Blowing in the wind - profile of Illinois governor James R. Thompson

National Review, Nov 24, 1989 by John R. Coyne, Jr.

Blowing in the Wind

CHICAGO--It's autumn now, and when Andre Dawson played Casey at the Bat in San Francisco, Chicagoans packed it in for another year. They're promising us a hell of a winter, perhaps of the 1978-79 variety, when political empires toppled and the divorce rate tripled.

But while it lasted, it was quite a summer. For one thing, the Cubs knocked the Mets out of contention in the National League East, thereby winning a crucial battle in the President's war on drugs. For another, the Wrigley Restaurant, one of the last of the city's uniquely elegant restaurant-saloons, closed its doors. And Governor James Thompson--born in Chicago in 1936, the year the Wrigley opened--decided not to run for a fifth term in 1990, leaving the political field wide open for candidates who make it sane, sober, and still married through the winter.

According to one analyst here, Thompson's departure will leave Illinois like France without de Gaulle. Well, perhaps. De Gaulle was tall, and so is Thompson. But aside from Salan and some confused Algerians, most people generally knew, when de Gaulle stood tall, where he was standing. With Thompson, the position has been harder to locate.

Some conservative Republicans react to Thompson in much the way they reacted to John Lindsay or Nelson Rockefeller. One of them, a committed and otherwise thoughtful conservative spokesman, in one succinct sentence called Thompson an obscenity-deleted governor, a "Democrat in disguise," a "boot-licking lackey for organized labor," and "the King Herod of the anti-life movement." Those less ideologically committed, however, tend to conclude that Thompson, although not measuring up to early expectations, has been an effective and competent governor.

He inherited, in 1976, a state in which the legislature and the executive branch, goaded on by Governor Dan Walker's erratic performance, were at each other's throats. Applying a strong dose of his shambling, aw-shucks, aggressive-sheep-dog style, he ended the feuding between the two branches.

With one eye on the media--as when, in the early days, he rode a horse into the state-capitol rotunda and gave his Irish setter, Guv, equal billing with the anchorpersons on the evening news--Thompson took Illinois through two recessions, a major shift in the international economy, and a series of rigorous adjustments required by a collapsing farm economy. His economic-development policy is slowly but steadily drawing foreign investment to Illinois. He has attracted joint ventures from abroad and encouraged the development of alternative uses for agricultural products. And he helped cajole the White Sox into staying in Chicago. As he leaves office, state revenue growth is strong. Bills have been paid, and the legislative coffers are full.

Through it all, Thompson has even managed to keep an unwritten peace treaty with Chicago in somewhat uneasy effect. Thompson is, of course, the leader of the Republican Party in Illinois. But in Chicago, it's Democrats that win elections, and Thompson has not been subtle in his support for Mayor Daley--and before that, albeit much more quietly, for Harold Washington. (This, incidentally, despite the 1987 mayoral candidacy of Donald Haider, an articulate, intelligent, personable, and even sane Chicago Republican.)

Thompson may or may not have helped deliver the coup de grace to whatever was left of the Cook County Republican Party organization. But many Republicans who do business in Chicago believe he has handled the city as well as can be expected. And they give him high marks for working behind the scenes with Mayor Daley and House Speaker Mike Madigan of Chicago to bring off the sleight-of-hand tax increase that made Chicago's unprecedented public-school reform program possible.

The accomplishments in this and related areas are real. But they are, as has been the case since the earliest days, accomplishments of persuasion and personality--by definition, private accomplishments, with no discernible political, philosophical, or ideological underpinning. In his first race, having built an admirable record as a federal prosecutor, Thompson was viewed as a hard-nosed Republican reformer in a corrupt state, potentially hostile to all special-interest blandishments. But when he was re-elected in 1986, he had the endorsement both of business leaders and of the AFL-CIO. He also had the quintessentially unlucky opponent, Adlai E. Stevenson III, an "ideological sourpuss," as one writer put it, who was blindsided by LaRouchies, thrown by his own horse, and reportedly bitten by his own dog.

But the point here is not luck; rather, it's how do you go about imparting a legacy, when your record is built solely on personality?

The obverse of that question is now being faced by the two contenders for Thompson's job. If you can't run on the substance of your predecessor's record because it can't be defined, and you can't dissociate yourself from it because you might step on some invisible toes, then what do you do? So far, the answer seems to be that you shadowbox and try to stay out of the way of your own punches.