced to a club called IGKAJTs at Quaker Oats, worried him that the thing could get out of hand and kill the foreign aid increase he wanted. So he needled Lourie who in turn got on the phone from Washington to Chicago and nixed the IGKAHT program. This was before I got there by several years, but I understand there was some back and forth between Lourie and Mr. John—Lourie arguing for the Eisenhower position and Mr. John riled up by Herbert Hoover’s commission and Kay Metz. The program was killed but the bad vibes of Quakers having to wear IGKAHTs buttons or possibly not looking good to the company’s bosses gave any future idea of government relations a kind of unsavory compulsory reputation—which was why I was treated coolly at first…especially with my deep conservative Republican background…as the putative successor to Kay Metz and her buttons. And that was why no one including Bob Stuart gave much of a positive reaction when I suggested that I earn my keep by trying to implement a Quaker government relations program. They thought of IGKAHTs.

Nobody at Quake cared that I was helping Bob Stuart on his Republican business but they worried greatly that I would be force-feeding them Republican politics. Well, I couldn’t help being the successor to Kay Metz but I decided that while working in partisan tandem with Bob Stuart, I had to put a definite bipartisan caste to company’s government relations program. The first thing I did was to go to Washington frequently and start off visiting all the Congressmen and Senators from states where Quaker had plants. Believe it or not, House Speaker Sam Rayburn himself represented a Quaker district (at Sherman, Texas). A whole collection of fairly prominent and powerful lawmakers did—and it was no trick at all to get in to see them, representing a company with employees in their districts. Of course I had to ward off the memory of IGKAHTs. I did it by bringing Democratic Congressmen from plant areas to Chicago to speak at luncheons and to encourage Illinois Democratic lawmakers as well as Republicans to speak as well. Pretty soon the memory of IGKAHTs was gone.

It was a whole lot of fun going to Washington as a representative of a then mega-million-dollar company. No more would I have trouble sitting for hours in the anteroom including the anteroom of Ted Kennedy when he was informed that a representative of a company with an extensive plant in New Bedford wanted to see him. Or Paul Douglas of Illinois whom I had never met anyhow and always wanted to. And almost as important was building a rolodex of staff-members of the lawmakers who could be reached fairly quickly and give first-rate, off-the-record assessments of legislation we Quaker should be interested in. One was crotchety old Bill Colmer, the reactionary southern Democrat chairman of House Rules from Pascagoula, Mississippi where we had large cat-food plant…and his aide-de-camp, eager-to-please Trent Lott whom I never really cottoned to but who later became Republican Congressman, Republican Whip, Republican U. S. Senator, Republican majority leader, then demoted to Republican Whip of the Senate.

Obviously I would extend the visits to a state where we had no plants, Minnesota, where my entrée was fairly warm anyhow, but representing an Illinois company generated the thought that perhaps a plant could be induced to locate there. And to the office of the Vice President where I met my old one-time friend then adversary and now an official about whom I could truly say I was neutral: Hubert Humphrey.

The trips took a good deal of time. In all, about forty or so plants were scattered throughout the country and I compiled not just a list of the Congressmen and Senators but distributed memos to the key executives who might want to utilize my office as a kind of resource, linking our views up with lawmakers who served on various committees. The compilation of so-called Quaker congressmen and Senators was the first step in the government program. The program received a major boost when in 1966 I got a new boss who was highly sophisticated about government relations and gave me the kind of backing up front that provided great impetus to the program. But this was 1964-65 and I was making up the program as I went on. My acquaintanceship had expanded: to having lunch frequently with Billy the Kid…former governor, two-time Congressman-at-Large, two-time state treasurer and frustrated presidential candidate wanna-be…who could still offer me great advice…ascertaining what could be done to upbuild the Republican party of Illinois…and expanding my knowledge of the bipartisan players on the Hill.

I remember arriving at my hotel in Washington one evening and having a note from Everett Dirksen’s office in my box. I knew him fairly well, having ridden with him on some campaign forays in the very early days of my tenure at Quaker…but what he wanted to see me about was a mystery.

So bright and early the next morning, I was in his office and waited an unconscionable time until the tousle-haired, wheezing uncrowned leader of the Senate…he was Republican minority leader with a far greater reach than just the GOP but by influencing southern Democrats, really ran the joint in his old pal Lyndon Johnson’s presidency…came in wearing a suit that looked like it had been slept in.

“What I want to ask you,” he said, coughing up a lunger into a rather grey handkerchief (not too edifying at 9:15 a.m.) while the other hand balanced an unfiltered cigarette between nicotine-stained fingers, “is if you would ask Bob for me to introduce this resolution at the Republican National Committee meeting here next week?”…and he handed over a very pro-forma commendation of the work he and House leader Gerry Ford were doing to cut expenditures in a make-believe war with the White House. The resolution was so routine that I wondered what in the world I was summoned personally for…but then the real purpose came.

“I have been talking with Billy,” he said, referring to former governor Stratton, “who says he is a good friend of yours. If he is correct in that assumption, you will regard this conversation as confidential. As you probably can surmise, I have enough work around here to keep me busy without considering what is likely to happen with the governorship the next time it comes around. But I am told that Mr. Ogilvie has a great interest in the job and that very possibly he will be running for president of the Cook county board in ` 66, and if elected will run for governor in `68. Of course I am totally disinterested and unobservant as to the likely consequences of such action…”

Of course.

“But there are two things which I would like you and Bob to consider which should not be shared with anyone other than yourselves. My great friend from Peoria is John Henry Altorfer who can be persuaded to run for governor—a man far better, may I say, in character and personal integrity than Dick Ogilvie with whom I have had some…”

Another coughing spell lightened up by his dragging heavily on his cigarette. (John Henry Altorfer was a very wealthy businessman and civic leader, a gentle, refined and personally very likeable Peoria native who had political ambitions, yes, but was motivated to philanthropy and Republican support by a genuine desire to contribute some good to the process. He was already a close friend of my boss, Bob Stuart who privately favored him for governor although it was not my prerogative to tell Dirksen that).

“…some disagreeable blandishments and with whom Harold [Rainville] has had notable difficulties on the matter of judgeships. In fact I can tell you I have never been particularly close to my colleague [Paul Douglas] but we have worked out a kind of gentleman’s agreement with Lyndon on judges, since the president feels I have been supportive on such issues as Vietnam, only to have it nearly sabotaged by Dick Ogilvie…and his kind. His kind which seem to want to build a machine similar to Dick Daley’s but in which none of us downstaters would play much of a part. Therefore, I would like to talk with Bob when he is here for the National Committee meeting about the possibility of his supporting, even at this early date, John Henry for the nomination rather than Ogilvie.”

The statement required nothing more than assent. So I assented.

“Now another thing and this is just for you to consider. Billy has lunch with you fairly often. He is thinking about running for governor again. No one has been a better governor than Billy and I did what I could to swing the jury against his conviction which thanks be to Almighty God worked out and he went free. But Billy should not run again for governor and perhaps you can gently, diplomatically, dissuade him since I am not in a particularly advantageous position to do so through my association with John Henry. He cannot possibly win the nomination because of his earlier legal troubles and he is kidding himself if he thinks he can. Billy will just take enough votes to possibly defeat John Henry and nominate Ogilvie which I believe would give impetus to the building of a Republican machine with all the machinations of Len Small. Well…if you can bring it up subtly and later get back to me…personally, not through anybody else, even Harold… as to what he says that would be helpful. Is there anything I can do for you while you’re here?”

No, but the thought of that offered gratuity from one of the great U. S. Senators in U. S. history would linger for years.

And it also was a horrendous verbal blow at Ogilvie. Lennington Small (1862-1936) was, to say so advisedly, undoubtedly the most corrupt governor in the history of Illinois (George Ryan notwithstanding since Ryan’s conviction had nothing to do with his governorship but from his god-awful sale of commercial drivers’ licenses as secretary of state). Small was by common consent an ogre: indicted and acquitted of extortion—but even worse, one who used his executive pardoning privileges to turn law-breakers and in even one instance a murderer back on the street for which, we are likely to surmise, some hidden financial benefit. Nothing Ogilvie had done or was able to do could even arise to a miniscule comparison to Small and Dirksen was unduly exaggerating—but Dirksen’s concern was a Republican machine mobilized from the Cook county president’s office which would defeat him for re-nomination in 1968 when Ogilvie would run for the gubernatorial nomination.

I said: Senator, it may be that Ogilvie will have trouble getting elected president of the Cook county board: after all, there has only been one Republican in that post in modern times.

“It may be so,” he said, “but I fear the alliance between him and Clem Stone who has unlimited…unlimited…money. There is already the makings of an alliance between Daley and Ogilvie on a good many things. These things are not easy for one like me to stop. After all, how many jobs do I have? How much of what I say means anything to Dick Daley? But that is my task and nobody else’s. However with respect to John Henry, you have my feelings on that. He should have a clear shot at the Republican governorship if at all possible and for God’s sake your boss ought not to be for Ogilvie if we can help it and Billy Stratton should not gum up the works by running for governor. None of these things can be changed except by a bit of coordination. I hope you understand these things are confidential.”

I do and did. I passed along the intelligence then, forty-two years ago and with two of the principals long dead, I do so in these notes.

Personal Asides: Lovie’s Leather Explained…Baker-Hamilton on Iraq and Old Man Bush Weeping…The Bush Doctrine Examined and Appreciated…Jeane Kirkpatrick: What’s She Thinking? But Fondly, R.I.P.

Lovie’s Leather.

Lovie’s Leather explains it all to you in Reader’s Comments the other day which still remains for you to peruse. He’s a very valuable commentator and his explanation of the name is enlightening. Thank you, Lovie and keep on writing.

Baker-Hamilton.

I am not disturbed by the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report which counsels evacuation from Iraq as the only valid choice. After all, James Baker is only reacting to his old prejudices and to the needs of client, Saudi Arabia and former Congressman Lee Hamilton has never been known to exhibit any independence of thought other than the one proscribed. The first important thing to remember about the Iraq Study Group is that it was mandated by Congress as election approached which is in itself a repudiation of serious intent…and the second judgment to make is that nowhere does it leave room for the prospect of winning in Iraq. Beyond that, the report is not a surrender as the Right maintains nor repudiation of American foreign policy as the Left believes. But because it is Baker-contrived, it is worth examining, as is the non-qualifications of some of its members.

And as for some of the establishment members? Evidently Leon Panetta was picked for this and the Catholic bishops’ pedophilia probe probably because of his stunning vision of gay rights and foreign policy along with his visage which so often adorns the pages of “Gentleman’s Quarterly.” Sandy O’Connor because she was such a bastion of principle on the Supreme Court which earned her the reputation as wheeler due to her ownership of a jealously guarded “swing vote” on the Court. Ed Meese was picked but didn’t belong there because he added a conservative flavor but is so nice a guy he was gulled by silky Jim Baker, who gulled him all through the Reagan administration. This is the group…excluding Meese who was probably outvoted and wished he had stayed home…that excoriated Iraq and subtly sought to undermine the Bush Doctrine. And what qualifications does Vernon Jordan have other than his role as power lobbyist and African American leader? The report’s only value is that it does underscore a fundamental truth: that the Iraqi people, by and large and to this date, have not stepped up to the plate to help quell Islamo-fascism. The report’s chief defect is that it leaves no room for the option of winning. And that enemies of Bush—and the United States, actually, in the arrogant personage of the insouciant NBC White House correspondent, David Gregory—want to bury the Bush Doctrine (about which more later).

The cynicism of the report represents Jim Baker at his worst. He represents the official State Department view that favors his own heavy involvement with Saudi Arabia, a view I came into contact with as a the number three foreign service officer with the Peace Corps and former service with Walter Judd, the ranking House member on Foreign Affairs. That view is this: Whatever the West does, Muslims want and strive to continue life under corrupt tyrants; therefore it is our goal to make kissy-face with those corrupt tyrants and make them our corrupt tyrants. Believe it or not, this is known in the State Department as the “pro-Arab view.” But it does not show a knowledge of the Arab past, just cynicism and opportunism which dovetails with Baker’s own opportunism which is on a scale with Jim Thompson’s (to draw the former governor into this where he really doesn’t belong: but whose opportunism is akin to Baker’s).

But this is wise-guy, side-of-the-mouth thinking with little relevance into Arab history as none other than the U. S.’s greatest expert on the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, has so clearly demonstrated throughout most of his scholarly life. Even a cursory reading of Lewis gives the following insights: Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Assad family of Syria do not extend to the Islamic past. Indeed, as early as 1786 the common diplomatic wisdom was, in dealing with Muslims was that things in, say, Turkey were not as autocratic as in king-led western Europe. Diplomats dealing with the Ottoman government had to inform their own governments that the sultan “has to consult”…to consult with whom? Former holders of high offices, leaders of various groups etc. What happened to change this to the situation of the present?

Believe it or not, modernization—recognition by Middle Eastern rulers that their societies could not keep up with the West with the cumbersome consultative process. The consequences of this modernization were disastrous. They increased the power of the state by placing at his feet the forces of repression and indoctrination. That was the first stage; the second came in 1940 when France surrendered to the Axis and set up a quisling government in Vichy which prompted the French colonial governments in Syria-Lebanon in the Arab-East to fall into the lap of the Nazis. The Nazis set up a fascist-prone government which was the antecedent of the Baath party. The West finally drove the Nazis out of the Middle East but when they the allies left in 1945 the Soviets moved in, setting up a powerful presence in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and sponsored Soviet-style political practice. So there is nothing there that is the product of many centuries as the old State Department bureaucracy insists and which Jim Baker, out of loyalty to his commercial clients, supports.

The break with the past came with a theologian called Ibn Abd al-Wahhab who lived in the area of Najd in desert Arabia known as the Wahhabi who was a Muslem reformer with a vengeance, literally. He led a movement which he claimed would restore pure, original Islam—but it had little relevance to Islam as it existed from the earliest ages. Wahhabism didn’t cause a problem until two things happened: the mid-1920s when local tribal chiefs of the House of Saud, Wahhabis, conquered Mecca and Medina which gave them control of the pilgrimages millions of Muslims make to the same place at the same time each year…and the discovery of oil also in the mid-20s. This militant sect not only held Medina and Mecca but wealth beyond their greatest dreams. As result what normally would have been a lunatic fringe now became a major international force: operating through Jim Baker’s favorite Saudi government and non-governmental organizations…such as the ones in Chicago who run evening religious classes funded by the Wahhabis.

Lewis points out that there are elements in Islamic society that very well can adjust to democracy. The anti-American feeling is generally generated by what is called by the media “friendly governments”—Jim Baker’s friends—which are the most tyrannical and hated by many of their own people. The second Jim Baker became the head of the Iraq Study Group I knew the fix was in. He comports himself ideally with the left wing media which is determined to punish not just Bush but the United States for fancied sins. You have “New York Times” columnist Tom Friedman, who certainly knows better, saying on the radio that the Iraqi insurgents have actually “defeated” the U. S. Army. Friedman, a Minnesotan, is a guy whose feeding at the trough of the “Times” and his winning of so many establishment-run Pulitzer prizes has made him quite drunk with arrogance.

But the goal of all…Baker, Friedman, Gregory and the Washington Beltway punditocracy to which now can be added George Will…is to bury the Bush Doctrine.

Which leads to an interesting question—irrelevant to some but not to me. At the recent public meeting in Florida where Governor Jeb Bush, a stunning success as governor, stepped down due to term limits, George H. W. Bush broke down and wept like a baby. Why? Because his son was stepping down? There is little reason to believe that. Many observers, I included, believe the old man—a decent individual and always brimming with sentimentality—was weeping at the contrast between Jeb, full of honors and adulation because of his success and the prospect of George W., searingly criticized by many, toppling in the polls and regarded by the establishment as a terrible president. Old man Bush is too much a child of the establishment himself not to feel it keenly—and tears rolled down his cheeks to the point where he almost collapsed in anguish—at the occasion.

Touching as the scene was, George H. W. Bush was a generally mediocre president and putty in the manipulative hands of Jimmy Baker as Ronald Reagan was not. I remember well as president of the City Club when the Club marked its 75th anniversary and then Vice President George H. W. Bush came here to toast the Club. A nice thing of him to do but fate made him take his dinner next to me. I was ready to be properly edified at my dinner companion. I can tell you that the hour and a half passed like two days and I was overwhelmed with unutterable tedium. Luck of the draw had put me in reasonably close contact with most of the political leaders of the latter 20th century—Reagan, Humphrey, McCarthy, Nixon and a good many lesser. It wasn’t that GHW Bush wasn’t talkative; it was that clichés ran the hour and a half with no insights or no pretended insights withheld because of the majesty of governmental power. Here is a man totally captured and captivated by the establishment…who, sadly, has been convinced by it that his presidential son is unworthy: which was the cause for the flood of tears, I’ll bet anything. Well, I hope the old man lives to recognize how wrong he has been about his eldest son…and the magnificence of his Bush Doctrine.

The Bush Doctrine.

The Bush Doctrine rests on three fundamental pillars. The first is a repudiation of a relativistic notion of terrorism whereby my terrorist is your freedom fighter. Knowing anything about Baker and Hamilton at all tells you that they are the world’s champion relativists. And the remainder of the panel—Sandra Day O’Connor and that perennial Leon Panetta—say it all. Were I Ed Meese, a very capable individual, I would be angered that I was gulled to join a commission that was rigged—but that it beside the point.

The second pillar of the Bush doctrine is to change the concept of punishment of terrorists from the old criminal system to the concept that they are def facto troops of the nation-states that spawned them. And the third: to take preemptive action to ward off an anticipated attack. Here is where he made his most striking break with the past: “I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”

Here it is essential to disprove contemporary liberal suggestions as to what Bush meant and stick to what he enunciated. Bush didn’t say he would act unilaterally. He did not say he would ignore world opinion. He did not say he would dismiss the views of allies. He did not say he would ignore the UN (although I wish he had said it). But what he meant was what he said later: “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long…[T]he war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge.”

To me the essential wisdom of the Bush Doctrine made imperative the attack on Iraq no matter whether or not it had weapons of mass destruction. There was no need to enter the war just to stop the genocide of Saddam Hussein, as hideous as it was, nor to find w.m.d. however nice it would have been to locate them, but to end the role Iraq undeniably played in the world terrorist conflagration—and. And to serve as a lesson to others that this will not be tolerated. Already Egyptian democratic activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim has said that the Iraq War has “unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon’s 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on the agenda, even if only to fight against [the reformers]. Look, neither Napoleon nor President Bush could impregnate the region with political change. But they were able to become midwives.”

Of course the Iraq War is a slog; it is not going swimmingly. And the pragmatists in both parties are unhappy. Some Republican conservatives are unhappy. But the right role for the U.S. is to continue Bush’s courageous Doctrine and to gut it out in Iraq. Just as the Truman Doctrine of containment was condemned by…sadly…some Republicans including the malleable Richard Nixon as “the College of Cowardly Containment”…the Bush Doctrine is terrifying the squeamish. In both cases, Truman and George W. Bush, we have presidents who were determined to stand their ground—proof that the United States is not only great, but is the luckiest nation in the world to have had such presidents.

A definite good that can come out of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group is that the president can use it to shuffle his military command if needed…just as Lincoln did with his multiplicity of generals. The departure of Donald Rumsfeld, as it proves, is no tragedy. A decent man, he was never gifted with firmness no matter his media reputation. It turns out his facility was to stand by his president on Iraq even if he had doubts—even if he shared the inner-contention of James Baker. Better Rumsfeld is gone.

What the imbroglio following Baker-Hamilton tells me is this: who was the first potential presidential candidate to criticize the report? John McCain. Suffice-it to say that with all his failings, he may well be the best one to follow through to implement the Bush doctrine which I firmly believe is a philosophy of great intrinsic worth to the nation. Yea, I am coming to believe that McCain-Giuliani is the only ticket that can win for Republicans.

Jeane Kirkpatrick, R. I. P.

I had heard about the Kirkpatricks, of course, when I was running around as a journalist and later as an adversary of Hubert Humphrey. They were Washington, D. C. liberals decidedly interested in his becoming president—and why not? She was a domestic liberal and interested for the most part as a young scholar is domestic governmental concerns where Hubert was at his best. In foreign affairs, Hubert was an anti-Communist, a bold articulator of vision and a somewhat valiant warrior which fit the Kirkpatricks’ views entirely. But, of course, with the triumph of McGovernism in the Democratic party…an infection that remains with it yet…and the rise of Ronald Reagan who assumed much of the old-line liberal Democratic mantle...it was natural for Jeane Kirkpatrick to write the “Commentary” piece she did and see to it that Reagan saw the article personally. He did and boldly named her ambassador to the United Nations.

Jeane Kirkpatrick lived for a time in downstate Mount Vernon, Illinois. During a period after she served as UN ambassador, she was thinking of running for president. She came to Illinois as a private citizen and professor at Georgetown often around 1988 for major speeches, one of which was to the United Republican Fund during a brief period of its modern glory days. In those days I was at Quaker Oats and attended the dinner, finding myself visiting with an executive whose company had arranged for a Lear jet to pick her up and return her to Washington following her speech that night.

With some effrontery, I hitched a ride on her return trip and deadheaded back to Chicago late that night while my wife wondered where the hell I was…and bemused and not a little vexed when, returning home quite late, I said I had been to Washington, D. C. and back. But on the ride to D. C. we talked about her wish to run for president. I said then and I felt that way throughout her later life that she would be just what the doctor ordered for the GOP. The comparison between she and Maggie Thatcher is inevitable. So, I wouldn’t be me without examining her on the domestic social issues.

“Frankly,” she said, herself the mother of two sons, “I have been so involved in foreign policy that I haven’t kept up on the abortion issue. In your estimation, does one really have to present a unified, comprehensive blueprint of when life begins and how long it should exist before a doctrine of merciful release be invoked in order to seek the Republican nomination?”

I said she certainly should be aware of therapeutic advice on both ends of the life spectrum just as she would want to be briefed on the latest domestic or foreign policy issues. She wrinkled up her Irish face and pursed her lips in that familiar way she always did when thinking…much, frankly, like one preparing to kiss or be kissed. Then she said, “It seems rather arcane. What role would I have in something so scientific?”

A question that was so entirely naïve that I wondered what she took me for: and I looked at her sharply. But her lips were still pursed in thought. She wasn’t kidding. With a veritable lifetime in public policy not involved in sexual ethics or reproduction she frankly hadn’t given it much thought.

Why, I said, in Supreme Court appointments, assuredly. And in all manner of other appointments: in the annual battles over the Hyde amendment.

She said, “Com’on, are you suggesting I apply a Catholic view to all this politically? But I am not Catholic.”

I said: I’m suggesting that the base of my party is composed quite heavily of people who, less Catholic than evangelical, sadly for me, believe strongly in certain issues of this kind and that you should determine what your own position is.

“And if it is not as you say pro-life?”

Then I would imagine you would have more trouble with the base than you would normally expect given that you please it so much with your laudable foreign policy views.

“Enough to get by? I mean—my foreign policy views. Are they sufficient with the base to, in your estimation, get by?”

I would say they are not. Look, you have great admiration for President Reagan. His views changed from a pro-abortion governor who signed a very, very liberal piece of legislation to one who points out his earlier mistake and supports pro-life inherently. I am not sanguine that if he had not changed his view, he would have managed to get the wholehearted support he needed to win the nomination. Perhaps but I am in great doubt that he would have.

“Oh come on!”

No come on. You’re in a perfect position to find out. Ask him! He’s a close friend of yours.

“Ask him what?

Now she was being coy.

“Ask him this: Mr. President, in your estimation, by adopting a pro-life stance after having signed the abortion bill in California, was your political career helped or limited by that decision?”

“Oh, come on! That would indicate I felt that he did it for political purposes!”

But ambassador, you come on! No candidate for the presidency can afford to make decisions without taking into account the political realities. It so happens I think President Reagan not only made the right decision but, weighing it, knew he would get adversaries in the Republican party as well as supporters.

Then she said a very strange thing which made me think she could never be a candidate for the presidency…a statement sounding very like a sophomore in high school civics. And I have never been able to deduce whether she was putting me on—or really was that idealistic.

“I wouldn’t want to have to sit down with issues like that and have to make decisions based on the politics of the moment.”

Which meant she was pro-choice. I changed the subject and we passed the time talking about other things. Later she dropped the idea of running for president and wanted to be chosen for vice president with George H. W. Bush in 1988. What a tragic mistake that old man Bush didn’t choose her—but chose Dan Quayle instead. His failure to choose her underscored a big problem with his team: resolute establishmentarians led by “realist” Brent Scowcroft who wanted no one more courageous than they in their way, they settled for a neophyte who never proved to be more than a star-struck boy for a first-class intellectual mind and international strategist. Rest in peace, Jeane Kirkpatrick; as our ambassador and the greatest woman figure in foreign affairs of her time, you have served our nation well.

Personal Asides: Messages to Two Correspondents to this Site…Political Shootout Team for Sunday: Joe Moore and John Curry…The “Tribune’s” Love Letter to Obama.

Two Correspondents.

First to the man or woman who signs in as “Lovie’s Leather”: Your comments are good but I must say your choice of a name is weird. What, exactly, is meant by “Lovie’s Leather”? It sounds like a dominatrix with a coiled whip and spurs who stalks in skin-tight pantaloons under a purple light. Would you care to enlighten us on just how you came upon that name? If you won’t or can’t, consider moving on.

The second is more severe—to the weirdo who writes vaguely illiterate stuff under the name of somebody’s (I’m not giving out the name) left buttock. I don’t appreciate it and I don’t appreciate you. Please don’t write anymore with that identification or I’ll have to follow through with the notice against personal attacks and invention of persona carried in every issue of this web-site. I’m not kidding. Begone. And if you’re not out of here for good, I’m going to spend every dime I have to find out who you are, announce my findings and employ a variant of legal rodent spray to get rid of you.

Political Shootout.

“Political Shootout” Sunday will begin at 8 p.m. notwithstanding a technical interruption last week…and will feature Alderman Joe Moore of the 49th ward and a new face, John Curry, skilled litigator, all-round good guy who has played key roles in many Illinois campaigns and who held a major policy role in the Reagan Justice Department. His support for Reagan extends back to 1976 when as a major operative he supported the 40th president in his drive to upset Gerald Ford. He is a regular correspondent for this web-site.

Trib’s Affair with Obama.

There are some times when I genuinely throw up my hands at the vacuity of the “Tribune’s” editorial positions. Here is a newspaper that pretends to be a national one with purportedly a moderately conservative point of view on the economy, on regulation, on foreign policy. Then it comes out as it did yesterday with a full-scale hurrah for Barack Hussein Obama’s running for president…and, worse, alleges that Obama is no polarizing figure, as is—and it cites them—Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich. Again: Obama is no polarizing figure.

The fact is, gentleman and lady or ladies, you have just fallen for the David Axelrod image…which maintains as Obama himself says in his book “The Audacity of Hope”…which should be characterized as the audacity of hype…so audacious itself that these words could well have been strung together by Axelrod himself: “I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” And the “Tribune” buys that hook, line and sinker.

A “tabula raza,” eh? Take the social issues first. Here is a guy who as state senator heard the testimony of a nurse from Christ Hospital that she found a baby whimpering in a death throe, stuffed in a dirty linen room at the hospital, the product of a botched abortion…left there to die. Infanticide, right? The nurse, Jill Stanek, took the child and tried to rescue it but was denied any help from the hospital. So she did the only thing she could do which was to nurture the child until a few minutes later it died in her arms. She protested to the hospital, was fired, ran for the state House, lost but took the case for passage of a “Born Alive” bill that would prevent this insufferable infanticide to the state legislature. She appeared before the committee headed by that master of moderation…that blank screen on which people of all stripes project their views…Barack Obama who opposed the bill. The U. S. Congress finally passed a federal bill in 2003 under her protests. Great numbers of Democrats in both Houses voted for the bill that Obama as a state legislator opposed. That’s real moderation, isn’t it? What you guys say should be inculcated in the White House.

This same “tabula raza” when he went to the Senate refused to join the group of fourteen Senators who tried to head off a filibuster so as to get some nominees to receive full consideration without blockage. In his book he praises the efforts and notes coyly that he was not part of it. The same “tabula raza” opposed even the confirmation of the Chief Justice, being only one of 22 to do so. Moreover, this same U. S. Senator in his audacious book pronounces that of the $9 trillion in national debt, “the bulk of the debt is a direct result of the President’s tax cuts.” Wrong as any kid who would take Civics 101 could disprove. The tax cuts—which the “Tribune” supported, by the way—involved less than one-tenth of that amount.

And this same “tabula raza”—the blank slate upon which so many Americans of both parties pin their hopes and dreams—also laments that the Bush administration has been stingy with the National Institutes of Health. Under Bush, for God’s sake, its budget grew by more than $8 billion or 40%. This year the administration proposes to double federal funding for the physical sciences over the next decade. What in the name of God are you guys doing in that Ivory Tower instead of jerking on Axelrod’s line and flopping your paper into his boat? This same “tabula raza”—the blank slate that gives all Americans so much hope—voted against CAFTA which you people endorsed. In his time in the Senate, Obama has a 100% ADA rating; in the same period of time Ted Kennedy has a 95% ADA rating. And you buy the Axelrod dogma that Obama is a blank slate on which independents and some Republicans want to project their hopes and dreams. And that Hillary Clinton is the polarizing one. Quite candidly: are you crazy? Do you wonder why your newspaper is regarded as one which doesn’t know what it believes?

All of this leads to one inescapable conclusion. You write your editorials the same way your marketing department proposes to expand your readership—crassly, cynically and with no regard for intellectual consistency. In short, you cannot be taken seriously. I understand you guys are “New York Times” wannabes. Well, what you’ve done is precisely a mirror image of the “Times” urging Newt Gingrich to run—a candidate at variance with all or most of its earlier prescribed views.

Now, obviously, your social issues, tailored as they are to the Hinsdale country-club, would not be the same as mine. But at the very least, give this a thought if you’re capable of it. Here’s a guy who is campaigning against AIDS. Fine. But wouldn’t it interest you to know that the Centers for Disease Control have said that the number one cause of the spread of AIDS in the U. S.—47%--is “male-to-male sexual contact.” That’s the contact Obama supports politically. The number two cause of AIDS according to the Centers is “injection drug use.” As state senator, Obama voted to make hypodermic needles easily accessible in legislation that also deregulated how they are disposed.

The third leading cause of AIDS is heterosexual sex—17%. Obama disavows abstinence education. He stated in a recent speech that “I unequivocally disagree” with any attempt to supplement abstinence with condoms. He wants more condom education. Do you realize that the condom failure rate for sperm is about 20% and the HIV virus is much smaller than sperm which means that while one can only get pregnant between twelve and twenty-four hours a month, one can contact HIV at any time, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. You obviously realize that this “tabula raza” opposes the Defense of Marriage Act.

Still, the “Tribune’ plays the Axelrod game that here is a Bambi like innocent post baby-boomer who is unlike Hillary Clinton, a baby-boomer tied down with all those pesky baby boomer issues.

Until your stupid editorial came out, I never fully comprehended how totally bankrupt your editorial policies are. No one, no Chicagoan, no Illinoisan, should bother to even consider a “Tribune” point of view again because there is very little doubt that your merchandising of Obama falls right in line with the marketing plan of your business office…and you fell like a ripe plum into Axelrod’s lap. You should regard your paper as a shopper—because, frankly, that’s what it is. For all its hyper-ventilating over Obama, the “Sun-Times” whose editorial positions dove-tails with his, at least knows what it believes. What are you going to do in the future now, when the business office suggests you endorse McCain as it very well may do—punt? Hope that people won’t remember? Give me a break.

Chicago: A Decidedly Un-Normal City Where Daley Seems to Reign Supreme…Where Love for Him Started with Gratitude to His Father.

[A column for The Wanderer, the nation’s oldest national Catholic weekly.]


By Thomas F. Roeser

Note: Wanderer readers have responded with great generosity to my article of two weeks ago reporting on The Women’s Center and its director, Mary Strom, which gives aid and assistance to troubled pregnant young women, convincing them to turn away from the thought of abortion and have their babies. Readers have sent checks totaling several thousands of dollars plus a used Ultra-Sound machine which can be put to work in the Center right away. Thanks so much, readers!


CHICAGO—In a normal city where top mayoral aides are being hauled off to jail…where the city’s chief executive sent bulldozers at midnight to a profitable municipal lakefront airport to destroy it in the middle of the night and turn it into a park because his wife wanted to see more foliage prompting an outcry that continues to this day…where flagrantly political patronage workers who electioneered on city time are being monitored by the federal government…where a U. S. district attorney interviewed the mayor for two hours straight on corruption…

…where the City Clerk pleaded guilty to taking $48,000 in payoffs to get companies to qualify in the city’s scandal-plagued Hired Truck program, the 33rd to be convicted in that particular scandal…where the second ranking official in the Water Department and unofficial commander of a group of electioneering patronage workers, including campaigning on taxpayers’ time for Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), has pleaded guilty to racketeering and tax fraud…where—oh forget it.

The list can go on and on until this paper is filled but suffice it to say in a normal city, reelection would look nearly impossible for any normal mayor. But as I have been showing in these articles for the past several years Chicago is not a normal city. And Mayor Richard M. Daley is not a normal mayor. A former pro-life state Senator turned pro-abort, social traditionalist converted to pro-gay rights mayor, he’s riding high. He is certain of reelection in 2007 if he doesn’t get indicted by the feds first. Which normally shouldn’t happen since his great and effusive fan is President George W. Bush. Bush appointed the U. S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald. But Fitzgerald is not your normal prosecutor, either.

In fact, some say Fitzgerald is a very odd duck as this story will detail. He could spoil the glorious the story involving the matriculation of Richard M. Daley, regarded once as the not-too-bright Dauphin prince-son of a brilliant old school mayor, Richard J. who on his own ascended to magazine cover status in Time and Newsweek as well as the London Economist, reaching the highest berth among the mayors of the nation, exceeding the record of his own father. The Economist, my favorite newsmagazine, bobbled it when they said Daley’s city has a slight “taint” of scandal. Slight taint! But nevertheless…

The International Olympics Committee has said it is giving Chicago top consideration for hosting the winter games in 2016. But, it added, if Daley isn’t around as mayor, Chicago won’t be considered. In 2016 he will be 76 years old. What is his secret? Not secret—secrets. Five of them.

First, rest assured if his name were Richard M. Snodgrass instead of Richard M. Daley--even if all the stars in the heavens were in such an unlikely alignment that he would be elected mayor (comparable to dropping a quarter from the Hancock building and have it stand on end)--Snodgrass would have been drummed out of power two years ago as a city disgrace— sent to continue his education at the federal institution of higher learning specializing in the manufacture of license plates at Oxford, Wisconsin. The name Daley here is magic.

And was magic when Richie began his upward climb: for one reason only: the overwhelming number of long-time Chicagoans believe his father, the legendary Richard J., prevented the city from going the way of Detroit by standing up to black radicalism in the 1960s, a lonely sentinel for urban order when the entire mass media were against him. They insist Old man Daley held the line when Martin Luther King came to Chicago, the charismatic minister leading marches and protests, rent strikes and capturing the love of the media. Daley overcame King because of two reasons: he had welded a core of traditionalist blacks into the Democratic party and they stood with him against the most charismatic preacher the nation had ever seen; and Daley benefited because, while Chicago’s segregation was illegal, time was on his side. Many blacks and whites never acknowledged it but nevertheless understood that had Daley tried to comply too much with black wishes he would have lost the white middle-class and the city would have crumpled.

Old man Daley has never received the credit for this with mainstream liberal media but most Chicagoans from that era believe the story. The few realistic social historians who aren’t co-opted by the trendy Left agree: He bent toward the forces of revolution just so far but not too far; never far enough to alienate his white working-class supporters, keeping all the time a tremendous following in black wards: the 6th, 7th 17th and in working class wards, the 5th , the 20th as well as the very poor black wards: the 2nd , 3rd and 24th. It was a performance worthy of Arturo Toscanini wielding the baton before the NBC symphony orchestra.

Newspapers of the time and Walter Cronkite screamed in outrage at old man Daley’s statement during the furor following King’s assassination: “I tell the police to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand because they are potential murderers and…to shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting any stores of our city!” He was laughed at by the late-night TV comics and the intelligentsia snobs. He was condemned for this by all black leaders. But secretly, traditional bungalow Chicagoans privately supported him and loved him for his guts.

I can tell you this: he attained an immortality with working class people of the time: a luster that never dies. Intellectuals cried he was insensitive, provincial and unsympathetic to the plight of urban blacks but of this there is no doubt, as the famous urban historian John Allswang of UCLA, the nation’s foremost urbanologist, has written: “Had Daley really tried to deal with black problems, there is good reason to argue that he would have lost not only much of his white ethnic support but his upper-class business support as well.”

Add his stand-up posture to white, long-haired leftist radicals at the 1968 Democratic convention and he won an enduring legacy for the name Daley among the middle-class which remained with the family Whites stayed with the Democratic party for jobs and security; blacks learned that patronage could help them as it had the Irish, Lithuanians and Poles earlier. Standing as a sentinel while the New York-based TV networks blasted him was old man Daley. His public housing policies were criticized but have been seen by dispassionate realists as necessary for the time: not for now but then.

The everlasting gratitude of bungalow belt Chicagoans for the old man carried over to his son Richard. Young Richie began with a surge of popularity due to belief of the middle class that the heroism of his father saved their city when other towns declined: Detroit under Coleman Young, New York under John V. Lindsay. He was elected state’s attorney, failed in one mayoralty attempt when two whites split the vote to enable a black to win. But when it was Richie’s turn, the legacy of the old man gave him a big starting push. Not a permanent pass since after the first election he won he was on his own. He could just as easily gone down.

But the fact is he has exceeded his father in many aspects—notably in one-man domination and having assumed personal patronage from the ward bosses. Exceeded his father in all but courage. He felt he had to adapt to contemporary cultural decadence where by shunning it he could have won but not by much. In co-opting the Left, he has gained far more power than his father had, has accomplished at least as much as the old man did plus with a finer appreciation of architectural and landscape beauty that the old man, who wrecked too many irreplaceable architectural treasures, never displayed.

Second, in criticizing Richard M. Daley’s switch from pro-life traditionalism to espousing abortion and gay rights I have been practically alone among commentators in this city. His patronizing gay rights parades means practically nothing at all to most people who live here, Catholics and prelates included. Most Catholic laymen and clergy (with few exceptions) believe young Daley has matched the old man’s heroism in saving the city from destruction by enabling it to prosper. Not to me. His capitulation to the forces of social disintegration has always bothered me. But I’m alone. A conservative priest with whom I had lunch the other day was extolling Daley so fervently that I reminded him about the mayor’s support of abortion on demand and gay rights. “Naw, he doesn’t believe those things,” he said. “He may have said [these things] but he doesn’t believe it. Not in the slightest.” Then when shown that he does believe these things, he sipped his coffee thoughtfully and said, “well—he’s done a lot of good things for this city.” See, that’s the way he gets away with it.

And in fairness, young Daley (he’s not young but 64; yet is called young Richie) has materially done a lot of good things here, graft or not. Chicago once had not one but two skid rows, one on south State street and the other on west Madison. If the old man saved the city from race suicide, his son has replaced both skid rows by charming neighborhoods inhabited for the most part by young professionals. The dreary west side skid row where my idol Msgr. Ignatius McDermott (who never cared for Daley or his old man because his big brother, Jim, an alderman was a rival) worked to reclaim drunks and homeless has been turned into rehab buildings, new buildings and Starbucks. Instead of old drunks coughing their lungs out on the street corners and getting rolled by thugs, they’re in spacious rehab and a prosperous class of gentry flows in once decrepit neighborhoods.

Moreover the city has been beautified—with a political sagacity behind it that trumps just good looks. The Wall Street Journal says that by beautifying Chicago, Daley has put it high on the list of desirable locations for industry. You can wonder who got rich undeservedly from it but looks alone played a big factor in causing Boeing to move its headquarters here from Seattle. The Economist, the premier international magazine covering the world economy, says that because the avenues of the city is decked out with concrete flower boxes over-spilling with blooms from Spring to late Fall like Paris, a new Millennium Park with its Frank Gehry outdoor concert hall, skating rink, modern sculptures, charming walkways and fields for lolling has given Chicago a great international acclaim.

Taking the other side is conservative African American ex-cop Frank Penn, a good friend of mine. In the old days when seeing a robbery suspect’s car roaring down a street, Penn could wheel his squad car around in mid-block and catch him. Now with elaborate cement flower boxes in the center of the streets, he would have to go to the end of the block to turn around and start the chase. But that’s a cop’s eye-view, not that of the Economist or the National League of Cities.

And there’s more than sheer beauty. In place of the racial animosity that reigned under the city’s two black mayors with the city council in a furor, there is now a feeling of comfort and ease between the races. That’s because of a political co-optation. Congressman Bobby Rush, a formerly vehement critic, who ran against Daley thundering about his corruption has changed his tune completely: I’d love to know why. Knowing Bobby, there’s something there more than a honest intellectual change of heart.

Third, while corruption as outlined above exists, no one in my memory has thus far accused or even attempted to prove Daley of being a thief or his old man, either. Especially the old man. The senior Daley knew how to apply patronage to tame warring minorities. A latter day reform has caught young Daley unawares. Kass points out that because he distrusted the old Democratic party, he moved patronage from the wards to his own fifth floor at City Hall. That could have been a fatal mistake. Politicking with jobs was always an arm’s length away from the old man but it’s been resting in your Daley’s lap. Past sins here could rise up to kill him. Not to mention the way he has pioneered the savvy of privatization for his political benefit.

Just one example: Rather than load the public payroll with political hires, young Richie has farmed out work to the private sector which repays his favors with lavish political contributions. But he hasn’t always been vigilant. His people have held up truck owners for bribes to get city contracts. Chicagoans wink and say, “so what?” but the feds aren’t saying so what. Richie may yet get burned by the unfathomable federal gumshoe Patrick Fitzgerald—but most Chicagoans would regard this as a great tragedy. They believe from the soles of their feet to the top of their heads that if you purify the pond the lilies die. A little scum on the top of the pond is allowed as the cost of running a city that purportedly works, they feel.

Fourth, Richie doesn’t want to do anything but run Chicago; just like his old man. This dedication to staying here is a big comfort to many. You’ll never see him flirting with the idea of running for governor or the U. S. Senate. That’s a marvelous sense of permanence for Chicagoans in a world that is not so permanent. His manic desire to keep on being mayor gives him a shrewd public sense. Not long ago, the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass, the best political reporter in town whom I admire more than any other journalist, noted that certain ACLU-type liberals in the Daley coalition nixed advertisements for “The Nativity Story” from being displayed in Daley Plaza across from City Hall. It was the kind of hot story that could get Daley in trouble: as one who melts away from defending Christians while allowing other faiths to hold displays in the public square. Daley called a news conference. What did he do?

As Kass says: Daley changed the subject, that’s what. He defended his patronage chief Robert Sorich, convicted by the feds for politicalization, as being a good family man. Sorich was taking the heat for Daley, was undoubtedly following orders which came from the mayor’s personal office but after Daley’s defense of him few remembered this. Sorich is from the blue-collar neighborhood of Bridgeport where the Daleys come from. Growing red in the face defending Sorich was good for Daley in two ways: (a) welding even more support from the white neighborhoods like Bridgeport and (b) good to change the subject from his tolerating the squishy liberals who vetoed the nativity film. Indeed in Bridgeport, the old parish where the Daley’s worshiped, Nativity of Our Lord, has held a fund-raiser for convicted felon Sorich. Kass reported a parish priest, Fr. Dan Brandt, saying: “[The Lord] was a convicted felon and Robert was convicted and so he may have a lot in common with Jesus.”

Fifth, ungrammatical and often a red-faced shouter when he gets upset with the media, Daley is in his own way as brilliant, astute and as devious a politician as the legendarily Machievellian 32nd president, FDR. His 2007 budget proclaims that “next year the city of Chicago will make new investment in our people and neighborhoods without raising property taxes or any other tax or fee. This will be the third year in a row without a city of Chicago property tax increase.” But as Mike Quigley, a bright young liberal reform Democratic Cook county commissioner, has pointed out (in statements that have received absolutely minimal press), the mayor has been steadily raising taxes over the last three years as can be testified by anyone who pays them. The ingenious device: tax increment financing districts or TIF about which very few people know or care.

The only newspaper that has given adequate coverage to the political payoff for Daley with TIFs is an alternative throw-away free paper, soft-porn but still with an extraordinarily good reporter. It’s The Reader. Writer Ben Joravsky explains: TIFs are districts in which all the property taxes taken by the local taxing bodies –schools, parks, libraries—are frozen for 23 years. If a taxing body collects, let us say, $1,000 on a given property when a TIF is created, that’s what it’ll be collecting when the TIF expires more than two decades later. Any property tax revenue created by new development or by the ever-rising assessments go into the TIF fund which is controlled by Daley and the local alderman (provided the alderman is loyal to the mayor). This control gives him authority over billions of property tax dollars. In fact, Joravsky reasons, TIFs are the hidden stratagem that has given Daley control of the city.

Daley has the power to do practically anything he wants with the money from TIFs. “Once approved, they operate without any independent oversight,” says Joravsky. “There are no budgets attached to them. You can’t even figure how much of your property taxes go into them since TIFs aren’t listed on your tax bill. As a result, the program has become a grab-bag, covering everything from Millennium Park cost overruns to upscale condos, with lots of money left over for well-connected planners, lawyers, bankers, developers, construction contractors and consultants.” All of whom feel the need to contribute to Daley’s favorite charity.

TIFs amount to property tax hikes. They suck up revenue and thereby present the schools, parks and county with a choice: cut programs to reduce spending or increase tax rates to compensate for the millions lost to the funds. Quigley who’s calling for reform of the program calculates the average Chicago tax bill is 10% higher than it would be were it not for TIFs. Over the past ten years more than 100 new TIF districts have been created and Daley boasts he’ll battle any plan to cut back on them while at the same time he points with pride to his holding the line of property taxes (which are soaring). But as this is a very powerful mayor, local officials with the exception of the lone Quigley, have kept their mouths shut. The mayor’s favorite alderman, Burt Natarus who represents the posh lakefront was asked by a reformer why TIFs aren’t in the city budget. Natarus raised himself up to full height, faced his accuser and said, “Because they’re not in the budget!” Oh, I see. That explains it, then.

Normally things should be uncommonly good for Richie Daley to win reelection in 2007. Two potential opponents, Cong. Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Luis Guterriez, have declined to run against him. Even if they had run, it’s clear that they wouldn’t have given him much trouble. Jackson huffed and puffed and said if he ran he could beat Daley: that’s baloney and he knows it. I admire young Jackson (not his old man) but he should get over that lingering vestige of bravado. He’s not running because he can’t beat Daley and he told me as much privately.

The only cloud on the horizon is the federal prosecutor Fitzgerald, the local district attorney here who has been a special prosecutor on the Valerie Plame non-case. Fitzgerald has done a magnificent job probing corruption in Chicago, Cook county and all of Illinois. I’m mystified at his record in Washington where no one can explain the long persecution…five times before a grand jury…of Karl Rove when Fitzgerald knew all along that then leaker was Richard Armitage and told Armitage to shut up for a long time about it. Or why Scooter Libby remains in the prisoner’s dock. If anyone knows why, please tell me. I don’t want to defend Rove who has committed a number of things that tick me off including his closeness to Bob Kjellander, but this one mystifies me.

It is not inconceivable that if he wants to go down as a totally fearless prosecutor, Fitzgerald can do it by indicting Daley, offending Democrats and even most big business Republicans plus George W. Bush. Jay Stewart the bright exec of the Better Government Association says he would not be surprised if he indicts Daley. Somehow, I would be stunned—but…what do I know? There are at least hundreds of patronage jobs that have been handled illegally, not from a backroom but from Daley’s 5th floor mayoral office. Hundreds. Remember, Fitzgerald indicted Scooter Libby for one very slight so-called dereliction that baffles most legal scholars to this day. Indict Daley? The media would love it.

As I said when I started writing this, normally Richard M. Daley has nothing to worry about. But Chicago isn’t a normal city and Patrick Fitzfgerald’s not a normal prosecutor.


This must have Richie Daley worrying.

Personal Asides: The Conservative Vote That Left the GOP—and Can Return…Postponement of the State Central Meeting Spells Kjellander Weakness…Mark Kirk Thinking of Running for the Senate Against Durbin.

The Conservative Vote.

Looking back, how prescient we were when we warned that Judy Baar Topinka would be a disaster as the Republican gubernatorial candidate because she would lose the party’s conservative base. All the smart pundits told us that anyone else but Topinka would lose to Rod Blagojevich: that Jim Oberweis was too polarizing, that Ron Gidwitz was too uncharismatic, that Bill Brady was not specific enough (they had a point there). Well, the party narrowly nominated Topinka who was supposed to be able to make great inroads with the independents and Democrats at a time when the governor was supposedly in bad shape with them. And what happened? Gee, we don’t hear very much about those bad pundit calls now that the election is over, do we?

Which leads to a larger question: The first job in party building is to regain the base. And the idea that conservatives don’t have anywhere else to go is hogwash. Take a look at some of the congressional races. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown, a liberal who made some conservative noises, collected no fewer than 23% of the self-described conservative voters in Ohio over Mike Dewine although Brown’s lifetime American Conservative Union rating was only 8%. Then look at three Senate races—in Missouri, Montana and Virginia. Conservative voters made the difference in all these states; they voted for the Democrats. The total conservative proportion of the electorate declined only slightly compared to 2004.

The publication “Human Events” reports that a poll of 100 voters in twelve close elections involving Republican-controlled House seats during the three days immediately before the election found that contrary to mainstream media supposition, the war in Iraq actually gave the GOP an edge of 36% to 32% as the party “best able to deal with the war in Iraq.” Where the Republicans fell down was on their lagging conservatism: scoring only 26% on “cutting taxes for the middle class,” 22% on “cutting the deficit,” and 21% on “keeping government spending under control.”

Which tells me that in 2008 the GOP better have a rock-firm conservative candidate on the issue of the war and spending. I have expressed this idea before—but Newt is the best equipped to come up with brilliant alternative choices on issues…but like Winston Churchill he is half genius and half nuts as a congressional colleague described him. He’d be superb locked in a room and ordered to come out at the end of the day with ten new takes on the issues. Of the ten, likely four would be nuts and five unduly impractical. The remaining one might win the election. I defer to no one as a former critic of John McCain: his misbegotten campaign finance bill committed due violence against the 1st amendment. But looking at what we know now, putting McCain together with Rudy Giuliani for vice president might be the only way Republicans can hold their base and topple the Democrats with a solid experiential ticket: a former war hero, pro-life by the voting record, a budget-cutter by practice, a supporter of winning the war in Iraq rather than slinking away. Giuliani is indubitably a hero for his behavior in New York and a practiced urban manager. That to me is not an ideal ideological ticket…mine would begin with Sam Brownback for president…but it could very well be the welding together of two of our highest rated contenders.

Postponing the Meeting.

Postponing the December meeting of the Republican State Central Committee until next month is a sign of weakness…a sign that there is no movement whatsoever in the effort to dislodge Bob Kjellander as National Committeeman. If the White House’s Karl Rove is so dumb that he still can’t understand the liability that Kjellander is, the SCC should have held the meeting anyhow and voted a resolution of no-confidence in Kjellander with a declaration that it will no longer work with him. Why the SCC didn’t do that can be laid to ultra-timidity, the trembling uncertainty that somehow the White House will be angered. To them I say: So what? The occupant of this White House whom I support almost across the board, will not be running again, guys. Anyone who will be seeking the presidential nomination will have to, automatically, take the position in Illinois that Kjellander should go. If Andy McKenna means to do something with the job of state chairman rather than preside over a vapid, inconsequential herd of cats, he should (a) announce his own position on such a resolution and (b) call the SCC to order and submit the resolution…declaring that if it does not pass, he, McKenna will resign.

Mark Kirk.

According to some reports, Congressman Mark Kirk has called together a group of strategists to ponder whether or not he should run for the U. S. Senate against Dick Durbin. Durbin’s approval ratings are very low. Normally…if Kirk were just a pro-choicer…I’d support him given that no one else of consequence seems to be running and he is a superlative candidate on other grounds. But Kirk’s pro-choice record is extreme, based on the necessity as he sees it of pleasing suburban and exurban independents on the issue…extreme to the extent that he public funding of abortion and also has been frenetic about his endorsement of partial birth abortion. That support is enough to duplicate the erosion of the conservative base that bedeviled Topinka. It’s too bad because Kirk’s position on foreign policy and national security is about as good as it gets—but until and unless he can adjust his stand ala Mitt Romney of Michigan on abortion, Kirk might as well forego running and stick with the 10th district.

Given the likelihood that Kirk won’t seek the Senate because of the apathy his candidacy would receive from the conservative base, who would be a good candidate? I have suggested Jim Oberweis but the chances are less than likely he’ll try. State Senator Bill Brady is interested but would not be a good candidate for several reasons: first, the lingering memory of his very strange barrage of blows he aimed at Jim Oberweis, his fellow conservative, when by every strategic reckoning it should have been directed at Judy Baar Topinka (as Ron Gidwitz did)…which gives credence to the very plausible conclusion that Brady wanted to stand in well with the establishment of the party. Second, that Brady never did raise much money even when he was running for governor when corporate checks were allowed—leading one to wonder how in the world he would raise sufficient money in the federal election when only individual giving is acceptable. Third, that there is a very, very limited and tight circle of family members…brothers, notably…around Brady that causes him to nod enthusiastically when listening to others’ advice but afterward check with the tight circle and ask: now, what should I really do?

The description of an ideal candidate would be as follows: First, a multi-millionaire…amend that to a mega-multi-millionaire. Second, a reasonable expert on the issues. Third, a social conservative with no amendatory provisions. Fourth, a gregarious man who thoroughly enjoys people and the zest of campaigning. Fifth, although never having held office, a reasonable familiarity with public questions: having devoted a good part of his life to the independent, non-profit, charitable and philanthropic sector. Eeegad: this profile comes out not unlike Jack Ryan! But wait a minute before you dismiss it.

1. The overwhelming reaction to the Ryan contretemps of 2004 has been…check it out…that Jack Ryan was savaged by the “Tribune’s” obsessive, almost pathological over-concern with his sex life and divorce. Not a bad enemy to have right now: a paper uncertain of what it believes which is virtually on the chopping block for sale or auction.



2. Jeri Ryan who would have the most to complain about was in her ex-husband’s corner the entire time and for the whole length of the controversy…which leads to the question if she’s satisfied with the situation what in the hell right does the “Tribune” have as prurient nanny of sexual correctness to destroy one’s character, political career and future relationship with his child? Ryan would be so sure of public sympathy that this issue would not dare to be raised by anyone.



3. The Republican party was hoodwinked out of a potentially good candidacy by the gumshoe Jansenist hyper-Puritanical action of a newspaper that cannot distinguish between investigative journalism and legitimate privacy concerns. The “Tribune” wanted to show its so-called objectivity by balancing the story of Blair Hull allegedly striking his wife to get her to stop kicking him with the Ryan privacy intrusion: one of the more despicable cases on record.



4. What Ryan should have done, of course, is either not run or to run and lay bare the terrible scandal of propositioning his own wife in a semi-public place. His resultant hesitation spurred all kinds of concern that he had something far worse to hide…and the “Tribune’s” hysterical seizure of the episode and drum-beat to sell papers was lamentable.



5. Conclusion: Ryan should try it again…unless he’s made another visit to Paris with a potential successor to Jeri. Which I imagine he hasn’t. That kind of Superbowl disclosure by the “Tribune” could well have scared off any thought of future carnality…or is this just an old man who’s writing this?

Personal Aside: This Stuff About the Illinois GOP Dead Beyond Resurrection is all Guff. All that Troubles it is the Near Monolithic Media.

David McSweeney 2


I’ve been around too long to believe it. I remember when, compared to this election, the national Republicans were enveloped in a tidal wave and swept out to sea. That was 1964 when the pundits said there was no hope of return within the lifetimes of people covering the news. They pronounced that the GOP had a fatal flaw—that flaw generated by Rutherford B. Hayes who sanctioned withdrawal of the Union army from the South after the Civil War which left blacks to the tender mercies of the white southerners. The Goldwater campaign which carried the southern states was a short-term phenomenon they said. The civil rights era coming up will cause blacks in the South to be dominant, so the white south is very transitory. Not true; not in the slightest sense true. The South has been for all practical purposes Republican country.

They didn’t realize that the seeds of liberalism’s excesses were coming to fruition with the violence in the cities and the awful anarchical rebellions during the Vietnam war. That produced a backlash that has been with us in many aspects even today. Barely four years after Goldwater’s landslide defeat, Richard Nixon—very uncharismatic and a total washout as a human being not to mention campaigner—won over Humphrey. This idea that the 2006 mid-term elections which so narrowly captured the Senate and took a somewhat larger chunk of the House cannot be overcome is fatalistic nonsense. Out of loss can come great future victories: such as the one good thing that came from the Goldwater movement was the emergence of Ronald Reagan.

One of the best candidates to emerge this year has been David McSweeney who, if he determines to continue, will be likely to be elected the next time around. He has all the things that a candidate should have: hardy intellectual resources, courage, eloquence, character in abundance. I look around and see Ron Gidwitz who though not successful as a candidate for governor has the intellectual grasp that towers over many others…and who seemed to find himself late in the campaign to the point where he has a lot to provide in the future.

And I still say Jim Oberweis, whatever he wants to do, will be a force to be reckoned with: I would hope he would consider running against Dick Durbin and spend the entire time from now until 2008 campaigning against this charlatan…remembering it was an ex-Congressman who dropped out of the House because he had received an erroneous medical report that he was going blind and who found out the truth, started what was seen as a hopeless race against the Senate’s majority leader, Scott Lucas of Havana, Illinois—with Everett Dirksen winning that contest and becoming a great leader of his own in the Senate.

I look with great favor on Tom Cross who, while we don’t agree on some aspects of social policy, has mastered the technique of being a unity-prone leader, encouraging people like Aaron Schock who have different social views than his own: that’s the essence of leadership.

The big difficulty with Republicans is this: we do not have even a faintly supportive media…and a supportive media intellectually is essential to generate the kind of intellectual ballast that is indispensable. You have the Sun-Times which is the Democratic party’s unofficial newspaper of record which has begun an almost indecent outward campaign of promotion…almost like the newspapers did in the 19th century in favor of Lincoln and against Lincoln, in favor of McClellan and some blistering him…of Barack Obama.

Obama is indeed an exciting candidate but as a newspaper of pronounced opinion which makes no pretense of equivocating truth and untruth—this paper has gone round the bend. This idea that Obama is a “tabula raza”—an empty slate on which everyone who supports certain ideas wants to project them with him—is wrong. He is at bottom a fervent liberal and near Fabian socialist with totally ultra-secular social tendencies, one who voted not just for partial birth abortion but to deny help to infants who survived near death in the womb from abortionist’s tools, voting to allow them to die of neglect and has the appalling bad taste to call this record “the audacity of hope.” All the while displaying the agreeable tendency to appear to consider various options: “ah, you may have a point.” Open-minded my foot. But with a stridently liberal press there is no other view but his in the “Sun-Times.” You’d think they’d have confidence in themselves to permit another view—but no.

Then there is the Tribune which apart from John Kass and the Op Ed writer Dennis Byrne is totally the wanna-be Midwest edition of “The New York Times” or the “Los Angeles Times.” The suburban “Herald” newspaper is just slightly to the right, by tad inches of the “Tribune,” portraying the same dreary politically convenient clichés. No political party can win in any large state without any major editorial support. Until and unless that is changed, there is likely to be only the dull grey of institutional liberalism, sluggish and stagnant, running through the state. Only a candidate of enormous personal wealth could overcome that disadvantage. The good news is that both papers may be extinct before long—or broken up to such a degree that their pernicious influence is abated.

My Date With Ginger Rogers: Part II.

When I greeted her, I felt like a middle-aged gigolo escorting an elderly heavily, heavily made-up blonde with not all that great a complexion (heavily rouged, skin damaged probably from many, many lay-ons of cosmetics over the decades)…albeit a trim woman, moving easily with the strapping body of the athlete, broad, almost masculine shoulders, tapered waist. She was essentially an athlete who became a self-taught great actress and who rigorously worked out all her life. The evening started slow but when I brought up politics, it bloomed since she was well-equipped to discuss all phases of presidential candidacies including what she regarded as Richard Nixon’s lamentable inability to warm up to people. “What I don’t understand,” she said, “is why a man that ill-at-ease ever chose the political profession.” I volunteered that he was regarded as a great foreign policy president. She disagreed, saying that he had few absolutes: using that word “absolutes” in a philosophical context of certainty which impressed me greatly.

She was a well-schooled conservative and thorough fan of Ronald Reagan who at that time had served two terms as California governor and who was preparing to run for the presidency. When I switched the topic to what I deduced was her strong point: acting and her having won the Academy Award for “Kitty Foyle,” she agreed to do so but not until she finished making the point that Reagan’s greatest contribution was as president of the Screen Actors Guild where, she said, “he drove the Communists out of the business—at least” she added ruefully, “for a time.”

She acknowledged that she and Fred Astaire were the greatest dancing team in Astaire’s career and said that while they made ten musicals, Astaire was determined not to allow their partnership to dominate his career—an idea prompted by Astaire’s sister Adele, who she acknowledged had been Astaire’s greatest partner.

She made no bones about the fact that she was ditched, somewhat, by Astaire. “Here’s a guy who started off in fifth billing in Flying Down to Rio in 1933,” she said, “when I was the second female lead after Dolores Del Rio and who rose overnight. You know the great surprise of that for me was this. Here’s a guy who started as a real nice punk—no looks, no singing voice but lots of dancing talent--ho was made overnight by the Rogers-Astaire pairing who immediately afterward didn’t want it to be continued because he would be typed! Astounding. After RKO insisted we do a flock of others which he seemed to fight until he was convinced to do it [The Gay Divorcee: 1934, Roberta: 1935; Top Hat: 1935; Follow the Fleet: 1936; Swing Time: 1936; Shall We Dance: 1937; and Carefree: 1938] which made us the top show-business team in the world, he acted as though he was doing the studio and me a favor.

“If he wanted out, it was okay with me—hell, I went on to beat Katherine Hepburn for the Academy Award for best female actress, but I never found out exactly why until his sister, Adele, who one night got too much to drink told me.” What was it? “He felt I was not a total dancer that Adele had been: that I didn’t know how to tap, that I faked but that my good point was that when the music stopped I was a hell of an actress. I told Adele that was a goddam lie that I didn’t know how to tap and that I didn’t fake anything. I’m not sure that was Fred’s own assessment but Adele’s who was supposedly his best partner and who quit to get married. I leave it to you to say whether or not Fred Astaire and his sister dancing with him could have been rated the way Rogers and Astaire were. Do you think so?”

I never saw Astaire dance with his sister but I immediately said no. Astaire was a kind of Trappist monk, dated Rogers only once in 1933 before he got married and the date was just that with him talking to her about their dancing—no affair. “He was a moody, spiritual Episcopalian if you can imagine such a thing,” said Rogers. “He’d sit in an empty Episcopal church and meditate in Beverly Hills some afternoons. He was not carnal if that’s the way you want to put it nor was he gay. He never made a pass at me and I didn’t expect him to. He was deeply in love with his wife and was a great father to their two children. He almost died of anguish after she died.

“He called up the producer, for whom he was supposed to make the film Daddy Long Legs and told him he would pay Hunt not to be in the film because he couldn’t go on. Then the next morning he showed up and said he’d try it. He did a great job. But if you ask me, I could never figure him out. We did two more: Carefree and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle and people couldn’t get enough of it. He called me one afternoon and said, `Are you ready for one more?’ I said, yeah but only one: I’d rather be remembered as an actress than a dancer. We did The Barkleys of Broadway which made a lot of money.”

When we met, Astaire was a successful dramatic actor of 75. Later in his eighties, he married a dashing, beauteous 33-year-old female jockey he met at the race-track where he owned horses. Everyone but Astaire and his new wife Robin believed the marriage was cynical, that she was a gold-digger. That proved to be not so. What the magic between them was is anyone’s guess but she fiercely guarded his health in his last years and sat by his hospital bed for days as the end neared.

To me, Rogers acknowledged the Academy Award aside, she will always be remembered as half of the greatest dance team on film: Astaire and Rogers. “But I can tell you,” she said, “both of us found that we could do more than dance. Fred became a gifted actor but…” here she seemed to smile inwardly, “…he never got an Oscar.” That was how she summed up still hurt feelings generated by his sister Adele that Ginger was never the finessed dancer Fred was. Look at the films once again as I have and you see two people melting into one stupendous performer.

With that we arrived at the reception. I made sure she made a swing around the place, took a drink, met people, signed some autographs. The young crowd was intimidated by her presence even though many had never seen or heard of her. Quickly, I escorted her out. She was a very interesting lady, I’ll say that. Dropped her off at her hotel where the uniformed doorman tipped his hat and she somewhat coquettishly acknowledged it--and that’s my remembrance of Ginger Rogers.

Personal Aside: The Rumsfeld Memo Verifies What Billy Kristol Has Always Been Saying.

The Rumsfeld memo released Sunday that argued to President Bush for a change in strategy was a shocker to me because until then I never really bought the idea propagated by Bill Kristol that Rummy was a flexible, pragmatic dovish secretary: his iron jawed visage and blunt words had taken me in. I should have known better since I knew him fairly well earlier. Rumsfeld was never, ever an ideologue but a very flexible pragmatist. Kristol, smarter than I on this one (and maybe on many other things) always argued that Rumsfeld was a key to the failure in Iraq by poor planning, yes, but also an inability to commit sufficient troops. In this memo, it is clear that Kristol has been right all along. Which means that Rumsfeld was not the kind of guy you would want to have by your side when, like Custer, you’re facing a lot of Indians coming at you ala the Democrats and the mainstream media.

The longer I look at this Iraq thing the more concerned I am that we must win this thing—not start slow, phased withdrawals. To withdraw means something of a Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. mentality: he who arranged the assassination of Diem. To withdraw means we must retreat from Iraq and vamoose: leaving those Iraqis, Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and others who believed in us to the tender mercies of chaos. That we must betray our allies in Lebanon and scotch the idea of an independent Lebanon so as to gain Syria’s support for our pulling out of Iraq. If that’s realism, I’ll take vanilla. It’s retreat and capitulation. What would Winston Churchill do at this hour? I know what this sounds like: it sounds like the only two people who are acceptable thus far for president are either Gingrich or McCain…and of the two, McCain is more nearly electable. Where Romney and Brownback are be at this juncture we don’t know. I guess we all know what Barack Obama would do, don’t we?

Flashback: The Illinois Republican Bourbons and the Pragmatists as Seen from the Vantage-Point of Billy the Kid in 1964.

[Memories from more than 50 years in politics for my heirs].


Billy the Kid and I…referring to the former two-term Illinois governor, William G. Stratton, two-time Congressman-at-Large and two-time state treasurer, cleared of one indictment by the grace and sufferance of Everett Dirksen, innocent of any theft committed by Republican state auditor Orville Hodge (outside of having a premonition Hodge was a crook), innocent of any attempt by a former press secretary to do a little special interest work on the side without telling his boss…decided to have lunch on almost a regular basis in the M & M Club at the Merchandise Mart where we both worked: he as a government relations officer for the Canteen Corporation, I as one for Quaker Oats. We did that for many years, continuing when he became a government relations officer for Associated Bank, in a relationship that lasted until his death in 2001.

“Illinois Republicans are largely controlled by the Bourbons,” said Billy. “They are the big families—the McCormicks, the Billy Wood Princes, the Ingersolls, the Armours, the Smiths or Northern Trust and Illinois Tool who are shirttail cousins of the Stuarts you work for, Bill Fetridge, the Donnelleys—Gaylord, Elliot and Jim--and to some extent the Stuarts of Quaker…his Poppa, his uncle and Bobby who you work for. None of them, the Stuarts included, never really cottoned to me but I never found them bad in the sense that they push their special interests. Where I haven’t always got along with them was that they treated you like you were their help, since they felt they owned the Republican party. Old man Wood of Sears [General Robert Wood] would call me up and raise hell because I was spending too much in the budget, that kind of thing.

“Now Colonel McCormick and I once were close when I first went to Congress and was an isolationist but when I changed and became governor he was a true sonuvabitch on spending, tax cuts. He wanted to resurrect the anti-Communist pledge that Adlai got rid of: he wanted every state worker to take. But he never called me up and tried to wheedle something out of the state for his or his company’s benefit, that kind of thing. Nor did anybody else of the Bourbons. They were all conservative except Bob Stuart’s uncle, John who ran the company for years who was and is a liberal. Old Mr. John caught me down here the other day—he must be ninety—and urged me to do what I can to elect Nelson Rockefeller president. I asked why. He said Rockefeller would be good for the cities. You don’t hear that ever from the Bourbons. I’m a good friend and admirer of Nelson so I passed John Stuart’s name on to his people but they said they already checked him out and old John was tighter than a tick; is he?”

No wild spender but I’d be tighter than a tick when a Rockefeller came around for a contribution, too.

“Yeah I suppose. The Stuarts all gave to me. Not that much, though. Not real much. Well, you have the Bourbons who think they own you because they believe they own the party—but say what you want about them, they’re principled people. Chuck Percy [who was running for governor that year against Otto Kerner] wants to hang around with them. He was born in Rogers Park but he sounds and looks like a Bourbon. Acts like one, too. Then you have the younger Republican so-called professionals who are coming up. They’re the next generation who are more pragmatic. I thought I could identify with them rather than the Bourbons but I’ll take the Bourbons every time.”

Why?

“They believe in something. They treat you like their chauffeur but they believe in a philosophy. I can deal with that. The pragmatists want to build a machine, want you to act like the Nazis—follow orders and leave the thinking to the Front Office. Thinking short-range, very short-range. Not any of them interested in government or government programs. Wanting a machine comes close to wanting to make money out of politics with both parties which is a key to real corruption. No offense, but I’m still trying to figure you out, whether you’re with the Bourbons or the pragmatists. You make me wonder. You were a full-time political staffer for years which might make you a pragmatist. You worked for a very liberal Minnesota governor and were or are a friend of Hubert Humphrey and Gene McCarthy: pragmatist again. But you also worked for Walter Judd a thorough conservative who aligned with Bourbons in Minnesota. You work for a crown prince of the Bourbons, now, Bob Stuart. I can’t figure you out yet.”

I’m easy. Not rich or powerful but count me with the Bourbons. I am a philosophical conservative; far more than you are. The liberal governor I worked for drove me nuts. A man of character and a very decent man but he was so liberal he drove me nuts. He was a Republican Lefty always crying for the downtrodden. I got my belly full of that. What helped was that while he was a Lefty, he was no pragmatist but a Lefty of great principle and we fought like animals but I respected him. A lady I knew up there, you probably know her, Elizabeth Heffelfinger: a real Republican Lefty but of great principle. She always tried to convert me to being a Republican Lefty but no luck.

He chuckled. “Great woman. I always cherished the thought she’d help me one day.”

. I turned down job offers from both Humphrey and McCarthy because I didn’t agree with them at all but I happened to like them personally. That’s past tense with Humphrey. Humphrey I learned to dislike. The reason I’m here today and am not in St. Paul is that Humphrey beat my boss with the Highway 35 non-scandal I told you about…although I should be grateful to him for getting me out of politics and into the private sector—but I’ll never forgive him for what he did to a good, liberal—naïve but good—man, my boss, the governor of Minnesota. But the guy I really loved—for his principle, character, intellect and guts—was Judd. Best man in this business I ever worked for. In every way. Goldwater can’t hold a candle to him. So mark it down I’m a Walter Judd conservative.

“What about me?”

You’re too liberal, too big government for me but you’re principled.

“Thanks. I knew Walter Judd when we were in Congress together . He’s too conservative for me but a man of great integrity. What about Rocky?”

Not interested in him in the slightest for two reasons. Too liberal number one and two much a ladies’ man number two, running around with another guy’s wife, getting her to divorce him where she had to surrender the custody of her own kids, him leaving his own wife. I’m no saint but that turns my stomach.

“I agree on the womanizing stuff not the liberal angle. I got divorced, too, but of course not that way. She couldn’t take my running for office every eighteen months so she skipped. I sued her for desertion: no real contest. I know I drove her nuts but she did me a favor in that I met Shirley and we’re a great couple. She stuck with me like a good soldier through all this. Yeah, chasing girls has always been the trouble with the Rockefellers except for the real old man. Anyhow getting back to me telling you about the Republican party here, there are the Bourbons and the managerial pragmatists who are coming up as the old Bourbons die off.”

What’s Charlie Barr of Standard Oil?

“He comes from a poor Kansas family, ain’t a Bourbon by birth, thinks he’s a pragmatist but he’s a Bourbon at heart. Charlie started off as a low-level lawyer with Standard but had a lot of conservative friends in the oil business who are in Congress. He started helping the bosses there with contacts so he got promoted to a public affairs guy here with Standard. Charlie thinks he’s a pragmatist but I know him and he’s a transplanted Bourbon. Helluva lot better than the pragmatists are. This fooling around with Goldwater stuff means he’s a man of conviction, of conservative principle. The top floor at Standard’s getting sick of it because they want to nurture ties with Lyndon Johnson. If Charlie were a pragmatist, he’d drop Goldwater right now since Goldwater’s going to be walloped but he’s a man of principle. Charlie’s starting to pay for his sins by being a man of conviction. The other younger guys around Charlie, from other companies, are just new at the game. They’re helping Goldwater because of Charlie but after the loss that’s coming, they’ll be gone with the wind. They’re pragmatists. Not Charlie. They’ll all be for the number one pragmatist of all, Dick Ogilvie pretty soon.”

Who are the pragmatists?

“Harold Byron Smith, Jr. of Illinois Tool who has tons of money, a Bourbon name and breeding, a cousin to the Stuarts, brains, talent, looks and great political sense and a desire to be involved in politics full-time. But he’s a pragmatist. Meaning he wants the Republicans to build a machine like Daley’s. A machine he’d help Ogilvie run. When Goldwater loses, they’ll all be for Ogilvie—except Charlie Barr. Smith’s guy is Jim Mack. Real pragmatic. You’re smart enough not to be rooting for Goldwater but if what you tell me is true you won’t be for Ogilvie after Goldwater loses. They—all of `em—want to build a Republican machine just like Cermak and Daley have for the Democrats. Bad stuff.”

About Ogilvie: He’s smart but I think he has the coldest eyes of anybody in town including old man Daley. Anybody who can’t laugh.,,

“Can’t laugh because he stopped a bullet in the jaw in the war. The way I got it figured: Ogilvie’s the sheriff now. Chuck Percy who’s running for governor against Kerner might make it—although it’s going to be very, very tough with Goldwater heading the national ticket. If Percy wins for governor, he should be a very good one, like I was. But suppose he loses this year to Kerner as I think he will--not because of his fault but because of Goldwater. In two years Ogilvie’ll run for president of the Cook county board and he’s likely to get it. Two years later, 1968, the governorship is up in a presidential year. Ogilvie’d have to quit as president of the board to run for governor—a bad move.”

Lord, you do think far ahead, don’t you?

The little chuckle. “Had to, all my life. Learned it from my Dad.”

If Ogilvie runs for governor in 1968, you’ll run for governor against him for term number three?

“Not saying I am and not saying I’m not. I have better contacts across this state than anyone else in either party, I’ll tell you that. I know more about Illinois than anybody else except Rainville who knows more than even Ev. I’ll be frank with you; there are many people who’d like to see me come back.”

What about the charges they could make against you?

He bristled. I had said something wrong.

“The indictment and all? I was acquitted, you remember? Also, Everett’ll be running that year and we’ll be a team. Great team. Always have, always will. Everett doesn’t like Ogilvie. Doesn’t like people who want to build a machine.”

Tell me again why you didn’t build a machine when you were in for two terms.

“My press guy, Smokey Downey, always told me to build one—use patronage jobs, control the party; look at Tom Dewey in New York and Jim Rhodes in Ohio, that kind of thing. That’s not my view of this business, build a machine. My view is: he who travels fastest travels alone and the name of this business is to travel fast: up and out and on to something else. I wanted to hire good and loyal people and move on—not build an institution. You see, I’ve never been like Daley, wanting to stick around in one job for life. I wanted to do a good job and move on and up, if possible. Let me tell you: Smokey and others came to me when Orville Hodge was in the legislature and said why don’t you hook up with him? Hook up with this guy and that guy. Together you’ll be the boss of the Republican Party like the Democrats have. When Orv announced he was running for State Auditor they said, `now’s the time to consolidate an agreement with him.’ I looked at Orv and thought he’d be after my job sooner or later before I was ready to move on. So I didn’t. And it turned out he was after my job.”

I agree with you about not building a machine.

“They told me Orv had lots of money from either an inheritance or that he married it. Hook up with him. Not on your life. So I didn’t. Let me tell you, I got hurt because he was a crook—something I had nothing to do with—but I’d be dead if I had started a machine and he’d be a principal player in it. He’s in jail now and I’d be dead meat. That’s why I don’t cotton to a machine. The first thing you get is ambitious guys tying their kite to yours, sort of weighing you down; then you get the hangers-on, the lobbyists cutting deals in your name.

“I want guys to work for me and not think about aligning with others to knock me out which is what machine people do. Pete Green [Dwight H. Green, former governor] started a machine and cut my Dad terribly…and tried later to do to me. And he didn’t get to where he wanted to go. No sir, you either govern or build a machine. Adlai for all his failings had it right. He governed—I think not all that well, but he governed—and moved up.”

Unspoken: this is what he had wanted to do for himself—run for president which was not out of the realm of possibility given he was regarded as one of the few Republican outstanding governors of his time.

I wanted him to tell me more so I continued on the old tack: But on the other hand, maybe if you had a machine you wouldn’t have gotten Orville Hodge running for auditor but somebody better and not crooked.

“Naw. You haven’t been listening. I could just as well have backed Orv because nobody knew, me included, that he had the seeds of crookedness in him. Hell, he looked okay to me and to everybody else. If I had a machine I’d probably back him. He was okay when he ran; just when he got in and saw all that money he turned crooked. If I had had a machine I probably would have listened to some of my people tell me this Orv is a comer and I’d back him and start building others up for the future along with him. Well, I told you: he travels fastest who travels alone. I didn’t do anything for Orv or try to set him up for governor while I would run against Douglas—something like that. As it was I got hurt by Orv but not as much as if he and I were buddies. Nobody said he was my man or that I was pushing him. The best thing that happened was that he was planning to run against me—that saved me from being tagged unduly as his sponsor. I tell you, Republicans aren’t Democrats and after you get out of Chicago there’s no way a machine can work.”

He proved wrong, there. We parted on that note and went back to work. To show how generally right Billy the Kid was in pegging his surmises: Chuck Percy did lose to Otto Kerner because of Goldwater. Dick Ogilvie did run for president of the Cook county board and won in 1966. He started to build a kind of machine, electing a Republican Cook county treasurer and other people down the line. Ogilvie did run for governor in 1968. Billy the Kid ran against him in the primary (along with John Henry Altorfer). Charlie Barr split with Ogilvie because he could see a machine getting built but that and having backed Goldwater was, for all practical purposes, the end of Charlie Barr. Stratton tried to appeal to the non-machine Republicans in the primary but ego being the great illusionist, Billy didn’t reckon with the fact that the Orville Hodge case and his own old indictment, even if he did beat the rap, did him in.

Ogilvie won the nomination for governor but didn’t face Otto Kerner who had been named to the federal bench but Sam Shapiro, the lieutenant governor: nice guy but no standout. Ogilvie won. He started building what he hoped would be a modern, Nelson Rockefeller-type of machine: based on patronage yes, but on liberal big government practices which means contracts and favors which produce contributions, spawning a whole generation of Republican operatives, some of whom like Bob Kjellander, are with us yet. He won the undying love of liberals for passing the state income tax which meant greater expenditures and a bigger government ala Rocky in Albany. He thought he could survive the drag for supporting the income tax. But that did him in—with his own party’s grassroots.

He possibly could have been reelected had Paul Simon, the Democratic lieutenant governor, gotten the nomination as everyone supposed. Simon was for the income tax, too and worked with Ogilvie to pass it so it wouldn’t have been an issue. Daley wouldn’t have minded an Ogilvie or a Simon as governor: they were the same to him: both big government men. But the populist, rogue liberal-demagogue Dan Walker who walked the state and talked about “the pee-pul” got the nomination in 1972: something Ogilvie or Daley, the media or anybody else didn’t foresee until too late.

And while Walker was a liberal, he drew support from conservatives on the income tax issue and from city dwellers for his opposition to Daley’s Crosstown Expressway which Ogilvie also wanted. So the man of the pee-pul won. Ogilvie’s machine mates went on to lobby for different things, fusing with the big government ideas of the Democrats. Winding up with Big Jim Thompson who built the “Combine” as John Kass called it of Republicans and Democrats for big projects.

It meant that Billy the Kid was out in the cold, never able to run for anything again—but he still was a good lunch partner.

After Ogilvie got in as governor, I asked Billy the Kid, well, what about the Illinois Republican party building a party staff, you know, like the one I served with in Minnesota and the one that built a good organization—apart from government—in Ohio under the Republican organizational genius, Ray Bliss? That’s not a machine.

“No, but it’ll never work here,” he said. “If I were governor, I’d try to disrupt it because I’d see a strong party as competitive to my interests. I always believe like Everett does: be as strong a political figure as you can but starve the party; keep it weak so you don’t someday have some charismatic state chairman with a built-in staff deciding to run against you. That’d be a page right out of Machiavelli, I guess. A very honest but candid assessment, you’ll admit.”

I do. But you did hire lots of county chairmen and put them in state government jobs.

“Of course. And they all worked, too. Those who didn’t got fired.”

My point is: wasn’t that an attempt to build a machine?

“Just the opposite. It was an attempt to keep the Republican party weak, tying the chairmen into me so they wouldn’t rattle around like loose cannons. None of `em ever had good state jobs. My theory—not ever for publication—was: keep the party weak; build up the governor; do a great job and be gone—up or out.”

So you don’t think the idea of a strong GOP state staff that would serve the entire party not a governor would work with Ogilvie?

“You try that with Ogilvie and he’ll co-opt it and use it as part of his machine.”

We tried it and that’s what happened. Ogilvie co-opted it just as Billy had predicted. To this day the Illinois Republicans have never had a strong GOP party staff. They have always relied on the “Combine” and because of that never experienced one whit of a Reagan revolution.

Not long before he died in 2001, Billy—now an old man, physically failing but still cogent—told me: “The only way the Republicans are going to get back in the governorship of this state is by having a very, very wealthy candidate—and I mean wealthy—run. The way politics is now, when you have an average income Republican candidate, it is too corrupting for him to raise money. Democrats can get away with having average income guys because they have such a built-in advantage of voting blocs: blacks, Hispanics, labor. I’m thinking of a Republican worth a billion or half a billion or something like that. The right guy could be clean, rich, un-bought, un-bossed by special interests. The times when we had good Republican governors (and unlike you, I count Ogilvie one of `em) who were of average, very average, income—like me, if you don’t mind me saying this—are over.”

I think he was right.