19 Comments Add your own

• 1. Chuck Sweeny  |  June 17th, 2008 at 10:43 am

  Americans have no sense of history. The story says Chicago has had important moments in politics before, but this year it will be more significant than ever, if a president from Chicago, Illinois is elected.
  But Obama is not from Illinois. He is the opposite of Ronald Reagan, an Illinoisan by birth and upbringing. He got his political career started in California.
  Obama was born in Hawaii, moved to Indonesia, went to Harvard, and began his political career in Chicago.

  And I’ll argue with anybody that the most significant political event in Chicago history was the Republican Convention of 1860, in which a Springfield lawyer named Abraham Lincoln was nominated for president at a convention center called the Wigwam.

  The rest, as they say, was history. But as I said, Americans know nothing of history, at least if it isn’t on the History Channel.

  Lincoln, like Obama, was not from Illinois. He was from Kentucky by way of Indiana. He got his political start in the state legislature in Vandalia and conspired with 8 fellow lawmakers to get the capital city changed to Springfield. Good job, too. Otherwise we’d have even farther to drive to see the circus.

• 2. Menlo Bob  |  June 17th, 2008 at 10:50 am

  What is a ’sense of history’? Do you mean they don’t know much history? Who writes like that?

• 3. Menlo Bob  |  June 17th, 2008 at 11:04 am

  Sweeny is on to something here. Obama has a sense that there are 59 states in this country and he’s visited 57 of them. And Obama is an American! Of course, history tells us that he was referring to the Heinz Ketchup Company. So much for ‘a sense of history’.

• 4. Pat Cunningham  |  June 17th, 2008 at 11:05 am

  Bob: A “sense of history” is a very common usage. Google it, and you’ll find hundreds of thousands of citations. There was even a movie titled “A Sense of History.” The term refers to a familiarity with history that enables one to sense the historic importance of a given turn of events. It takes a sense of history, for example, to recognize the importance of the presidential candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. So much for your knowledge of everyday usage of English.

• 5. Menlo Bob  |  June 17th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

  I’m sensing history right now. Oh wait, it went away. Now I’m sensing anthropology…or is that zoology? Maybe it’s just my sense of smell.

• 6. kaus  |  June 17th, 2008 at 6:38 pm

  Democratic Chicago? It rates a 10 on the patronage-o-meter.

• 7. Bookworm  |  June 17th, 2008 at 9:22 pm

  Not only is a sense of history important, but a sense of perspective is too.

  The “outside” perspective of this article makes it sound as if Chicago Dems are riding high and enjoying some kind of Golden Age, which seems laughable to those who follow Chicago/Illinois politics from the inside and know all the gory details regarding Rezko, Blago, Madigan, Jones, Stroger, Sorich and many other names not mentioned anywhere in the Politico article.

  Upon reading this article I am torn between two conclusions: 1) the Politico writer has no idea of just how badly the Democratic party has screwed up the city and the state, or 2) maybe they are doing better than we think, and we Chicago/Springfield political junkies are too close to the situation to have any real perspective on it.

  Of course, the Clintons’ Arkansas, the Kennedys’ Boston, LBJ’s Texas, Truman’s Kansas City, et al, all had their seamy underbelly too so this is really nothing new.

  By the way, I picked up my first two Garry Wills books today (”Certain Trumpets” and “Head and Heart”) and am really enjoying them so far.

• 8. Craig Knauss  |  June 17th, 2008 at 11:26 pm

  We always hear about the Chicago Democratic machine and its corruption. I won’t ever deny it; it’s bad. But what gets overlooked is the Republican machine in places like Dupage county. I lived there 25 years, and they were running a real close second to the Daleycrats when it came to graft, corruption, and incompetence. Any time one party controls a place for too long, corruption sets in. I’ve heard the Republicans have controlled Dupage since the time of Lincoln. I don’t doubt it since they held virtually any and all elected or appointed office while I lived there. And for their leadership we got high taxes, high living costs, congestion, etc. For example, we had the Dupage Airport Authority, which spent over $100 million of taxpayer money (without a referendum) to improve the airport for private jets. And the jets don’t pay any landing fees. The homeowners pay it. And you wouldn’t believe the amount of money the Public Works Dept. and Forest Preserve Dept. wastes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

• 9. Bookworm  |  June 18th, 2008 at 12:27 am

  Of course I’m not denying that Republicans have their share of corruption. The “end is listless” on both the state and national level: Ryan, Cellini, Kjellander, Weller, Foley, Libby, North, Nixon, Dean, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, etc. etc.

  Downstate Republicans are certainly far from pure in this regard, as much as they like to blame the big bad Chicago Machine for everything.

  You’re right, Craig: prolonged one-party rule is a bad thing no matter what party it is. “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

• 10. Kaus  |  June 18th, 2008 at 4:26 am

  To sum it all up then for everybody, a US Senate, House and President all being democratic would be corrupt…..

• 11. Bookworm  |  June 18th, 2008 at 7:07 am

  Maybe not if it lasted for only two or four years. Brief periods of single-party dominance or control are inevitable given the periodic swings of voter opinion.

  But when one-party or one-family control goes on for decades or generations — as in Chicago, where Democrats have been in charge for more than 75 years, and 40 of those years have been under someone named Daley — that’s when things get really bad.

  That’s probably another reason many Democrats hesitated to vote for Hillary Clinton — not so much because of anything against her personally as the simple conviction that it was just not a good idea to have 24 straight years of the same two families in the White House. (Which would be the case were Hillary to be elected this year)

  Think about it: “corruption” literally refers to the rot or decay that sets in when a living organism dies. Prolonged one-party control leads to stagnation and from there to corruption. It brings decay to the body politic. That’s why a two-party system that keeps things moving and stirred up and alive is healthier.

• 12. Pat Cunningham  |  June 18th, 2008 at 7:45 am

  Worm: I’m glad you’re enjoying Garry Wills’ books. You’ll have to get around to “Papal Sin” and “A Necessary Evil.” Oh, and “John Wayne’s America” too.

• 13. Pat Cunningham  |  June 18th, 2008 at 7:54 am

  Kaus: You’re comment No. 6 above is the 2,500th posted here since the inception of Applesauce. Congratulations — not to you, but to me, for having elicited such profusion.

• 14. Craig Knauss  |  June 18th, 2008 at 8:50 am

  Kaus says, “To sum it all up then for everybody, a US Senate, House and President all being democratic would be corrupt…..”

  Could be. Six years of the Republicans controlling all three branches of government certainly were NOT free of corruption. When one party controls everything…look out! However, even if the Dems keep the Congress and take the White House, the Repubs still have the Supreme Court. A Dem president or Congress won’t get away with the crap that Bush did.

• 15. Leatherneck  |  June 19th, 2008 at 9:08 am

  Well I agree, Chicago has the political “mystique” that defines it, in ways that LA and NYC do not. Other cities have political machines, sure, but these cities are known for other things, Chicago seems unique. It is known for its political system, (corrupt yes) but it’s where “they make the trains run on time”. And the patronage system in Chicago is enmeshed with the city’s ethnic tapestry. There are the legends of Daley, and the 1960 Election, etc. If anyone has read Mike Royko’s books, they know what I mean. And even now, the machine is live and well. Walk into city hall and see the people sitting at empty desks (And those are the employees who actually show up for their check).
  In the one-party system, unfortunately there is a lot of bloc voting. Minority groups are told who to vote for. A candidate’s success depends whether his/her name appears on the palm card in a given ward and whether they have been annointed by a certain committeeman. As a result, the rest of Illinois cannot compete with the sheer numbers in Chicago. And that is how we ended up with Rod Blagojevich getting re-elected in 2006. We all knew that Rod was a disaster back then, the worst governor ever…but that did not register with Chicagoans. When the Black Wards go to vote, it is an involuntary reflex. Their vote for Blagojevich… as bad as he is.. was as natural as swallowing or chewing.

• 16. Kaus  |  June 19th, 2008 at 9:57 am

  ….and here comes Obama out of the same corrupt system. I’m not saying HE is corrupt…but you judge your friends by who they hang out with.

• 17. Pat Cunningham  |  June 19th, 2008 at 10:48 am

  Kaus: “You judge your friends by who they hang out with”? If they’re your friends, doesn’t it follow that they hang out with you? (By the way, Kaus, the grammatical way of stating it is “judge your friends by WHOM…” You might also want to avoid ending that sentence with a preposition, although I’m not a hardline stickler on that rule.)

• 18. Kaus  |  June 19th, 2008 at 11:10 am

  My bad….WHOM is correct. As far as ending a sentence with a proposition, I will watch that also. It is amazing what I can learn here! Thanks! Learning is important. L’étude est importante.

• 19. Craig Knauss  |  June 19th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

  Leatherneck,

  And look how many times James Thompson got re-elected. Even though he was a Repub, he nearly bankrupted the entire state paying for his giveaways to Chicago. A $100 million here, $300 million there. Expansion of McCormick Place, Sox Park, new State of Illinois Building, etc. Fortunately the World’s Fair never got off the ground. Downstate got a new Dept. of Revenue building in Springfield ($70M) and that was about it. He used his line item veto to delete Rockford’s state office building year after year (because “the state couldn’t afford it”). Wasn’t the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago something like $200M? And close to a billion for McCormick Place? No wonder Illinois couldn’t afford the Rockford facility. Neither party is guilt-free by any means.

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