BOOK REVIEW By MILTON RAKOVE
An Irish psychologist
The 'true chieftain'
Himself! The Life and Times of Mayor Richard J. Daley, Eugene Kennedy, The Viking Press, New York, 1978, 288pp. $10.95. EUGENE KENNEDY'S Himself! is the second book chronicling the life and times of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley to hit the bookstores since Daley's passing 16 months ago. It is the fifth biographical sketch of Chicago's most preeminent politician and public figure to appear in the past eight years. Daley as a political figure has, to date, been generally ignored by academic scholars and nationally known political journalists. The first published study of Daley's life and times, Daley of Chicago, was written by Chicago Sun Times sports columnist Bill Gleason in 1970. It was followed by Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko's best-seller, Boss, in 1971 and by Chicago television commentator Len O'Connor's Clout in 1975. O'Connor published Requiem, a purported history of Daley's last years in 1977, shortly after Daley's death, and Kennedy's study is the most recent biography of Daley's life and times. All of these books have something in common. They attempt to give the reader the history of Daley's career, and to evaluate him as a person and a public figure. They cover much of the same ground and generally chronicle the same events with varying degrees of historical accuracy, depending on their perspective and research capabilities. None of these authors knew Daley well or worked with him or were active participants in the political and governmental process of the city of Chicago and the Democratic machine. They were outsiders who were forced to rely mostly on secondary sources such as newspaper clippings and interviews with people who either were or pretended to be close to and familiar with Daley, and his activities and motivations during his more than two-decade reign in Chicago. All of the authors, of course, were also limited or aided by their training, backgrounds and perspectives. Gleason, Royko and O'Connor are lifelong Chicagoans and close observers of the Chicago scene. But all three were limited by their lack of academic training in research methodology and careful checking and rechecking of sources. Kennedy, a Ph.D. in psychology and an author of a number of books, demonstrates his fidelity to his training. Himself! is much closer to the guidelines and requirements of scholarly research than the books written by the three newsmen. Kennedy, who is a relative newcomer to Chicago, does not have the instinctive gut feelings for the city and its denizens that lifelong Chicagoans like Royko, O'Connor and Gleason have, although he demonstrates an ability to grasp much of the ethos of Chicago in his book. The various pictures of Daley that emerge from these books are also colored by the perspectives from which the authors view the late mayor. Gleason's liberalism and lack of depth are reflected in his advice to Daley to "be remembered not as Chicago's most efficient mayor, not as the mayor who made State Street and LaSalle Street work with City Hall, but as the mayor of all the people," or to be condemned to "be remembered as just another political boss." Royko's portrait of Daley, presented in a brilliant prose style, is of "a very bigoted and mean-tempered man," a political boss, interested almost exclusively in his own powers, who brought the city close to ruin. O'Connor, in Clout, pictures Daley as one whose "earthly ambition has been to be a great man," and whose "desire for eternity was that he had been a good one," and a Daley who was not a great politician, but rather a careful schemer
MILTON RAKOVE June 1978/ Illinois Issues/25 who benefitted from a number of accidental breaks. And, in Requiem, O'Connor's bias shows through as he unsuccessfully and inaccurately attempts to portray Daley as an aging, paranoid tyrant, losing power in his last days, a portrait close to the one Royko also inaccurately painted six years earlier. Kennedy's Daley is different from all the others. His Daley is a "true chieftain" who knew how to amass, retain and use power, and whose strength and success were rooted in his Irish Catholic ancestry and environment. Kennedy's picture of Daley is much more favorable than any of the others, carefully researched, and cross-checked for accuracy and validity. His Daley is a civic leader dedicated to his city, his "Lady of the Lake;" his family; his church; his Gaelic brethren; and his neighborhood; a chieftain who made occasional human errors, but who wrote a record and left a legacy he could be proud of. Kennedy is an Irish bard, eulogizing an Irish chieftain, whose heritage he shares, whose weaknesses he abides, whose failures he condones, whose strengths he admires and whose accomplishments he praises.
Himself! is a good book, probably the best of the books on Daley, to date. There is not much that is new in it in the retelling of the story of the Daley years, but it is comprehensive, well-written and carefully researched and documented. Much of the information in the book has been presented before in Daley of Chicago, Boss and Clout. Clout is probably the best of the other three books in its compilation of facts and information, although O'Connor does not write with Royko's savage and brilliant wit and style. Boss is great Royko, a book-length, incisive, one-sided Royko column. Himself! is valuable because it is the first genuinely favorable portrait of Daley. Kennedy writes well, often poetically, sometimes pedantically and occasionally effusively. Himself! is worth reading by anyone interested in Daley's life and times; it is well worth reading for anyone interested in a trained psychologist's analysis of Mayor Daley's personality. There is another point, however, which needs to be made. Kennedy's book, like all the others, is limited in its frame of reference. All of these books are primarily concerned with Daley's personality and life history, and superficially with his political style. But all of those things are secondary, if not peripheral, to the most important aspect of Daley's career in Chicago — how he led and directed the Chicago political machine and how he organized and ruled the governmental system of his city. One does not get a comprehensive, accurate mosaic of that Daley from Kennedy, O'Connor, Royko or Gleason. And that is the task which is yet to be done, if it can be done. The obstacles in the path of that objective are formidable. Daley went to meet his Maker without having divulged much of significance to anyone except, possibly, his wife. Those who were close to him and dealt with him on important matters of political strategy and public policy are almost, without exception, equally reticent and uncooperative with would-be researchers. They may and sometimes do talk about peripheral or publicly known matters, but they do not open the door more than a crack. As Alderman Thomas Keane, the second most significant figure in the Daley era, told Kennedy in an interview in which he clearly divulged very little, "What do they want me to do, put everybody in the penitentiary?" My own experience in tape recording interviews for an oral history of the Daley era has clearly indicated to me that those who were really close to Daley won't talk and that those who do talk either were positioned some distance from the epicenter of the action and don't know, or will only divulge what is noncontroversial, peripheral or public knowledge. But, despite the obstacles, the challenge to scholarship should be met, and the techniques, resources and methodology of traditional and more modern research should be utilized. In Himself!, Kennedy has made a worthwhile contribution to that objective. 26 /June 1978/ Illinois Issues
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