Don't Make No Waves . . . offers insider's view of Daley Machine

BETTER than Royko. but not as good as Gleason.

This is, perhaps, the simplest assessment that can be made of Milton Rakove's study of Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago and his powerful Democratic Party political operation. Rakove's Don't Make No Waves . . . Don't Back No Losers offers a far more accurate and objective view of Daley and his party's politics than does Mike Royko's Boss (New American Library, 1971), but it lacks the fresh and incisive analyses contained in Bill Gleason's lesser known and unheralded Daley of Chicago (Simon and Schuster, 1970).

Unlike his two contemporaries, Rakove, professor of political science at the University of Illinois' Circle Campus, writes as an insider looking at the machine of which he has been a part, A precinct leader and former party candidate for elective office, Rakove avoids Royko's catchy phraseology. Instead, he provides an accurate account of the operational nature of Chicago politics. For example: "There is no such thing as the public interest insofar as the electorate is concerned; . . . the private, self-interests of the various groups that compose the electorate must be appeased; and . . . this can best be done by appealing to those groups on a personal basis and by concerning oneself with those private interests rather than with broad social problems."

Clearly reflecting an academician's perspective, the Rakove work is encyclopedic in its treatment of the internal workings of Chicago's Democratic political operation. It is not, however, without its flaws. While written by an insider, it lacks an insider's flavor: it offers little that an experienced observer of Chicago's politics will find new or useful. It suffers from occasional lapses into the "tunnel vision" so characteristic of Chicago political observers - the tendency to equate Chicago politics with urban politics generally.

If it can be said that there is both an art and a science to the study of politics, then Rakove's book would clearly have to be classified as an art form, for there is no science whatever to his analysis. The book is comprised largely of the author's impressions and lacks any empirical basis for its conclusions. The book even fails to make effective use of case histories to buttress its insights.

Perhaps nowhere is this omission more evident than in the book's final chapter which discusses the future of the Cook County Democratic Party in light of emerging suburban political patterns. Potentially, Rakove's analysis of suburban politics is the most creative portion of the book, but the total absence of documentation makes the validity of this portion impossible to assess.

A second, equally serious omission is the book's failure to deal with Mayor Daley's unique political relationship with the principal interest groups in the city with the financial powers of LaSalle and State streets and with the labor union leadership. Perhaps Rakove's vantage point in the party offered him no opportunity to observe this relationship, but without such a description, the mosaic of the party's control over the city's politics is-, incomplete. Critics will also object to the book's tack of concern for the policy consequences of Chicago politics. But this is not the book's essential point — namely that Daley's political style is issueless; it emphasizes problem solution rather than policy formulation.

The book was not written to patronize or to apologize for Chicago's Democrats. Not even Royko is more harsh than Rakove on how Daley has subordinated the city's constitutional rights to his own ambitions. in drawing on his own background in international relations to characterize the political style of the party's leadership, Rakove may offer fresh insights, but comparing the Cook County Central Committee to Russia's Kremlin, Hitler's Brown House, or Mussolini's Palazzo Venezia is hardly likely to win Rakove any favor with the party's leadership.

Finally, the reader is left wondering whether in likening Mayor Daley to Chairman Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, Rakove isn't burning his own bridges to the party's leadership — or perhaps expressing his pique at failing to realize his own political ambitions. In any event, he does not appear to follow the maxim that success in Chicago's Democratic party goes to those who "Don't Make No Waves."