Flashback: Richard Nixon Comes to the Aid of David Reed Although it Took a Bit of Reverse English to Get Him There.

[More memoirs from more than fifty years in politics for my kids and grandchildren].

Of the two congressional campaigns I strategized in 1966, the one that interested the Republican National Committeeman…who was also my boss, Bob Stuart, as president and CEO of The Quaker Oats Company…was that of David Reed in the 1st congressional district. For two reasons. First, Reed was a highly intelligent young African American in his late 20s with intellectual acuity and vision to challenge the old order of the machine-based Democratic party…with talents sure to last beyond what all of us recognized as his inevitable defeat that year. Second, the congressional battle in the 6th was beginning to get ugly and turn to poison despite the best efforts of many in both parties. The incumbent was Rep. Roman Pucinski (D-IL), a rising leader of House liberals, particularly on education, who got caught between the switches on the issue of busing.

Once very popular in his district, he now faced an angry electorate condemning him for all kinds of fancied evils—including urban riots and urban poverty. To defend himself, Pucinski adopted overnight a campaign to accommodate the backlash by adopting a harsh, anti-black language that could be compared to that of Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo who also turned from liberal to near-racist in his stentorian tones. To counter this, the Republican candidate, John Hoellen, strove against my earnest protests to match Pucinski epithet-for-epithet, demagoguery-for-demogoguery. In fairness, I cannot blame the two Ogilvie grunts, Tom Drennan and Jim Mack—for Hoellen was truly a loose cannon. None of us…Drennan, Mack and I…could control Hoellen just as none of the Democratic strategists, representing the National Education Association and the AFL-CIO, could hold back Pucinski. The district truly became scorched earth. Mack and Drennan were petrified that their involvement would rub off on Ogilvie who was running for president of the Cook county board; I was mortified that none of us could control this wild stallion who shouted and raged just as Pucinski shouted and raged with the national media singling the district out as an object-case in vituperation over urban chaos.

The result was that the three of us—Drennan, Mack and I—became fused together trying to get Hoellen to cease and desist…just as the NEA and labor was doing with Pucinski. We would meet frequently for breakfast in a small room at the M&M Club in the Merchandise Mart. I remember slamming Hoellen into a wall with the fury of my protests that he separate himself from unruly, red-neck Northwest Side elements that were egging him on—and I recall ducking when he aimed a swing at me, but not missing a kick that he aimed at a most vulnerable site of the body as, while I was temporarily sidelined, colleagues grabbed him around the throat yelling, “you’ll listen—you!” A waiter who came in the door at that moment stood jaw-droppingly stunned. There were identical struggles across town and in Washington with the maddened Pucinski, as well. The Hoellen campaign then continue to rocket on its own momentum with national press seizing the moment to capture spewed anger from both candidates. There was nothing we could do to stop it. I cut off funds but it meant nothing for Hoellen like Pucinski was awash in news coverage.

So while the battle raged up one neighborhood and down the other, Drennan and Mack hightailed it back to the Ogilvie campaign, slammed the door and ignored it. I did the same but concentrated on Reed who was conducting a quiet but brilliant dialogue with lots of young people in the 1st district. The question was: how to get money to Reed. The House Republican Congressional Campaign Committee denied any sizable outlay. So Bob Stuart did a very wise thing. He called on his immense credentials as the scion of a famous and wealthy family that had been involved in Republican campaigns since early in the 20th century. He sat in his office and called a private citizen, a lawyer in New York, working on Broad Street by the name of Richard M. Nixon. Nixon was crossing the country helping Republican candidates for Congress in order to pick up due-bills for collection at the next presidential go-round in 1968. He had been to Chicago to campaign for Chuck Percy and for Dick Ogilvie. Now Bob Stuart asked him to come to campaign for a black Republican congressional candidate who had no chance whatsoever of winning.

When Stuart called Nixon, Nixon had been thinking of coming to Illinois to poke his nose into the frenetic Pucinski-Hoellen House race with the view that as the polls said the margin was razor thin, he—Nixon—could get some credit if Hoellen won. But a closer look convinced Nixon the same way it did national Democrats that there was no honor to be salvaged from claiming victory by either candidate. Nixon had to come this way anyhow for Ogilvie once again with the travel and lodging paid by the Republican National Committee as it had for all his campaign trips. The trip was free so what the hell. Thus he made this bargain with Stuart: he’d come to Chicago low-key and find some time to visit with senior business people to encourage them to contribute some bucks to Reed. After all, it was no skin off his nose as the RNC was paying the bill anyhow. And no one, the RNC or Nixon or anyone else, wanted to touch the inflammatory Pucinski-Hoellen race. He said he would appreciate the invitations going out discreetly. He definitely didn’t want to be pushed into endorsing Hoellen or get involved in any sense with a campaign that was busily reenacting the U. S. Civil War on race.

The deal was struck. I was called by a RNC staffer named Nicholas Ruwe who told me he would be traveling with Nixon to Chicago and for God’s sake keep the news of his coming here from the media which would be dogging him for comments on Hoellen. At the same time, a DNC staffer was fighting with the Pucinski people who had arranged for Maine Senator Ed Muskie, a Pole, to come to campaign with the Congressman. But Muskie who wanted to run for president in 1968 was having nothing to do with Pucinski and was canceling the engagement and arranging not to take angry phone calls from Pucinski. Both candidates were lepers with those who wanted to be president.

Therefore, Bob Stuart arranged a small cocktail party with light nibbles for the guests and passed the word that Richard Nixon would be on hand. Nixon was posturing against Nelson Rockefeller at the time and business types and contributors were running to and fro meeting both. Reed came to me and asked if I could get Rockefeller to come in for him next. I said, “David, listen to me. You’re a damn sight better having Nixon with this crowd than Rockefeller, trust me.” But, he said: Rockefeller is a billionaire to which I replied—and you’re not going to get a penny of it, my lad. In case you didn’t know, we are committed to Nixon for 1968 and if you want to get Rockefeller, I suggest you call him up in Albany yourself and get him. He winced: o.k. I couldn’t help adding: “Listen, guy. You’re one lucky candidate. I know all kinds of congressional candidates who would give quarts of blood to have Richard Nixon come in and raise money for them.”

He said: Why do I think Nixon is or was a racist? I said: “Get that out of your mind. As vice president he often cast deciding votes in the Senate on civil rights while the majority leader, Lyndon Johnson by name, was unable to get bills through thanks to his friends from the deep south like Jim Eastland of Mississippi, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and people like that.” He said, “oh, okay. I guess I have a lot to learn” and made himself happy with the fact that as a kid from the Chicago South Side he would be the subject of Richard Nixon’s fervent endorsement—but he kept looking at me questioningly for a time. I kept on reassuring: “Don’t look at me like that. Nixon has a good civil rights record. Trust me!” He said: okay.

The letters and calls of invitation worked wonders and we had a packed crowd of people giving $500 apiece for the privilege of shaking hands with a man who came very close to becoming president in 1960 and might get elected in 1968. And it was mum to the press as well. The reception was to be held at the Drake and the presidential suite was ordered in a phony name for the former vice president. The advance man Ruwe called me when they got in, saying he was calling me from the Nixon suite. And sure enough, I could hear that famous voice behind him talking softly. So I hightailed over to the suite with about 2 hours to go to see if maybe I could get a little face-time in with Nixon.

I swept by the reception room 45 minutes later as people were already starting to arrive. By George, the crowned heads of Chicago were starting to come: John Swearingen of Standard Oil (Ind.), Robert Ingersoll of Borg-Warner, Robert Galvin of Motorola; Bob Stuart’s father, R. Douglas Stuart, the former ambassador to Canada; David Reed was there and I took him around for a bit and noticed that he was making a particularly good impression. Then someone nudged my arm. I turned and saw Ruwe the Nixon advance man. One look at his face—of abject terror—and my blood froze. As we walked to the side, I calculated what possibly had gone wrong. Perhaps that madman Hoellen had heard Nixon was here and was storming over to get his endorsement and the two would tumble onto the rug and slug it out. Perhaps Nixon had had a stroke in his suite. Perhaps something had gone wrong in Washington, like another presidential assassination with a chance of command—meaning that Hubert Humphrey was now president. What could it be?

“Listen,” said Ruwe. “You and me—we got trouble. Maybe we got to cancel this thing.” Cancel! Impossible! Why?

“Nixon is up in the suite now. He just got a phone call from Ray Bliss.”


Ray Bliss was the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, the former legendary state chairman from Ohio.

“Ray Bliss just dropped a bomb on us!” said Ruwe. “He just told Nixon that Nixon has to pay all the bills from his national trips himself—that the RNC won’t cover them. This despite the fact that Nixon was told earlier that the RNC would.”

I said calmly: “What does that have to do with me—or my reception for David Reed?”

“WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH IT!” Ruwe screamed—then as people looked around, he lowered his voice and looked around conspiratorially. “What it has to do with this party is this: Nixon was promised by the last RNC chairman, Thruston Morton, that the party would pick up all his bills. Now the deal is off! All of us traveling with Nixon—me, the security detail, two clerical people—are all being charged to his account. Nelson Rockefeller is raising hell with Bliss because Nixon is getting a free ride so Bliss pulled the plug on it. Do you realize that this means Nixon is stuck with the tab of well over $100,00…well over that!”

I said again, calmly, “Nick. That’s too bad. But I still don’t know what…”

“I’ll tell you what it has to do with it! He told me to make plane arrangements to get the hell out of here tonight! He’s in a terrible…dreadful…temper and I don’t blame him!”

I said, “But as regrettable as this thing is, a former vice president of the United States can raise the money to cover this thing. There ought to be many people to…”

“No, Roeser. You still don’t understand. Ray Bliss harpooned us, don’t you see? He’s listened to Rocky who hasn’t done a goddamned thing for this party this year and is making Nixon pay his own bills! He’s in a…well what I would call a cyclonic rage! And I am asking you to go up there with me and try to calm him down—for his sake—for my sake—for Bob Stuart’s sake—for all our sakes! I have seen him like this! The last time was when he lost the California governorship. It’s not pretty! He’s throwing things up there! Come up with me now and help me figure out what to do with him!”

We took the elevator to the presidential suite. As we opened the door the anteroom had a mirror on it which was directed to the spacious parlor where, with jacket peeled off, tie lowered to half-mast, I saw the spectacular ski-jump nose, the black hair glistening, the eyes snapping as he held the receiver to his lips—waving us in with an exaggerated gesture of exasperation.

We entered timidly and sat down. He ignored me, held the receiver away from his ear and said in an guttural whisper to Ruwe: “Bliss” and pointed meaningfully to it.

I won’t try to repeat what he told Bliss but in substance: Ray…let me say this. I was told that all my trips would be paid for—was told it! Was told it! Listen to me: WAS TOLD IT! I’ll tell you this, Ray! Tell you this, Ray! Tell you this, Ray! I’ll make good on all my bills. Make good on all my bills! I’ll either pay for them myself or by god I’ll raise the money. But I want you to know this. You better goddamn hope…and he expressed the thought that if he ever, ever got near the presidential nomination much less the presidency, Ray Bliss would be hiking his ass back to Ohio…

Slam went the receiver! Then, standing up, came a long tirade of injustices and ingratitude from all whom he had helped…monumental ingratitude! Now here he was, in Chicago out of the goodness of his heart, expected to speak for a black candidate who had no chance of election…a black candidate who probably voted for Kennedy…who probably would vote against him—Nixon—were he to be once again on the ballot but by god he never would…never would…he’d leave the party rot in hell before he would…leave it rot in hell with Nelson Rockefeller…leave it rot in hell with all those who had betrayed him earlier…the people who were against him when he ran for the House the first time…the people who wanted to let him hang out to dry about Alger Hiss…the people who wanted him to get off the ticket with Ike…the people who put obstacles in his way in 1960…and here he is, in the vote goddam fraud goddam center of the nation.

I had not been introduced and I was thankful for it. Then, unexpectedly, Ruwe joined in to agree with him. Nixon was just saying that, speaking about Negroes, Lyndon Johnson that cunning s.o.b., would so structure votes when he was majority leader so that Nixon would have to cast the deciding vote on civil rights—thereby losing all the credit he had built up with the South…and at the same time not getting a single goddam black vote for his pains!

“Yes,” said Ruwe, “and here you are ready to speak for another black candidate! And will the blacks on the South Side vote for you again? Hell no!”

I decided Ruwe was cruel, allowing me to listen to this tirade from the both of them. Nixon’s color blanched as he listened to Ruwe. I was preparing to get out of there and cancel the thing when Ruwe said:

“And they’re counting on you to close this thing down tonight, the people who have always gone after you! They say, he’s got to cancel this thing, this thing with the black candidate. They’re counting on you doing that!”



Nixon turned suddenly calm, ashen. “Yes,” he said, “they are. Well, by god they’re going to get…” here he used a scatological word derogatorily characterizing sexual intercourse. “They’re going to get…, Nick, because I’m going to give this thing everything I got and afterward--.”

“And afterward, you’re going to grab Ray Bliss by the collar,” said Ruwe, “and give him a ……”

“Yes,” said Nixon as we rode down in the elevator. “What’s this kid’s name? David Reed? Okay.”

The reception was filled and in we came. He gave a speech I will long remember: Our party believes in civil rights—and civil rights is being throttled by machine tactics in the city of Chicago when a young man like David Reed who has so much to offer has been detailed to stand-in-line with the ward hacks…etc. That’s why I am so pleased to welcome this fine young man into our party and we will-make-it-HIS-party, won’t we?

The checks were written right there. Reed picked them up and looked beatifically at Nixon as the greatest man of the universe.

And as he and I left, he turned to me and said: “You were so right. He is a very great man. The fact that he came here to do this…”

I said: well, it’s been a long evening. Go home and get some rest, David.

No, he said, I’m energized. The fact that he did this--.

Yeah, I said. And at his own expense.

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

Late that night Nick Ruwe and I had a drink.

“The party called back and they’ll pick up all the bills. But what you saw is known as Reverse English with those of us who deal with him,” he said. “You use that only as a last resort when he’s in a state like that. You say that his enemies will be expecting him to do such-and-such. They’ll be counting on that. And with luck, he’ll decide to surprise them. But the guy who’ll get it in the end will be Bliss, I promise you.”

The night Nixon became the 1968 nominee in Miami Beach, Ray Bliss was canned. And, frankly, I didn’t feel sorry.

One-Liners: All the News that Can Fit in One-Sentence.

Domino Pizza founder Tom Monaghan who sold his company for over a billion $ has become the political financial guru for U. S. Senator Sam Brownback for president, an evangelical turned Catholic, who will run heavily on conservative social issues—but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything: If Monaghan could drop a ton of dough (not pizza, the green stuff) it’d mean something but he can only give $1,000 and when it comes to raising money, let’s say he’s not exactly the warm and cuddly puppy-dog type….The political consensus, growing in Republican circles, is that Barack Bambi is the latest taste of the month but in a fierce election where national security is important, Lady Hillary would be the gutsier with the prospect of going all the way while Bambi is too limpid-eyed and gentle like a fawn…Anti-Obama missives are starting to flood in from everywhere but where they originate—with Hillary: the latest being the “Sun-Times” column by Juan Andrade, masquerading as an on-the-fence Hispanic but who in reality is a Daley regular Democrat ward-heeler, blasting Obama for voting for the anti-illegal immigration fence…The real task for David Axelrod, Obama’s guru, is to show him as tough not wimpy which given Bambi’s inclinations will be a big test…

In answer to the mystery as to where paleo-Republicans will go for president (those of the Pat Buchanan stripe who opposed NAFTA and CAFTA and a heavy blockade on legal and illegal immigration) there’s only once choice: Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, chairman of House Armed Services in the GOP House, who had endorsed Buchanan twice in previous presidential runs and has announced his presidential candidacy but has been a hawk on Iraq…A top national Republican leader told this column that presidential candidate Sam Brownback is too soft on illegals and trade because as a new Catholic he thinks he has to bow to the liberal bishops: not yet understanding that “pleasing that bunch of whom 50% are fairies means nothing politically”—his words not mine…

Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, Louis Farrakhan’s first Congressman, got in as Congressman from Minneapolis because the city’s left-leaning daily, the “Star-Tribune,” was too timid to question his militant Muslim credentials—the newspaper a creature of the McClatchy newspaper chain, showing Chicagoans what is ahead for us if the chain gains control of one of this city’s two newspapers: the paper nodding timidly as Ellison insists on being sworn in on the Koran instead of the bible…just as it looked the other way when Ellison spoke at a fund-raiser in 2000 for former Symbionese Liberation Army member Kathleen Soliah charged with the attempted murder of a LA police officer…Toodle-oo.

Flashback: Strategizing two City Congressional Campaigns—Republican Hoellen vs. Democrat Pucinski on the Northwest Side and Republican Reed vs. Democrat Dawson on the South Side.

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

As a born Chicagoan…but as one whose political experience had been limited to pure, pristine Minnesota…I determined to get the practical feel of city politics by strategizing for two congressional campaigns in 1966 in districts widely different: the city’s 6th (in 1966), basically the city’s north and northwest sides with some run into the suburbs, represented by Rep. Roman Pucinski (D), the city’s foremost Polish-American politician and the 1st, the South Side ward represented by Rep. William Dawson, patriarch of the black Democratic party whose move to that party from the GOP produced a massive shift of African American votes to the Democrats. I had no illusion whatever that Republicans could win the 1st but with unrest in white areas with the liberal Democratic party, the 6th was do-able if our candidate could work skittishly and avoid any taint of racism. Anyway, I wanted to get the feel. I wasn’t a paid operative, still continued by day job with Quaker but used my free time to strategize on these campaigns.

The 6th was do-able because in 1966 the fruits of LBJ’s outpouring of federal anti-poverty funds and liberal court decisions concerning busing were producing evidences of backlash in the white areas of the nation’s urban centers. The Republican nominee here was John Hoellen, a big, pudgy, Germanic Lutheran alderman with a volcanic temper; yet a well-educated, Northwestern law school grad whose family had a well-known shoe store in the 47th ward; who had joined the city council as a reformer, working first with Paul Douglas and later Robert Merriam against the Daley machine.

Hoellen was no red-neck, was sophisticated in the ways of Chicago, a sophisticated businessman and lawyer-litigator, no race baiter but when I scouted him he had an orator’s way of trying to capitalize on discontent in speeches to neighborhood crowds that gave me some pause. But what gave me more concern was the fact that he had hired for advertising and communications the number one grunt in the Republican party, Tom Drennan who was abetted by the number two, Jim Mack, then a public affairs executive with Illinois Tool but who was 100% allied in the effort to elect Sheriff Dick Ogilvie to the county board presidency. He had done it to ingratiate himself with the Ogilvie faction in hopes they would help him. In turn, they saw anything that Hoellen could do in the 6th as immediately beneficial to Ogilvie. The fact that I had the role of campaign manager was distinctly unfavorable to them because they wouldn’t be able to call all the shots unchallenged —although they agreed that it would be beneficial for one reason.

Billy the Kid called it. “They like you as campaign manager because you can get them—augggghh—money!” he said.

You like doing that, don’t you? I said.

The next noon at our first strategy-lunch while the two grunts devoured sandwiches on my bill at the M & M Club, feeding their faces with both hands and slurping coffee while kicking about the quality of food, Drennan brought it up first, between burps.

“Wherzzzzza auggggh? D’you think [burp] your boss’ll pop…” and he was forced to pull some food out of his mouth in order to breathe, an edifying sight, “for--.”

“…for money?” Mack supplied.

No I don’t. My involvement isn’t tied to that. He has enough to do as National Committeeman. This is for my own education, gentlemen. I’ve been in this work eleven years—in Minnesota, of course, not here—and I may be helpful but actually it’s a learning experience for me. I think I have something to supply in terms of experience and writing.

“Hows `bout trade [burp], trade `sociation augghh?” said Drennan.

Beg pardon?

“He means trade associations your company belongs to,” said Mack. “Their members give money.”

Look, you have a finance chairman don’t you?

Yeah.

He’ll look after the money. If I can be helpful in that department, I will. You guys should get over this thing about looking at people as sources of money which you decide alone how to spend. I realize that’s how you ordinarily work but that’s not going to be the way we work now. I’m a full partner in this thing not the money-tree or I’ll quit. And with it I suspect the National Committee might lose interest.

Drennan looked at me suspiciously as he slurped his coffee. “Izzzzat a augghhhr?”

I was learning how to interpret him by now. “Is that a threat?”

No, just the fact. This idea that you beckon your finger and say “more money, augghgh, burp” is famous, you know. Get the idea now that I’m not a 41st ward heeler living to follow your orders of “money aughhgh, burp.” We plan the strategy together or I’m out. Besides the next time we meet Hoellen had better be here and play a decisive role in this or I’m out. Your decision.

Drennan picked up a toothpick, grimaced and probed his teeth. “Smhiururttt.”

Pardon?

“He didn’t say anything,” said Mack.



The next time we met, Hoellen was along. I broached an idea that, believe it or not, was new at the time: lawn signs. Lawn signs had started in the suburbs of Minneapolis—Minnetonka, to be exact. Walter Judd was the first congressman to grab them; his lawns signs became famous to the point where a main full-page color ad in the Minneapolis papers was “here’s the famous Walter Judd lawn sign—rip it out and paste it up yourselves.” The next day along with our regular cardboard ones, the city’s front lawns were covered.

“What are they?” asked Hoellen, dubiously.

“Who prints `em [burp]?” asked Drennan.

“They’ll never work here,” said Hoellen derisively. “Never. They’ll be gone overnight.”

“Rnnmmnnn,” said Drennan.

Pardon?

“He said rain will take care of them,” said Hoellen.

All agreed except me. But I dropped the idea.

Which shows you how definitively dogmatic Republican so-called professionals were and can be which Chuck Percy himself described as “the attitude.” They were--and are--often wrong but never in doubt.

That was the 6th district. In the 1st, a group of young black professionals, all college-educated, were dissatisfied with the old-line Democratic party…tired of standing in line for everything: opportunities to run for office, notably and, having gone to Drake University in Des Moines with scholarships, were lifting their eyes beyond the usual black neighborhood inducements to questioning the Democratic party. They formed around one bright young man—David Reed—who kept asking pesky questions which irritated precinct captains and ward committeemen: (a) why if the Democratic party was so good for African Americans were the neighborhoods in such terrible shape…(b) why, if the Democratic party under Lyndon Johnson so good, were jobs so hard to get…(c) why, if the Democratic party was so compassionate, did its feudal structure require long years of apprenticeship to hacks before young people could move up?

Of course, Reed had figured it out. The answers were clear then and are clearer now, albeit accepted by only a few. To (a): the neighborhoods were in terrible shape because of discrimination from the downtown Democratic party of Richard J. Daley…to (b) jobs were so hard to get because the inner-city was almost entirely a prison of government institutions with USSR-style subsidies and little private industry…and (c) the ward committeemen-straw-bosses, headed by the big boss, 80-year-old Rep. William Dawson (D-IL), ruler of the entire black South Side had a vested interest in supporting only those sycophants who were willing to spend years serving in menial machine posts so that they themselves wouldn’t be dislodged.

I had bumped into Reed a year earlier and now he called me and said that he was willing to shake up the troops by running against Dawson for Congress: with little or no hope of winning but to emit a few sparks of resistance. Most of the “New Breed” were connected with the private sector anyhow and they had young people with them who wanted nothing better than to stage a revolution of sorts. Reed ran against Dawson the first time in 1964 in the Democratic primary; then, like Dawson himself, who had been a Republican but switched to the Democratic party, Reed became a Republican. He ran in 1966, got the nomination, and I served as a liaison between him and my boss, the Republican National Committeeman, Bob Stuart, and the Percy for Senate campaign.

We agreed that Reed would have his own set of issues unique from the Republicans’: he would support certain domestic ventures that were not part of either party’s specific program. Tax incentives for the inner city was one; probably more federal programs than the national GOP would like as a kind of sweetener—but most were concurrent with standard Republican doctrine. Frankly, Reed was less of an integrationist than white liberal Democratic dogmatists; he believed in pluralism and denied that black well-being depended on forced busing to white schools.

Instead he demanded for black schools the federal assistance that even in LBJ’s Great Society he proved statistically went to white schools. In a very real sense, Reed’s program was not inconsistent with John Hoellen’s. Hoellen opposed forced busing which was then new as did Reed. Both were eloquent about the discriminatory effects of the Democratic party of Richard J. Daley—Reed from the vantage-point of being a well-educated young black man and Hoellen from his berth as a prime opponent, with independent Democratic aldermen, to Daley’s machine.

It was with Reed that I first saw the corrosive effect of vote fraud to swell the already great Democratic numbers enabling the party’s statewide ticket to win. It was only six years after the narrow election of John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon. Reed, who knew from the start what his electoral fate would be, had invited me to make a tour with him very, very early on the morning of election day, 1966 to see evidences of vote fraud. Accordingly, I went to bed early the night before at the Illinois Athletic Club and he picked me up at about 4:30 a.m. We made the rounds of his inner-city district where the polls were supposed to open at 6 a.m. A number of the polls were located in store-fronts. In those days, votes were cast on voting machines which had curtains that automatically pulled back to ensure privacy.

We swung by a number of the storefronts from 5 to 6 a.m. to view the scene through the storefront windows: precinct captains standing at the machines before opening of the polls, casting votes repeatedly with the curtains flying open and flying shut over and over and over again. That sight led me to join others to form an organization called Project LEAP (Legal Elections in All Precincts) which recruited honest judges of election and poll-watchers to try to stem the tide of vote fraud. But the sight of the curtains flying open and closing, open and closing repeatedly made me sick because it meant theft of and dilution of honestly cast ballots. No matter what you say about Richard Nixon, there is no doubt in my mind—because I had seen it—that this vote fraud duplicated throughout the entire city—elected John F. Kennedy to countervail the honest decision of the voters to elect Nixon. I calculated that on the basis of what we saw, at least up to 250,000 fraudulent ballots could well have been cast in Cook county alone.

To which the liberals, so dramatically shocked by any other abuse, have always maintained a good deal of humorous skepticism. One answer is that the blacks would have cast ballots for Democrats anyhow. Not in that avalanche number: not that many people were interested in going to the polls. And if they did go to the polls , why the need for such wholesale theft? Another is that then solidly Republican DuPage county was doing the same. Not in the slightest. Were Hinsdale’s precinct captains doing the same? Do you think Hinsdale’s Republican captains were beholden to a machine for jobs to the extent that they would get to the polls at 4 a.m. and run up the totals with the curtains flying open and closed? Com’on. The sins of Hinsdale involve other actions, not these. This was unique vote theft even if you acknowledge that corruption isn’t endemic to only one party. But the real answer as to the dispassion of liberals to corruption then and now is that they benefited.

The question I asked Billy the Kid later was: how can any Republican get in with such vote-fraud? How could Ogilvie get in?

“Hmmm,” he said with a wise smile. “How do you suppose?”

By cutting deals with the machine?

“The very idea!” he said in mock horror. “How could you imagine such a thing?”

Did you cut a deal with old man Daley when the Dems ran the low-key, uncharismatic and boring Judge Richard Austin in 1956?

“Daley thought he was giving me enough of a deal when he picked Austin who had no political ability whatsoever.”

You’re saying there was no vote fraud against you then?

“Are you kidding? But we minimized it.”

How?

“What the hell are you—my confessor? I decline to answer. Pass the butter.”

Later it developed he had echelons of off-duty state troopers from across the state in plain clothes visiting city polling places to tamp down the fraud, even to the extent of banging on doors starting at 4:30 a.m. to stop the “early voting” but even then the vote fraud was great. That’s the stuff you had to put up with in the “city that works.”

Personal Asides: It’s Like Barbra Streisand…Newt Gingrich on “Meet the Press”…Iraq…Iran.

Barbra Streisand.

I cherish our contributors: especially, on Illinois political topics, a writer named Dan. He nudges me when in his estimation I deviate from the one, true, proper conservative stance. But the other day he nudged when a nudge wasn’t needed or necessary: not that I mind, but I’d like to urge him to reconsider. I said that in my Roosevelt University class, Greg Baise impressed me as probably the best vote statistician the Illinois GOP has. That’s because as he visited with the class, he recited topical electoral trends of many counties without referring to notes: an incredible feat which I later checked and found to be correct. The fact that it was done ad-lib, almost down to the last decimal point, impressed me mightily and I said so.

Dan responded by citing the many times that Baise deviated from conservative positions and said I was wrong to praise him. I don’t know first-hand that Greg Baise did these things that Dan alleges in Reader’s Comment—but let’s give Dan the benefit of the doubt and say Baise did. That kind of comparison does not compute. For instance, I will say that there is no other woman singer whom I enjoy more because of her way with the vocal acrobatics of a popular song than Barbra Streisand. To follow his prior habit, Dan would respond that Barbra Streisand is a lefty. Yes she is; and she’s also a great singer. Those estimates can be one in the same. I would urge Dan not to let two things that don’t compute influence his judgment. Barbra Streisand can be a great singer and a unregenerate lefty both at the same time: indeed she is. Greg Baise can be a great statistician and exhibit an acrobatic memory and be conservatively incorrect at the same time. Insisting that Barbra Streisand not be honored as a singer because she is a lefty is anti-intellectual; considering that Greg Baise not be regarded as a great electoral statistician because he is not 100% conservative is anti-intellectual. We…and I mean we conservatives…must not fall into that forensic trap. Conversely we do not have to argue that Ronald Reagan was a great president and a great actor (although at least one actor in my family maintains he was).

For instance, Milton Friedman was the greatest economist of our time—more than that, one of the greatest economists of all time. But on the issue of drug use—the decriminalization of marijuana—I can disagree with him on wholly moral, Burkean principles: and I do! By disagreeing with him on drugs does not mean I am insensitive to his great contributions on the economy—would you agree? (At least I hope you would). Abraham Lincoln was one of the true geniuses of the Western world: first a political genius who contrived to save the union despite the fact that the states who rebelled could honestly attest that they had a perfect right to rebel but Lincoln’s adamant stand and eloquence kept the Union together; second a literary genius whose words rank with those of Demosthenes and Cicero. But his solution to the race problem was to move all the blacks back to Africa. That was wrong in the context of his time and ours—but it doesn’t negate his genius. Would you agree? (At least I hope you would). You see, you must be nuanced as you look at the panoply of human talents.

Now I’ll try another: Franklin D. Roosevelt was an outstanding leader in the presidency. He was outstanding not because his solutions were correct but because by his eloquence and dynamism he galvanized a nation that was on the verge of disposing of the old verities and opting for even greater radicalism including a variant of domestic communism. He was wrong on a number of things, I believe: wrong on how he sought to revive the economy, wrong on how he tried to push us into World War II.

But you don’t say that because Roosevelt was wrong on these two major things, he was a bad president. He inherited the Depression, found the country in the throes of despair and revived it, no matter if his solutions were not infallible; he intervened to get us into war, believing our destiny was to defend the West. The way he got us into it is suspicious but there is no doubt that he was a gallant leader during our involvement in it. I personally believe a better president than Roosevelt on a host of other things…limited government, preservation of the free-market economy, the downplaying of the imperial presidency…was Calvin Coolidge (a man who has not been given his due). But I will insist that as a leader of a nation in Depression and war, Roosevelt was excellent and by all odds vastly better than a Calvin Coolidge could have been from the standpoint of inspiring a people to stand tall. Remember, I may have a bit of an edge on Dan: I was there during the Depression, saw the despair and was there during World War II and saw Roosevelt’s inspiring leadership).

Where conservative people concerned with the triumph of its principles—of which I number myself—err, is when they lump all faults together and ditch the virtues: to-wit, liberals say Calvin Coolidge was a poor president because he was too restrained in use of presidential power; conservatives that Franklin Roosevelt a poor president because he was too demonstrative in exertion of presidential power, not recognizing that they lived in different times. Does that presage a relativist view on my part? Not in the slightest. There are absolutes in consideration of the presidency and they can be cited easily. James Buchanan was an absolute failure by refusing to rise to the challenge of the incipient Civil War. James K. Polk was an absolute genius president in achieving all he had set out to do…including enlarging America…within a self-declared one-term limitation. Reagan was a great president by insisting on return to the old virtues of tax cuts and, in the Cold War, the will to win it. I firmly believe George W. Bush will be as great as Reagan, far greater than his father—but that remains to be accepted.

With that, let us begin the discussion. Let us see if Dan will accept this modest correction. Let me restate my contention: Greg Baise is undoubtedly one of the best…if not the best…Republican masters of Illinois electoral history based on voting statistics. No more; no less.

Newt Gingrich.

I have often cited Henry Hyde’s evaluation of Newt Gingrich as 50% genius and 50% nuts. It is, incidentally, the same evaluation that Lord Beaverbrook and others including Lady Nancy Astor gave to Winston Churchill between the two world wars. Indeed, given Churchill’s wild forays into world strategy—which were held down admirably by his general staff—they were right! Gingrich’s 100% genius rating was deserved with his molding of the Contract with America. It was ratified in a number of his speeches on vital issues: notably the ones covered in his latest book “Winning the Future.” The 50% nut factor showed up Sunday with his interview with Tim Russert on “Meet the Press.” To Newt the entire problem over Iraq and other world challenges has to be solved with a decision by America to add enormously to the power of the State Department—in numbers and hugely expanded budget! It’s impractical, wacky stuff. In the next Republican administration he should be locked in a room and asked to come out every fifteen hours with a sheaf of 24 ideas: twelve of which will be idiotic, ten impractical, one impossible and one a concept of genius.

Iraq…

Sometimes it is idyllic to use a short-form in discussing world affairs. As I reported before in “Flashback,” in 1979, a year before he was elected to the presidency, Ronald Reagan came to Chicago to change planes before returning to California…and I was asked by John Sears to gather a few business CEOs to meet with him. He was then regarded decidedly as a lower-rung candidate…overshadowed by the prospect of John Connally, who was being covered as the portent of the Republican future and Reagan was “a bit long in the tooth” as James J. Kilpatrick, then the most prominent conservative newspaper columnist, called him. The press speculated that the failed attempt to dislodge Gerald Ford from the nomination made Reagan appear disloyal to his party…that Howard Baker was the vision of youth…that Bob Dole had the centrist thrust.

While President Jimmy Carter was not doing very well, it is important to remember how the media treated him: as a kind of super-intellectual who thought, unlike politicians, in admirable tones of grey and beige with no oversimplifications. In fact with the exception of Dole, most of the Republican challengers made special efforts to stress the nuanced elements of foreign policy. When I met Reagan and spent almost four hours with him, we talked of many things including foreign policy. His solution to the Cold War was simple: we must win it…win it, not effect a kind of negotiative stance with the Soviet Union. It was startling for me to hear this, so inured was I to hear so many others talking about this tack, that stance, this negotiating tactic, that. It was a temptation to think that Reagan was over-simplistic; an old man; an actor; a non-intellectual. Yet he was right, was he not? And he proved it, did he not?

I am beginning to believe that the same problem of nuance and complexities in discussion is overwhelming us on Iraq. Friends, I do not have the faintest idea of how many troops should have been sent there; or whether Bush was right to have held firm on the number of troops he originally dispatched. I am sure the Pentagon misjudged the ease with which the occupation could have been effected: that’s transparently clear, isn’t it? But I don’t know, not having been there, whether it was a mistake to decommission all of the Iraqi army or to try to incorporate it into a police unit. I do know this, based on what I have learned in many years of life thus far: There is no substitute for victory in Iraq. Let the Baker-Hamilton people and the media debate in fuzzy specifics…let the Democratic presidential candidates posture about the Shiite-Sunni hostilities as insurmountable…there is nothing theoretical about the specter of defeat for us if we allow things to come to an impasse and make the false step of declaring victory and getting out—which is the Democratic approach.

As Reagan would say today, we must win. The Taliban and Qaeda elements in Afghanistan would be immeasurably bolstered by a U. S. defeat in Iraq; the pro-Karzai forces would be decimated. A defeat in Iraq would easily lead to likely defeats for the U. S. and Western efforts in Afghanistan. We fled Vietnam after a decade of fighting, having lost 60,000 and sustaining 150,000 casualties. We paid an enormous price as Soviet policies expanded in the 1970s and early `80s. It is important to see who was on what side in the debate. The mainstream media were rooting for us to get out and trumpeted that we were an imperialist country; great segments of the Democratic party were as well. This disaffection carried over to large segments of the Republican party. I remember picking up Connally for a talk at my Northwestern University class; he was not sanguine that we could win. Howard Baker, George H. W. Bush all spoke in terms of holding the line. The great simplifier was Reagan: we can win it. We must win it.

Can we win it? Of course we can. Did we not defeat the insurgents in Malaysia and Algeria? Could we not have defeated our enemies in Vietnam? Of course; the Tet offensive, contrary to Walter Cronkite’s estimate, was a success. Did we break faith with the women who died in Vietnam? I shrink from the awful truth: but, in a sense, of course we did. And I put it on a partisan basis because it belongs there. The Democrats who capitalized on Watergate and who took control of Congress cut off the funds to wage the war, with “The New York Times” cheering the way. Slowly I am coming to the conclusion…not having gotten there yet…that it would be a monstrous mistake if we elected a president who was not firm enough to win the war. As of now…and only now…that man would seem to be McCain—as flawed as he is on other issues: notably McCain-Feingold. I have estimated that McCain and Giuliani would be the best ticket but I would settle for McCain and Romney or McCain and Brownback. But the answer is to move to the simplistics. And win the damned thing.

…and Iran.

There’s no doubt that the low estate of George W. Bush’s popularity would dissuade any normal political president from further riling up his critics at this time, when his very name has become a curse-word to the trendy left…when a movie is advertised full-page in “The New York Times” picturing in fictional terms his very assassination (with no objection from Father Greeley, let it be said). But this president has not been a politically pragmatic one. He did not shrink from his duty to defend our shores by taking the battle to the Islamo-fascist source of terrorism. It would be my hope that he would see the wisdom of moving on Iran in the same way. For there are many reasons for us undertaking the military option. I have studied this one more prodigiously than I have other things and believe along with Arthur Herman of Georgetown that we should not remain powerless in this eventuality.

Iran has defied all of the UN’s resolutions and its harboring of terrorists who operate against the West is well known. To this list I would add its often declared intention to wipe Israel, a member of the United Nations, off the face of the earth. The Left which has of late embraced an anti-Israel stance…particularly with its newest recruit, former president Jimmy Carter whose hatred is Israel is immense, making comedic his receipt of the Nobel peace prize…decries any fashioning of Israel’s well-being with our own foreign policy. This is nonsense. Of course Robert Taft’s prescription that war should only be waged to preserve the peace and liberty of the American people: but these days, Islamo-fascists link us with Israel in almost the same breath. Far from backing away from Israel, we should recall that 25 years ago Israel blasted Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak which rendered a temporary but invaluable service to the cause of peace.

It would seem to me that our defense in the form of an aggressive offense, would be to: (1) insist that we will not allow any state to endanger the flow of commerce in the Straits of Hormuz and that we do it by sending a carrier strike group’s guided-missile destroyers to be deployed there with unmanned air vehicles and submarines to guard against any Iranian missile threat to our Navy. As (2) we should halt all shipments of Iranian oil while at the same time supporting the right of tankers with non-Iranian oil and the platforms of other Gulf states. How to back up this guarantee? It wold be done by destroying Iran’s air-defense system, its bases for its air force and communications systems along with its missile sites along the Gulf coast—with, and this is important, Iran’s nuclear facilities, embracing not just it’s “hard” sites but replete with destruction of bridges and tunnels to block the movement of critical materials to places of refuge.

Finally, (3) amphibious Marines and special ops forces seize Iranian oil assets in the Gulf which means the 100 offshore wells and platforms on its continental shelf. Is this the ravings of one who is an overage destroyer (me?). Not if you value history. We did all of this before. In 1986-88 under Reagan when the Iran-Iraq war threatened to interrupt oil traffic, the president sent the Navy to organize convoys and actually re-flagged vessels to prevent Iranian attacks. That operation not only worked in the short-range: it led Iraq and Iran to slow their long war.

It requires a man of George W. Bush’s intestinal fortitude to do this. But, hell, he has nothing political to lose. He has been demonized by the Left up to now and nothing he does, including finding a cure for cancer, will change it. But this it will do: it will break the cycle of us being paralyzed with indecisiveness in this struggle. It is the thing Ronald Reagan would do…because he already did it. To the whining media and the Left, I say: leave them to heaven—or, to be more accurate, the opposite location.

Personal Asides: Terry Barnich to Go to Iraq to Serve His Country…More One-Liners: Opinions Conveyed in One Sentence Each

Terry Barnich.

Congratulations and best wishes from this web-site to Terry Barnich who has accepted a one-year tour of duty in dangerous Iraq to serve his country in a field with which he will prove to be a great contributor: the accelerated generation of electric power in Iraq. Terry, a former chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission, lawyer and owner of his own firm involved as a key consultant in the electric power field, has become a State Department official in a relatively short-range but vitally important mission to help the U.S. in Iraq. He has been a frequent contributor to “Political Shootout” and has been one of the most formidable defenders of Republican positions across the board…from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush—including economics, regulatory, social and foreign and defense policies.

In his last action as a Republican stalwart, Terry ran the Topinka primary campaign for the U.S. Senate. Her campaign as run by Terry was efficient and well-focused. When he left after her primary victory, I was distressed, frankly, because I was sure that had Terry remained there would have been reason to expect a rapprochement of sorts on social policy could have been effected—at least somewhat. Maybe not but this I will say: If Terry had been able to stay for the remainder of the campaign, she undoubtedly would have been spared many difficulties of her own making. Terry himself has much to offer as a candidate based on his extraordinary communications talents and superb handling of the issues. He is a pro-lifer, by the way, although it must be added, a Republican loyalist first (unlike this writer who has been known to be disruptive of party unity uber alles when social issues get in the way). But this writer has been sufficiently familiar with Terry’s great prowess in issue dexterity and communications that I would vote and support him in most eventualities. I interviewed Terry briefly on WLS last night. He promised to call us every so often from Baghdad and report on the radio his observation of how things are going.

More One-Liners.

Because John Kass continues to be the best thing about the “Tribune,” a few tiny-minded liberal partisans have been taking futile shots at him on another blog—but to this fan, it’s like mosquitoes buzzing noisily around a giant…Don Rumsfeld mystifies me because while he left office with a wise warning about the dangers of military weakness, his legacy is more complex with traces of the old Machiavellian feints and bobs that add up to a less than full application of military force to Iraq which communicated —along with his final memo to the President—intellectual confusion leading to the hope that he writes a book to get his points on Iraq said clearly, cleanly and without troublesome ambiguity at last…

I for one would love to know what role State GOP chairman Andy McKenna played in the run-up to the Topinka primary win i.e. was he properly neutral or did his office weigh in on Topinka’s side: meaning, friends, incontestable facts not just emotional allegations—including communications from the Chairman himself…Isn’t it true that big business types usually wimp out and retreat behind professional liberal p. r. types when they have to face the public--as did the Civic Committee of the august Commercial Club of Chicago, headed by the retired CEO of Illinois Tool, when it advocated hiking personal income taxes to pay for the state’s red ink instead of prescribing the more difficult political solution of cutting spending to the bone or cutting taxes to increase the revenue?...

Tell me why William Safire, a good wordsmith but little else got the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush?...Gee, after having written several columns extolling him here and in the “Sun-Times,” it would have been nice to hear from Peter Roskam before he left us to serve in Washington which was an abrupt change from the oft-expressed gratitude for support that came this way following each election from his predecessor, Henry Hyde…Speaking of post-electoral gratitude, David McSweeney has been nice enough to stay in touch often including our most recent get-together: breaking-bread at the Marriott Sports Bar Saturday where his enthusiasm for private sector and public issues continued unabated…

This coming New Year’s Eve marks the second anniversary of the death of Msgr. Ignatius McDermott whose opening of Haymarket coincided on New Year’s Eve 23 years ago: a fitting time with that date rife with temptations for drunks…Some wistful wishing from Republican big businessmen, mostly of the retired variety, that Peter Fitzgerald consent to come back and run for governor with some effort to contact him despite the obvious unlikelihood of that occurring…Some growling from Republicans following the 8th district race that commentaries by Russ Stewart, a favorite on my radio show, centered unduly on David McSweeney’s stand on social issues, with a vitriol reflecting Stewart’s own biases in that regard, the critics not including McSweeney…

Mary Cheney’s pregnancy though a lesbian begs the question who was the sperm donor—but likely it was in vitro fertilization in which case she and her lover could always observe each Father’s Day by sending a bow-tie to a syringe at Washington Hospital Center…No WLS “Political Shootout” for the next two Sundays—next Sunday, Christmas Eve, being devoted entirely to Christmas music and the following Sunday to a network roundup of 2006 top events—although on December 31st I will be on the nationally syndicated radio-TV show “Beyond the Beltway with Bruce DuMont” which plays here on WLS from 6 to 8 p.m and later on Channel 20…

This coming Thursday marks the end of the very successful Roosevelt University course, “Influencing the System” with talks by WVON radio host Cliff Kelley at 6 p.m. on the politics of Chicago with special reference to the African American community and the candidacy of Barack Obama…and at 7 p..m. a lecture by Mike Noonan, Democratic campaign manager extraordinary who ran the successful Todd Stroger campaign about which he will explore any special problems that arose…Now an ancient farewell communicated without the scatological addition that occurred in the 16th episode of “The Sopranos”: Toodle-oo.

Flashback: Charlie Barr the Converted Bourbon and the Dick Ogilvie-W. Russell Arrington Machine Builder-Wannabes, Vie on How the Illinois GOP Should Go. And the Grunts Win.

[More from fifty-plus years in politics for my kids and grandchildren].

Lunching as I did for years with Billy the Kid…two-time Congressman-at-Large, two-time State Treasurer, two-time Governor of Illinois…I must admit I got biased. Bill Stratton was a progressive governor of Illinois who saw his niche in the ``50s as expanding state government, no doubt about it. But he was no political empire-builder, nor big organization man who wanted to build a machine ala Daley. In fact, it is a shame I got to him at the end of his career because I think I sold him as an ex-governor on the concept of the State Committee having an independent political staff, one engrossed in building an organization for the party, not an individual and servicing candidates with p. r., fund-raising and organization expertise. In other words a staff dedicated to building a party organization, not as a tool of a governor. It wasn’t goofy idealistic: Ray Bliss did it in Ohio; we did it in Minnesota. I am sure Billy would have agreed to that. While he served as governor, Minnesota and Ohio had pioneered the state GOP staff concept: and I was the Minnesota GOP’s first political publicist. Not a patronage hack. Paid by party funds and fighting with and occasionally siding with my great patron, Elizabeth Heffelfinger who raised money by the tons but was no man’s grunt.

We operated a staff free from any candidatorial machine-building. The party staff served as an institutional memory in off-years; after primaries and conventions picked candidates, our staff loyally served the nominees: but not until the party electorate’s decision was made. This was the concept that Bob Stuart, as RNC committeeman and I tried to present to the leaders of the Illinois GOP. All of them bought it. Dick Ogilvie said he bought it but privately it was with tongue-in-cheek. He and his machine staff—Drennan and Mack—cut backroom deals with a very weak State Central staff and co-opted them for the Ogilvie governorship campaign—which was not our anticipation. Once Ogilvie became governor, the staff—executive director, research director, organizational troops—were co-opted by the grunters, Drennan and Mack—and the staff became grunts of the hoped-for Ogilvie machine. Which meant that in short order they were taking orders from the Ogilvie grunt brigade, not doing a thing to help Chuck Percy or the reelection of Everett Dirksen who was running in the same year Ogilvie was.

As a result, I became privately very turned-off at Ogilvie and his people. He criss-crossed the state running for governor and took no position at all on the question of the state income tax. But seasoned news reporters told me the fix was in: that once elected, Ogilvie would support an income tax that was so earnestly desired by the Democrats. Mike Howlett, the Democrat who was state auditor and a friend, told me the same thing…as did Billy the Kid. Billy was no fan of weak, decentralized government but he thought the Rockefeller-like buildup of Illinois government as a leviathan ala Rockefeller should have been sold as did Rockefeller bigger government in New York state. The difference was that Ogilvie was not a visionary speaker, not a philosophical big government man but, Billy said, a big government man masquerading as a small government man. No charismatic politician himself, he would have taken the challenge to go across the state and educate about the need for expanded services. Not Ogilvie.

All the while the Ogilvie grunters, having co-opted our Illinois GOP staff concept, followed the dictum of Tom Drennan. “We need money, Roeser. Clem Stone’s drying up. Your job: get the money. Augggh!”

And sure enough, once Ogilvie got in without have made a commitment on the income tax, he endorsed it and worked with Democrats to pass it…thinking that he could survive the heat and get reelected in `72. I was opposed for three reasons: first, knowing that Ogilvie supported the income tax, I was keenly disappointed that he cynically played mum during the campaign when he knew all the time what he was going to do; second, that he cynically co-opted Bob Stuart’s staff concept; and third that he had no sympathy at all for the basics of conservative governing: pared-down spending, tax cuts and no vision whatsoever for a viable Illinois GOP unless it was a tail on his kite.

Ogilvie and his grunters ended what little influence had remained with the patrician Bourbons who were committed to philosophy of governance. Russ Arrington, the Senate president was a Bourbon by way of having worked with Clem Stone (a self-made Bourbon) but Arrington bought in to Ogilvie’s machine concept and became a rootless pragmatist: expanded government filled with technical details. Harold Byron Smith, Jr., one of the brightest, most attractive young professionals—a Bourbon by reason of birth to the prestigious Smith family, and therefore one would surmise a man who would want to accomplish good things for the state and party and perhaps be a candidate himself—became an Ogilvie grunter and consummate pragmatist. He became almost everything in the Illinois GOP after a time: was national committeeman, state chairman, chairman of the state finance committee. At the very end, he became a kind of grunt acknowledgee of George Ryan. Smith once told me when Peter Fitzgerald was running for the Senate that Fitzgerald had made a mistake in with social policy.

“What mistake?” I asked. He said that by opposing gay rights Fitzgerald didn’t understand that gay rights appealed to at least 10% of the state and maybe more. I doubted it but even if it had, there seemed to be no option but to go with the majority. Of course, Smith was pro-choice and sided with the accommodationist exurban country club structure of liberalism. Big government, no tax cuts, liberal social policies would never have appealed to the old Bourbons.

Chuck Percy was a Bourbon (by osmosis, having been born a poor boy in Rogers Park and aping the Bourbons to the extent that his accent even sounded eastern) but in many ways—not social policies--a Bourbon he was. My boss was an old-school Bourbon who wanted to do good things for the state but both were not in tight with the Ogilvie grunters. Everett Dirksen was a patron of the Bourbons: he loved business types who wanted to accomplish great things. In his own way he was a kind of reformer with a great appreciation of the free market and business operating relatively untrammeled by restrictive government; particularly notable in how he fought repeal of section 14(b) of Taft Hartley. The Ogilvie grunters regarded him as a man of the past. The Ogilvie grunters’ favorite woman was Hope McCormick, wife of Brooks, the national committeewoman, who did as she was told by the grunters without objection.

Charlie Barr, who had brought them all together under the aegis of Barry Goldwater was tossed aside because he wouldn’t bow to the grunters. The grunters were close to him when he had some corporate power; not now. Besides, Barr strenuously opposed Ogilvie’s vacating his county board presidency to run for governor after only two years. He wanted to build a party base, not a personal base for Ogilvie, and he had hoped the county board presidency could be used to build a base for the GOP wherein conservative views would be promoted. That was not the goal of the grunters. They saw Ogilvie as Daley. Besides, Charlie’s boss at Standard of Indiana didn’t want to think about Charlie who had tied the corporation to Barry Goldwater now that Lyndon Johnson, the friend of the oil industry, was president. And the Ogilvie grunts regarded Charlie as a vestige of the past—a past they had been a part of but which they now discarded. So Charlie spun off, left the company and all but evaporated as a political force.

Another dissatisfied Republican was Tim Sheehan, the Cook county Republican chairman. He had been a Congressman and 1963 mayoral aspirant who had made a deal with Daley—but basically on other things he was a Bourbon. He agreed with Billy the Kid that Republicans aren’t naturally disposed to build a machine. He went so far as to hint broadly that Ogilvie was a crook. Not so but Tim was a deep-hating Irishman.

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I will now digress to point out that my own work at Quaker was immeasurably enhanced with the hiring of a young man…four years younger than I…who would coordinate all of corporate communications and government relations under his aegis. It is a great good fortune to have one sympathetic to your goals. Not that Bob Thurston’s predecessors were not, but Bob, who came from Mead Johnson, had a marvelous capacity for government relations at a time when senior officers were not always so gifted. While my contact with Bob Stuart continued on a personal and political level, my work in corporate government relations and community affairs was channeled through Bob Thurston and his rising influence in the company made success not just possible but often a certainty.

His liaison with the senior officers made it much easier for me to function in the corporation. Rapidly, working together, we developed a government relations plan; he approved my idea for working with the black community to enhance our commitment to Chicago. He was rapidly promoted—to vice president, then senior vice president, then executive vice president and made a board member of the corporation. In addition to being a strong supporter of mine, he came up with a great number of novel ideas which we implemented together. With the keen support of our CEO, Quaker became a model company for government relations and community relations as a form of enlightened self-interest.

Before Bob Thurston came aboard, I hired an assistant (government relations staffs are never large) reporting to me who did a tremendous job…and who continued to do a great job when Bob Thurston came to us. He was Patrick Racey, gifted with talents that we often called “the wonderful Racey machine.” He had a mind that fastened on details in encyclopedic detail, far different from mine. It was the era before the Internet and all I had to go before going to Washington to lobby on an item was to sit down with Pat and have him run down verbally the legislative history. Step-by-step, from bill introduction through committee hearings through debate on the House floor, to its concurrent introduction in the Senate, to passage by a Senate committee, back to the House where passage by the House was recited by “the wonderful Racey machine” with pertinent roll-call votes to the Senate repeated by direct recall with another roll-call to the resultant conference committee. Often I would cry out “stop! Enough! I got the picture!” Racey was one in ten million who could write memos to key managers all day with the stub of a pencil (he refused to be a typist or memo dictator), give it to our secretary and copies would fly like a whirlwind throughout the company. He detested mechanical contrivances and I don’t know how he would fare today with the Internet, I-pods and the rest.

Later, after Bob Thurston came aboard, at the dawn of the corporate social responsibility movement in corporations, I hired a black man as community relations manager reporting to me who was far different from other African American corporate types. Charles E. Curry was from Jackson, Tennessee, born illegitimate whose only contact with his father was when that gentleman, from the rich black side of town, would visit surreptitiously with his mother every few days at midnight to peel off dollars with which to support the family he had sired apart from his own.

Chuck went to an historically black college and came to Chicago to as a “detached worker” in a marvelous project initiated by the YMCA where workers would hit the streets, ingratiate themselves with black youth and lead them out of drugs and crime. He was the best of the best of that group. No one knew how he could adjust to the corporate environment but not only did he do extraordinarily well but was regarded as the finest, most skilled, prescient expert of Chicago’s poverty neighborhoods. His skills helped develop our foundation from a do-good white-dominated philanthropy to one that really demanded the best from poverty neighborhoods before the company would invest in their projects.

Chuck’s expertise extended to politics as well and he was often a conduit between us and black leadership. Therefore, with Bob Thurston as our captain, I reporting to him, and Racey and Curry reporting to me but as virtual equals in expertise, we had what I modestly maintain was the best damn government relations-community relations outfit in corporate Chicago. Bob Thurston added to Chuck’s portfolio by having him sent to Emory University for a substantial period of time for graduate work. Chuck became a leader of a group of black male professionals known by the inauspicious name of the “Rat Pack.” They belonged to a number of professions: lawyers, community activists, journalists. One of them became president of the Chicago Urban League, Jim Compton; another, Danny Davis, was elected alderman, county board member and Congressman; a key member was Art Norman, now reporting and anchoring for NBC-TV News, Channel 5 Chicago. Chuck Curry retired as one of the best known black corporate executives in the city. Sadly, all of them eulogized Chuck along with me after his untimely death at 68 from cancer. Back to our story.

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

“Count me out,” said Charlie Barr as he watched Dick Ogilvie’s campaign for governor. “Those grunts want to build their own machine. Hell, if I wanted to play machine politics, I’d do it right and sign up with Richard J. Daley. I thought the Republican party was different, better than that. Oh well, it doesn’t much matter anymore because Standard Oil’s going in another direction, but the fact that my Republican Party is as well is very sad to me. The fact that those guys are going to put in an income tax to build a bigger government tells me that they were never for Goldwater at all: only pretending.”

“As for me,” said Billy the Kid at one of our many lunches, “I was never for weak government, always a progressive but never for a machine. First of all, building a machine in the Republican party won’t work. Our people aren’t like the Democrats. We don’t have people trying to get their brother-in-law a job running an elevator at City Hall. That’s Democratic party stuff and Drennan is an old line Democrat who thinks that’s the way to go. Well, it isn’t. With his way there’s no difference between us and them.”

But, Bill, I said, you’re a big government man and so are the Democrats. You say you can’t tell the difference with Drennan. What’s the difference between you and the Democrats?

“You don’t understand this, Roeser,” he said, “because you’re not a progressive. I want to enlarge government in a responsible way so as to help those who need help but not subsidize businesses or industries. There’s night and day difference between what I want to do and what Lyndon Johnson is doing—creating generations of dependants with his welfare programs. You used to work for a progressive governor, Elmer Andersen of Minnesota. You mean none of that stuff rubbed off on you?”

I’ll tell you this, Billy, I said. If we got to have big government, I’d damn sight rather have it come from a guy like you who doesn’t want to build a personal machine than this crowd of grunts.

Then Billy imitated the Ogilvie grunts with a guttural “money-money. Clem Stone’s drying up, Roeser! Your job: get money! Auggggggh!”

Aw shut up, I said. It’s too realistic.

Then, going back to my job after lunch, I decided I’d like to get my hand in political work on an organizing level. What’s it like to run campaigns in Chicago, apart from the pristine state of Minnesota where there was no machine? What’s it like to go against the Daley machine? I yearned to run a congressional campaign again, as volunteer campaign manager on free time after work to get the “feel” of the opposition machine. And not just one: two…one strategizing a Republican campaign on the Northwest Side of my birth and another planning the message, strategy and organization for a Republican campaign on the heavily Democratic black South Side where the black machine of William Dawson, ally of Daley, came into play. What? my wife said. A job, three kids and me and you don’t have enough to do? Sure, but just this once: I wanted to give it a try after-hours on my own in two congressionals, widely different in Chicago. “Good idea, “said Billy the Kid; “I’ll give you some ideas only don’t ask me to help.”

Okay! Seems silly now…a needless drain of surplus energy…but I was only a kid of 38. So I did. And did I ever learn a lot!

Personal Asides: Political Shootout Sunday…To Cal…One-Liners.

Political Shootout Sunday.

Guests will be liberal Democratic reform Cook county commissioner Mike Quigley who will talk about his pension reform plans for Cook county government and Kevin White, lawyer, Republican intellectual and keen analyst, who should have been more adequately praised by me for his valiant attempt to dislodge Rahm Emanuel. That’s at 8 p.m. on WLS-AM (890).

To Cal.

Yes to your question about the Maine Township Yrs…and I don’t know but think not to your question about Tom Cross…and no to your guess that I’m preparing to write a book about Hillary Clinton.

One Liners.

The smartest guy statistically in the Republican party is Greg Baise, president of the Illinois Manufacturing Association who in my class gave a rundown from memory, not looking at notes, key county-by-key-county of 2006 election returns vs. past years: astounding; also that he carries volumes of returns in his brief-case for night-time relaxing reading when traveling…Chris Lauzen deserves the Republican nod for Denny Hastert’s seat notwithstanding the embarrassing attempt to add CPA to his name for ballot purposes (because everybody is entitled to ten goofy ideas in life, although my wife says I exhausted the quota the first year of our marriage)…Father Bob Barron is the best homilist in this Catholic archdiocese—not that this is so flattering given the low estate of pulpit speakers in my Church…but also the best from intellectual robustness, meticulous scholarship and preparation…I should have said that in addition to David McSweeney, two other Republican congressional candidates supported term limits—Kevin White [5th] and Andrea Zinga [17th]…Best musical play to see is “Forever Plaid” at Drury Lane…

Understanding the need for local time and traffic updates, I think Big John and Cisco Coto are fine on WIND early mornings, but I really miss Bill Bennett…Mike Savage has always struck me as weird but now I’m getting worried about myself since the other day when I was listening he made sense…Laura Ingraham is great: witty, acerbic, bright, imbued with a charming female youthful vitality that matches her stunning good looks as seen on her website—but her voice is screechy, too much so, isn’t it?...Michael Medved is the most erudite, hands-down and locally Steve Edwards, on, of all things WBEZ, is the best interviewer since John Callaway…Does anybody…anybody…watch “Chicago Tonight?”…The best debater I have witnessed since Hubert Humphrey is arch-liberal Alderman Joe Moore [49th] who can be convincing on all topics, even the ones where he is totally wrong: but he should be considered for prime-time politically by his party…The greatest disappointment for a radio guest in my lifetime was Rep. Melissa Bean [8th] who gets away with murder with the incumbent factor, was so insecure on her maiden voyage on my WLS show that she had a staff aide sit by her side and riffle through DCCC Clif’s Notes to help her…Hey, it’s 11:10 p.m. and to bed.

Precarious Audacity: The Democratic Love Affair with Obama is Bound to Blow Over Soon with Disillusionment and a Fresh Realism.

While He Looks, Sounds Great at First Blush, He is Far Too Naïve for the Job. That’s Why it’s Best for Him to Run Now so Dems Can Scratch

That Itch and then Pick Someone Mature.

By Thomas F. Roeser

A column for The Wanderer, the oldest national Catholic weekly (with some updating).


CHICAGO—The official press announcement from the office of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) was bristling with importance. It followed immediately a huge reception of screaming, weeping exultant partisans in New Hampshire on Sunday, December 10, where he addressed the largest pre-presidential primary crowd in modern state history. There were 1,500 cheering people as enthusiastic as if they were witnessing John Lennon. At exactly that moment, the junior Illinois senator’s Washington office filed a low-key, terse heads-up to the national media.

It said that Obama would make an important announcement the following evening, on Monday, December 11, about “an upcoming contest of great importance to the American people.” Media savants nodded to themselves and did high-fives: here it is! The news ricocheted around the nation and was a bombshell here as with every pundit in the country. Political correspondents were called to the office of major newspapers and ordered to be prepared to write crisp commentaries on the entrance of the charismatic African American senator into the presidential race of 2008. Television networks stood by; Washington, D. C. staffs hustled to their offices. The office of Sen. Hilary Clinton (D-N.Y), the Illinois native who until the Obama fad was regarded as a sure-thing for the Democratic presidential nomination, tensed up. Her publicists got ready to issue good sport welcoming statements to Obama. All the while gritting their teeth in recognition of what could be the most dramatic contest for the Democratic nomination since 1960.

All Democratic presidential candidates and current and former presidents were standing by. President George W. Bush lifted his eyes from Baghdad. Former president Bill Clinton, intensely interested in his wife’s presidential future hired a writer to contrive some ad-libs.

Add to them former Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), now considered a hopeless basket case after having maimed himself with a badly delivered joke misinterpreted as slurring military service; former U. S. Senator John Edwards, once regarded as the most potent alternative to Hillary Clinton; former vice president Al Gore, considered to be the major challenger to Hillary Clinton, worrying that he would lose his berth to Obama.

And on the Republican side Sen. John McCain, the front-runner for the GOP nomination who had had his own earlier run-in with Obama and had allowed his old Navy blow-torch temper embarrass him; Rudy Giuliani, running second to McCain for the nod felt suddenly depressed; Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, regarded by some as the conservative challenger to the nomination wondered if the charges against his Morman religion’s old strictures against blacks would be revived. Also, Rev. Jesse Jackson rehearsed a statement that said Obama would lead all blacks from Galilee to Jubilee. Rev. Al Sharpton had a plane reservation for Chicago to get some face-time on TV. All waited tensely.

Then on Monday night came news that seemed incredible—at first. Obama would appear on—of all things—the sports TV network ESPN which ordinarily has a huge viewership. Political wise men and marketers nodded their heads. This was a new era and the fact that Obama would choose the hugely-watched sports network would be in deference to the enormous ratings sports has over regular news breaks. It was to be a new era dawning.

Then, with everybody fastened on ESPN, Obama appeared and in a serious mode. He began by saying in presidential tones that he recognized “this is a contest about the future.”

Journalists began to scribble and tape recorders whirred. “This is a contest about the future. A contest between two very different philosophies. A contest that will ultimately be decided in America’s heartland,” said Obama. “In Chicago, they’re asking: Does the new guy have enough experience to lead us to victory? In St. Louis they’re wondering: are we facing a record that’s really so formidable? Or is it all just a bunch of hype?”

Journalists across the nation leaned forward, ready to link this announcement with the most dramatic ever made on television: John Kennedy at Fannueil Hall, Boston, announcing as the first Catholic to seek the presidency since Al Smith; the Lyndon Johnson decision not to run for president in 1968; Franklin Roosevelt’s announcement that he would seek an unprecedented third term in 1940.

Obama’s voice was calm, measured.

“So tonight I’d like to put all doubts to rest. And tonight, after a lot of thought and a good deal of soul-searching, I would like to announce to my hometown of Chicago and all of America that I’m ready…”

Pause. Then an undignified, un-presidential shout:

“…for the Bears to go all the way! Go Bears!” And as he clapped a Bears cap on his head, he intoned in a resonant hum the V-signal that animated the three-dots-and-a-dash of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as used in World War II: da-da-da-DAH!

The most brilliant bit of promotion and hustle for any modern incipient presidential candidate. One which far exceeded the 12.7 million viewers of the previous week’s Monday Night Football—for the Chicago Bears-St. Louis Rams tussle. Only hopeless old fogies dating to the early 20th century didn’t like it. Kids, middle-agers, elders, blacks, whites, Hispanics, men, women, business-types, conservatives, liberals, radicals, reactionaries, feminists, racists, straights, gays, labor union beer drinkers, limousine liberal champagne sippers—people of all ages--loved it. As did I. It was not triviality triumphant; it was political merchandising at its most brilliant apex.

And a wondrous joke deservedly pulled on the too-solemn political writers who take everything a candidate says as equivalent to the Ten Commandments. As a journalist who goes back a very long way (too long, in fact) I can say it ranks with the prime stunt in the pre-television era when super-dark horse candidate Wendell L. Willkie became the odds-on favorite for the Republican presidential nomination of 1940 by appearing on and stumping experts like Clifton Fadiman and Oscar Levant on the country’s top-rated radio entertainment program “Information Please.” Robert Taft and Tom Dewey were eclipsed after that. Roosevelt’s jest about “my little dog Fala whose scotch blood was furious after Republican attacks” in 1944. Harry Truman’s radio imitation of commentator H. V. Kaltenborn pronouncing him defeated on election night 1948. The botched polling of the three-member Puerto Rican delegation at the Republican convention of 1952. The screamingly funny screwed up valedictory of Herbert Hoover at the GOP convention four years later.

Or John Kennedy’s appearance on live TV as the mystery guest on “What’s My Line” in 1960 and his dignified yet comic one-liners which caused viewers to regard him as a youthful composite of America.

Congratulations should go to the Illinois man who, assuredly, thought up and wrote the stunt: David Axelrod, a Democratic consultant who never had a presidential winner yet after twenty-plus years in the business.

Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, Franklin Roosevelt and the litany of presidential candidates going back to the birth of modern communications must have saluted this gimmick from their Valhalla.

Was the da-da-da-DAH! sung by the candidate—from Beethoven—overkill? Not on your life. But other missteps by Obama…including his own incredible naivete… come close to being fatal. And when he fails to get the presidential nomination as he surely will despite this brilliant hype and falls back to being just another Senator among the 100, he might well console himself by cherishing his Chicago Bears announcement which stirred the team’s juices to win 42 to 27 as it marched to a hoped-for Super Bowl victory. Race discrimination won’t beat him. Youth won’t beat him. Other factors will.

Great visuals are in place for him to be remembered enduringly as a losing primary candidate before the convention, however. Like Adlai Stevenson’s shoe with the hole in it; Al Gore having invented the Internet. Obama will be remembered appearing in the relaxed style of business casual appropriate for Gentleman’s Quarterly: a jacket, collared shirt but no tie which given his thin, boyish face looks just right: dressy enough to show serious intention but without the old-man formality of a tie and business suit. His fans say it reflects the quality of being comfortable with himself. From now on, it will be in fashion to go open-throated shirt and tieless. Not said very often is the fact that the only other world figure to appear thus is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who may also have thumbed through GQ to capture the jacket-and-no-tie look.

While Obama’s sartorial style has the refreshing quality of unconventional youth, his latest book, The Audacity of Hope called by detractors The Audacity of Hype or The Hope of Audacity is a disaster. The book which I read cursorily at Barnes & Noble in less than an hour, is not only the most ignorant book by a presidential candidate since Illinois’ Paul Simon’s which recommended slashing U. S. defense during the pre-primary jockeying of 1979-80 in the Cold War, it is the heady kid thoughts of a youth exultant that under campaign laws a Senator can fly in luxurious private jets donated by corporations for the parsimonious cost of just one regular first-class ticket. Until he discovered the down-side.

Whee! The book has all the depth of Action Comics—vapid, shallow, inexpert, embarrassingly naïve—totally shockingly unexpected from just a run-of-the-mill Harvard law grad and University of Chicago professor of law not to mention a Senator and incipient presidential candidate. In Audacity, Obama pinches himself for being able to ride in CEO luxury on private jets at such cheap cost. True, it is difficult to put up with the big business, big-labor escorts, lobbyists, who seek to ply him with requests for special interest favors. But, sigh, that is the burden of being a statesman. Then, he discovered that as the Democrats’ point-man on ethics, he was required to disdain such favors. This brings forth great sorrow; but he resolves to buck up.

The furor over Obama is because he is a living reincarnation of the seemingly innocent Bambi…wide-eyed, very youthful at 45, not immediately discerning on the motivations of those who want to take him to the cleaners (but with an inward notion of how to cash in on his celebrity). What will kill him politically is that he is congenitally tempted to violate his Bambi image and cash in. It happened to better men.

Running with special interests almost did-in John McCain which led him to the overkill corrective of collaborating on the “McCain-Feingold” act that put the 1st amendment in a straitjacket. That was to purge himself of corruptive stain of being a “Keating Five” wheeler-dealer who bummed free corporate jet rides and got favors in return for trying to save a near-bankrupt savings and loan. Even so, McCain is a vastly more prepared candidate for the presidency since he learned the lesson. Obama says he’s learned his lesson—but no: he hasn’t. He still often goes private jet paying one first class ticket. He still gets caught taking personal favors that he should avoid. He knows better but he can’t help it.

Is he either dumbly naïve or--as some journalists are beginning to ask-- is he the reverse of the Bambi he pretends to be? Everybody knows the story of the Disney tear-jerker. A baby deer is born and as we watch he experiences everything for the first time: butterflies and flowers, his first sight of snow and the forest fire. But as Chicago journalists now ask: this is a different kind of Bambi. This Bambi Obama looks innocent with beguiling soft brown eyes and a gentleness of a fawn but he has adjusted all too well to Chicago’s steamy political jungle. There’s no simple life for him. He’s susceptible to grandiose living quarters and privileges, made possible by his two big book sales, yes—but also because of the great good fortune that came to his lawyer wife and the freebie gestures of new-found rascal friends.

Then there’s Mrs. Obama. A statuesquely beautiful black woman, she loves the social limelight, standing next to her angular, beaming husband in evening clothes as the TV lights almost blind them as they walk into social gatherings of mega-multi-millionaires. He loves it too. But we begin with her.

Michelle Obama had had a modest income as a lawyer before her husband was elected to the Senate and became a national figure. She worked as a community organizer and a junior attorney through the sufferance of Newton Minow, an old liberal warhorse blue-chip lawyer of the old Democratic establishment. Then she worked as an assistant planner for Mayor Richard Daley. But as her husband’s career flourished, she got a good paying job at the University of Chicago hospitals, in the Hyde Park area of Chicago where they live. Her beginning salary there when he was just another state senator was about $50,000. But better things were to come along with his political success.

When her husband got elected to the U. S. Senate, her income rose to $121,910 with the hospitals in 2004 and she was put in charge of the institution’s community relations. And the next year, 2005, she was made vice president for external affairs—basically the same job with a fancier title—and received a massive salary hike to $316,962, tripling her income. The hospitals depend to a great extent on state and federal grants. Its president explained to the media that the value it placed in Mrs. Obama came naturally and was not related to her husband’s election. Sure. Okay, her stunning salary hike, while suspicious, does not register a scandal on the Chicago political Richter scale where many aldermen and city hall patrons can’t lie straight in bed. The next piece of coincidence does.


As the Obamas’ income expanded, the Senator and his wife determined to buy a luxurious mansion in the Hyde Park area. And I mean a luxurious mansion. Where Paul Douglas, the last Hyde Parker to go to the Senate, lived in a modest house he did on a professor’s salary and a bare apartment in Washington, where, to give him his due, Dick Durbin lives in a bachelor apartment in Washington which he shares with two other lawmakers, that doesn’t go with the Obamas.

Fair enough. With income in the millions from the book sales and their two hefty incomes, one might suppose that they need not have to take advantage of old-style politics such as have enlivened the biographies of other Chicago political types—especially when Barack Obama is touted as the new wave of reformer, eager to break with the corruption of our present day. A more disciplined man would be careful to keep his nose clean. Not so with the Obamas. It turns out that the Obamas’ property in the pricey South Side neighborhood adjoins that of one Antoin (“Tony”) Rezko, a close fixer friend of Governor Blagojevich. Rezko was indicted for siphoning kickbacks from firms wishing to do business with the state of Illinois. Earlier, Rezko and his companies contributed a total of $19,500 to Obama’s prior state campaigns (in Illinois corporate contributions to state campaigns are legal). In addition, Rezko held a fund-raiser in 2003 for Obama’s U. S. Senate campaign. Let us say the Rezkos and Obamas are well acquainted.

Rezko pleaded not-guilty on the kickbacks and must be regarded as innocent until incorrigible federal attorney Patrick Fitzgerald calls him to trial. But here the heavy taint of scandal could…not will but could…reach Obama because Obama bought his house in 2005 for about $300,000 less than the asking price. On that same day, Rezko’s wife purchased the adjoining lot, paying the full $625,000 asking price. The same day. Which prompted the Chicago Tribune to wonder if Mrs. Rezko didn’t subsidize Obama’s purchase of his $1million-plus home while at the same time providing a park-like preserve which has no access from a public street. The U. S. attorney has said nothing but--.

When first asked about the deal, Obama said he “dotted every i and crossed all the t’s.” Then a few days later he admitted the deal may look improper. “It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe that he had done me a favor. For that reason, I consider this a mistake on my part and I now regret it.” There is a noticeable lag between Obama’s scathing criticism of corruption in other countries (such as in Africa where he charmed international media on his klieg-lighted tour there) and his benign toleration of Rezko in Chicago and his failure to comment on corruption in Chicago and Illinois where federales are sifting through files in Mayor Daley’s and Governor Blagojevich’s offices. From our champion of ethics: not a peep.

To his supposed rescue has come none other than that rogue donkey of Democratic politics, Fr.Andrew Greeley. Greeley has a weekly column in the Chicago “Sun-Times” and to switch the focus away from Rezko the waspish priest wrote an attempt to help Obama. Far from helping him, it got Obama in danger and Greeley into trouble. Greeley wrote that there are so many racists in this nation—and in the Republican party—that…get this…crazy “white supremacists will fall over one another in their attempts to derail the campaign…” Greeley then went—as he often does when inflamed—beyond the pale.



He wrote: “If he decides to run, the senator is a very brave man. He should invest in flak jackets and helmets—emotional and physical.”



That was the first hint of mention of a possible assassination attempt. The story was not only intemperate; it was an unintentional message of harm that any sober commentator and newspaper wants to avoid. It only underscored the truism in Chicago that when you have Andy Greeley on your side, watch out, as Joseph Cardinal Bernardin discovered too late.



Be that as it may, for now, Obama captivates primary state crowds where he exhorts Democrats to pick someone not from the baby boomer generation, one who is a break from the Vietnam-era politician, who reflects the shifting ethnic and racial makeup of the country—someone who has vision and magic. But his Bambi style—whether it’s naivete and accident-prone involvements with Chicago hoods and fixers--can be easily capitalized on in a primary campaign. In the last state campaign, he endorsed a Greek banker who has funded mob figures. When this came out, Obama didn’t drop the guy like a hot potato. He stuck with him.

Some journalists assure me that with this great hype will come a fall. I think so, too—but to save the party from itself, Obama has to run so that it can learn a lesson from this foolishness. But no one should expect cunning old Vietnam-era pol Hilary Clinton to go after Obama personally if they run against each other in the primaries. She will be a pleasant, harmless little lady candidate. No one can afford to assail a black Bambi in a Democratic party where African Americans are its largest, most temperamental and most loyal bloc. But insinuations in politics have been known to float up from nowhere. The biggest one McCain has to face is one that began in 2000: a cruel one…that as result of five years of solitary in the Hanoi Hilton, he’s half nuts.

With the disclosure of stories putting his judgment and maturity in doubt, Barack Obama will face his first big test in the primary debates. There he can’t get away with saying some states are blue, some states and red but all states are American: Rotary Club pap. So far he has not had the sophistication to handle a real first-class forensic debate on the issues—especially when his gaffes on U. S. defense and the domestic budget and his implacable animosity against tax cuts is leaked. When he debated Alan Keyes, he lost spectacularly but no one cared since Keyes’ emotional balance was doubted, too, at the time. But intellectual maturity is only one thing.

Like all other Democratic national candidates, he’s appalling on traditional moral issues…but he’s got one to get over—not bothersome to Democratic red-hots but independents and those Republicans who with misty eyes may be tempted to vote for him to allay fancied guilt for the fact that some whites owned slaves. He has tried to woo a kind of evangelical liberal constituency who care more for pollution and peace than unborn life. It hasn’t gone all that well. There he faces a big test. Already pro-life church groups and traditionalist organizations have been filled in—on an issue all but unanswerable: on Obama’s steadfast opposition to the Illinois “Born Alive” bill where he refused to admit any help be given in form of nutrition or pain-relievers to babies writhing in pain from botched abortions. No, Hillary Clinton won’t raise those concerns. She will be discreetly silent. But the issue will be raised by other, non-candidatorial types.

When that occurs…whether it comes from a journalist’s question ala Bernie Shaw who asked Dukakis if he would favor capital punishment if his wife were raped…Obama, facing the question on his opposition to saving children born alive from botched abortions…standing next to Hillary on the platform while she looks demurely at him… will have to answer the questions alone, on a platform somewhere, perhaps in pro-life Iowa, before the TV cameras and without David Axelrod by his side. There’s no good way for him to reconcile himself to the center.



By trying to reconcile his stridently leftist views…far exceeding those of even Hillary or John Edwards—anyone that is unless Al Gore himself…Barack Obama he risks alienating his fan club which loves him for the Lefty he is.

As he tries to respond at that future time, while Hilary Clinton waits for his answer with her plastic sweet smile, the nation will once again hear the opening strain Beethoven’s Fifth which he made so famous in extolling the Chicago Bears. By all odds it will signal the rolling down of the curtain on what up to now has been an exciting preliminary. But it will be the deadly drum roll for Bambi, meaning “back to the Senate for more preparation before you try again for the major leagues.”

Da-da-da-DAH!