EUGENE KENNEDY - Professor of psychology at Loyola University of Chicago, his new book, Himself! The Life and Times of Mayor Richard J. Daley, will be published by Viking Press on St. Patrick's Day.

NOTHING was more characteristic of Mayor Daley than his capacity to listen without saying anything, without, in fact, allowing the slightest flicker of reaction to pass across his face. Let others talk, let them gush or cry or threaten; Daley could remain imperturbable, his own opinions and judgments kept twice sealed in his heart. Let others read into his expressions what they would; they would have no basis for their judgments but their own need while he, listening always with great concentration, would learn from what they said. His control enabled Daley to hold off his statement or decision until the last possible moment; there was, after all, every advantage in not committing oneself until the final instant of choice. Through such restraint one could draw out the opposition, keep them guessing, and build power all at the same time. It was an exercise of power that other men, anxious in their enthusiasms or doubts, could admire but seldom emulate. It was this control, for example, that enabled him to support U.S. presidents on Vietnam while he privately urged them over and over again to bring the war to an end.

Closely associated with this ability to control was Daley's enormous intuitive capacity to judge men and events by the way they registered in his own feelings. He could attend to his own reactions and find there a profile of the suppliant or the associate that enabled him to make a decision about his worthiness or weakness, not on the basis of what he said but on the basis of how he made Daley feel. This was as ancient as St. Thomas Aquinas' injunction: "Trust the authority of your own instincts." Operations at this pre-intellectual level were devoid of the ambiguities and complications of over-intellectualized schemes. Daley's greatest strength may have lain in this talent for understanding what others were like, of reading their innards to know who was strong and who was weak, who would bear up and who would collapse under pressure, who was true and who was false for the long haul of political adventure.

This was a remarkable gift .... It saved Daley a great deal of time and energy to have such a responsive set of instincts; they served him, according to his values and traditions, eminently well, and there were few who fooled him or fooled him for long in their self-presentation. It was no small advantage to understand that there were those he could trust and those he could not; his instincts told him, among other things, where threats lay to him, his work, or his family, and he heeded their messages with all the fierceness of a warrior intent on protecting his kingdom at whatever cost.

The Mayor did not, then, think things out in the manner of an intellectual. He did not have to cut through encircling coils of ambivalence, but rather responded with a kind of primal wholeness, acting on the resonations that rose from his innards like the varied notes through the mellowed wood of an old violin. This way of dealing with life made him a man oriented to action, to getting things done, and, therefore, he was exasperated with those who debated schemes endlessly or always pushed theoretical obstacles in the way. "Everybody is telling me why I can't do something," he would complain, "What I want are some people who can show me how we can get things done." And so he moved ahead at full speed, his eyes fixed on what he felt were the basic and decisive facts about human experience, on what motivated people and what made it possible to accomplish his desired goals. The environment in which he lived and worked was not that which was created for most persons by the media; he read all the papers, despite his denials, and he was well aware of what television reported, but he did not believe these interpretations most of the time any more than he believed professors or other experts. He grew to dislike the media intensely and, in chieftain fashion, did not try to make peace with them but attacked them head on. Such was his nature, such was his confidence in his own instincts. 

16/ January 1978/ Illinois Issues