It seems that the White House took the Machine aesthetic and mimicked it to a T. By all accounts the Obama’s inner circle is a small, insular group. William Daley, despite being a titan in Chicago, was never invited into Obama’s private club. It could have been the generation gap or Bill’s ties to banking and big business, but I believe it simply was the Chicago cliquishness that never allowed Daley to become the Boss he wanted, or needed, to be.
There is at least one competing theory, however. The departure of Richard M. Daley from the Mayor’s office and the subsequent (and utterly painless) transition of Rahm Emmanuel into that seat of power coincided with Bill Daley’s ascension to Obama’s Chief of Staff. In a city almost entirely run by backroom deals, the timing seems uncanny. It would be reasonable to assume that some kind of trade was made between the Obama and Daley camps, and it appears the Daleys, who are not the forgiving sort, might have gotten the short end of the stick. One wonders what repercussions that might bring.
This work is based on an article written for The Kendall Weekly Times.
1 Comment
Bill Daley took himself out of the game, remember? So your closing theory that there will be “repercussions” from the Daley camp toward Obama makes absolutely no sense. Bill Daley wanted out and he’s getting out.
Whether you like the Daleys or not, they are responsible for Chicago’s reputation as the “city that works.” You may not care for the way they make it work, but it works and at the end of the day, that’s all the people really want. They want the garbage picked up, the snow removed from the streets and the pot holes patched. How it gets done is less important to most people than the fact that it gets done.
So, you send Mr. Daley to Washington and suddenly he’s in charge of making things happen with Republicans who have made it their mission to see that nothing happens in the hope that the gridlock will be blamed on the president. Daley is not accustomed to that, so he took himself out and is coming back to Chicago where things get done. End of story.