American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle For Chicago And The Nation. - Review - book review

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 19, 2001 by Jason Berry

AMERICAN PHARAOH: MAYOR RICHARD J. DALEY: HIS BATTLE FOR CHICAGO AND THE NATION By Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor Little Brown & Company, $26.95, 614 pages

In laying the groundwork for his 1960 presidential campaign, Sen. John F. Kennedy asked Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, "Why don't you run for governor?" A reasonable question, from one Irish-American pol to another. Illinois was a pivotal swing state. Dick Daley ran the Cook County Democratic Party, by far the most powerful political machine in America, with hundreds of thousands of votes at his command. A statewide campaign by the mayor would mean big coattails for the party's presidential nominee. Or so thought JFK.

Daley's terse reply, reported in American Pharaoh, the stunning new book by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, speaks volumes about the psychology of politics. Said the mayor: "If we have two Catholics -- one running for president and one for governor -- only one is going to win, and it's not going to be you."

This was not idle boasting. Daley knew that his mammoth vote-grinder, oiled by patronage jobs, sweetheart deals for insurance companies, contractors and others allied with the party, probably could hoist him into the governor's chair. He also knew that Kennedy would be tarred by harsher-than-usual press coverage. Illinois' Republican leadership and the state's major paper, The Chicago Tribune, would raise the congenital issue of corruption, and in many minds that issue did have certain religious overtones. Daley's Cook County drew its muscle from ethnic Catholics -- the predominant Irish, Poles and Italians (with a key ward controlled by the mob). The subdominant members were transplanted blacks in the "plantation wards" of the South Side.

Pulling out all the stops

At Daley's behest, Kennedy made his campaign appearance in Chicago very late in the campaign, after swings through the downstate Republican strongholds and suburbs outside the city. The mayor didn't want JFK over-exposed in the city, where news stories were feeding off rumors about possible vote-buying. On election day, Daley pulled out all the stops. Illinois was the state that pushed Kennedy over Richard Nixon and into the White House. He carried the state by less than 10,000 votes, and most of those were probably stolen, according to research by Cohen, a senior writer for Time, and Taylor, a former Time correspondent, now editor of The Chicago Tribune's book section and Sunday magazine.

Nixon magnanimously chose not to contest the election, fearing that a protracted struggle over an accurate tally would be so bitter as to politically cripple a new president.

The authors write of a post-election joke that started circulating in Washington. JFK, his secretary of state Dean Rusk and Mayor Daley are stranded in a lifeboat, with only enough food for one. Two will have to jump overboard. Kennedy says he's too important; Rusk says the same about himself. Daley insists the only democratic thing is to vote. They do, and Daley wins, 8-2.

Vote fraud and other forms of corruption made the big city machines of yesteryear a perennial target for journalists and prosecutors. The machines that shaped modern American politics were largely Democratic and tied to the growth of cities: Boss Tweed in New York City; Mayor Erastus Corning of Albany; James Michael Curley, the "rascal king" of Boston and model for the mayor in Edwin O'Connor's novel, The Last Hurrah; Frank Hague in Jersey City; Boss Crump of Memphis; the list goes on.

Of the scholars cited in American Pharaoh, political scientist Arnold Hirsch makes the point that the big-city machine functioned as a balance of competing ethnic interests.

The successful machine politician also made sure that the city, or his piece of it, functioned well enough so that voters saw tangible results. As Cohen and Taylor write: "A [precinct] captain was expected to be able to predict his vote almost exactly; missing by more than 10 or so votes could result in a reprimand."

Boundaries of personality

The Chicago mayors before Daley, like other Northern big-city bosses, were power-consumed, and yet they also understood limits, inherent boundaries of personality. "He don't like my name," the challenger Anton Cermak said of the Chicago mayor he dislodged in 1931. "It's true I didn't come over on the Mayflower, but I came over as soon as I could."

A ruler too wild or greedy or venal would clash with the sensibility of the voting blocs who carried a sense of obedience as they knelt in pews of the large neighborhood churches that helped lighten the load of poverty.

Daley was a loyal husband and dutiful father of seven. He began each day receiving Communion at Mass. When Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited the city, he threw out the red carpet and held a lavish dinner in their honor. When they left, he said: "Come again and bring the children."

Such simplicity had its charm, but there was a darker side. Millions of Americans who knew little about Daley drew the image of a vulgar bully from network TV coverage of the 1968 Democratic convention. After Chicago cops wielding billy clubs mauled antiwar protesters and even reporters in the streets, Connecticut Sen. Abraham Ribicoff chastised Daley in a prime-time speech at the podium, denouncing "Gestapo tactics." Daley shook his fist at Ribicoff and bellowed back. Whether he said the f-word is a matter of dispute.