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WHERE ARE THE VlTO MARZULLOS?
CHICAGO AND THE AMERICAN CENTURY: THE 100 MOST SIGNIFICANT
ROLLING ON THE RIVER: THE BEST OF STEVE NEAL
Illustrations by Mike Cramer Blaming voters for lack of interest in the current crop of political candidates is a lot like blaming the customers for not ordering cottage cheese at a rib shack. The creamy, bland offering may be healthy fare, but when diners become accustomed to the tasty and, well, just plain interesting entree, attention wanes. Such was the case in national politics this year. The two major parties served up a brow-furrowed son of an ex-president and a Gap-attired self-confessed bore, then wondered why there seemed to be more concern about which down-and-very-dirty contender would become the final Survivor than who would become the Next Leader of the Free World. Even the maverick candidates, a scolding Pat Buchanan and a scolding Ralph Nader, failed to grab public attention. But then, "Eat your vegetables" has never been a compelling slogan for a presidential campaign. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. And, as far as politics goes, the past — even the recent past — is where we're drawn. Most states have some political legends — though Montana and North Dakota may be exceptions — but Illinois might lead the nation in the sheer number and audacity of the scalawags, scoundrels and outright crooks who people its past. "Chicago undoubtedly sent better politicians to prison than other states sent to Pennsylvania Avenue," writes F. Richard Ciccone, the longtime Chicago Tribune political writer, whose recent book Chicago and the American Century is a veritable dictionary of the weird characters who have populated public chambers and private barrooms around Illinois in the last 100 years. While Ciccone uses his biography to enumerate the top 10 in various categories, including literature, media, law and business, it's clear that all those fields are intertwined in Illinois. Steve Neal's recently published chronicle of Illinois political life, Rolling on the River, isn't quite as ambitious. Instead, it's a collection of newspaper columns he has written over his years as a political writer for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. That, in itself, is a risky venture, in that newspaper columns are supposed to be read and then placed in the bottoms of birdcages, not bound 20 November 2000 Illinois Issues www.uis.edu/~ilissues
up in a volume for hindsighted consultation. But Neal's columns, and his contemporary insights into the day-to-day activities of Illinois' most colorful characters, stand the test of printed time. They provide snapshots of the lives of the people who contributed to Illinois' fame and infamy. Which brings us to the point. Where are the Vito Marzullos of today? That late Chicago alderman, with the fractured syntax and undisguised worship of the Chicago tradition of "honest graft," won not only the respect of fellow Chicago City Hall politicians, but was a personal favorite of former Gov. James R. Thompson, who showed up in the council chambers one day as a main speaker at a farewell tribute to Marzullo. This was the same Thompson who, a few years before, had used his corruption-busting years as a crusading U.S. attorney to campaign his way right into the governor's mansion in Springfield. Where are the Vito Marzullos of today? Where, for that matter, are the James R. Thompsons? That governor was a 6-foot-6-inch extrovert who loved parades, loved the press, loved the people and even loved to drink booze out of a toilet plunger at football games. Media critics lamented that ungubernatorial act; the people re-elected him. George Ryan is something of a throwback, it could be argued. His biggest problems these days are leftovers from his tenure as Illinois secretary of state. It's alleged that some employees of that office (under Ryan's rule) actually took money in exchange for granting people driver's licenses. And some of that money actually found its way into Ryan's very own campaign coffers (though Ryan himself has not been charged with any wrongdoing). Or so its alleged. Maybe in some other states those charges would shock people, but in Illinois, Ryan's predecessor three decades before actually kept many of the checks people sent in for license plates. Oddly, he didn't even bother to cash all of them. When then-Secretary of State Paul Powell died unexpectedly, associates reportedly found in his closet boxes jammed with cash and checks. This, not incidentally, was the same Paul Powell whose declaration when certain pieces of legislation neared passage still echo in the state Capitol. "I smell the meat a' cookin'," www.uis.edu/~ilissues Illinois Issues November 2000 21 Powell would say, meaning that a lot of people would end up with something on their plates when that legislative business was completed. (Powell was also reported to have said, "My friends eat at the head table.") Over the last century, as Ciccone points out, Illinois didn't send its politicians to the White House, and usually kept its more disreputable ones close to home. But federal law does require every state to send people to Congress, and thus Illinois maintained its reputation as Home of the Knave for decades. U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen, sometimes called the "Wizard of Ooze" because of his deep resonant voice and his flights into the rhetorical stratosphere (a lofty path adopted many years later by Chicago Mayor Harold Washington), often went to the White House, but only as a trusted aide, counselor or ally to Republicans and Democrats alike. For 20 years, until his death in 1969, Dirksen was the reporter's mother lode for quotes and insight, though no one was sure they were mining the real thing or fool's gold. It didn't matter because it sure sounded good. "I am happy to be back in the broad fertile bosom of Illinois in the resurrection of spring," Ciccone reports Dirksen as saying to a gathering in his home state. And Neal cites this comment by Dirksen when he was criticized for shifting positions on major issues on a regular basis with no apparent need for explanation or apology: "I am a man of principle, and one of my basic principles is flexibility." One wonders if Al Gore, another national politician whose positions have sometimes reversed themselves, could get away with that. Illinois has a history of liking its colorful politicians and rewarding them with long terms in office. Former U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, a man of the Chicago streets who reveled in his down-home background and one-of-the-fellas demeanor, did finally get rejected by the voters, but only after it was clear that the Justice Department was more likely to send him to the Big House than back to the U.S. House. Since his release, he has been a regular media commentator, dinner guest and banquet speaker. The late-Mayor Washington was unusual in that he did his jail time before he achieved his highest office. He served 40 days for failing to file federal income tax returns. Still, the likable South Side politician became Chicago's first African-American mayor and, by the time of his death in late 1987, a popular figure throughout Chicago, not just in the city's worshipping black wards. With a twinkly eye and an insider's wink, Harold, as he was known throughout town, gave the impression that he was operating just a little bit outside the normal scheme of things, running a scam on the Old Guard. The fact that the Old Guard was being maneuvered by Alderman Edward "Fast Eddie" Vrdolyak actually helped Washington cement his support. Vrdolyak was one in a long line of politicians considered by the public
22 November 2000 Illinois Issues www.uis.edu/~ilissues to be using his government job as a personal growth industry and, to Washington, he was a perfect foil for the mayor's populist posturings. The list of Illinois political characters is bipartisan. William Stratton, the "Boy Governor" of the 1950s, was indicted after his regime for spending campaign funds on personal items. He ultimately beat the rap (laws regulating campaign finance were even more lax in those days), and spent the next 30 years as an honored guest on the political dinner circuit. Gov. Dan Walker donned a kerchief, walked the length of Illinois and was elected as a reform governor, but his pomposity became too much for voters, who tossed him out. He later went to jail for business ethical breaches unrelated to his governership, but the voters never forgave him his reformist stance and he faded away. Gov. Otto Kerner, another who proclaimed a higher moral stance, also eventually went to prison. It seems he benefited financially from race track stock in exchange for favorable racing dates, but his true failing may have been that he wasn't a lovable scamp. Gov. Richard Ogilvie managed to weather the revelation that one of his top aides when he was Cook County sheriff moonlighted as a chauffeur for Mob Boss Sam Giancana. But he, too, lost office when he committed the unpardonable sin of introducing a state income tax to Illinois. Voters, it seems, will tolerate a lot of things, unless it costs them money. On the U. S. Senate level, voters cast out Ralph Smith, the appointed replacement for the late Dirksen, because he was just too bland. Then Tribune reporter George Tagge, himself a formidable politician, single-handedly decreed the candidate would be called Ralph Tyler Smith. This early effort at polishing a politician's image didn't work. Smith lost. Al "The Pal" Dixon, who never met a hand he didn't shake, got smothered in the "Year of the Woman" in 1992, but the woman who smothered him, Carol Moseley-Braun, showed that a winning smile doesn't ensure political shelf life. Among the scandals that dogged her tenure was a politically indiscreet tete-a-tete with a Nigerian dictator. She was replaced by Peter Fitzgerald. Enough has been said about Mayor Richard J. Daley, so a succinct way of including him in any list of memorable politicians is to say, "Exhibit A." His son, Richard M, still has a long way to go to become "Exhibit B," but he's trying. He more or less has eschewed raw politics, even allowing the Chicago mayor's office to become a legally nonpartisan one. He gets along with some Republicans, his public comments, while often snarled, often make sense and he has introduced enough good government measures that what is left of independence in Chicago's historically hysterical city council remains mute most of the time. When a voice does emerge, it usually is someone like Alderman Burton Natarus, complaining of horse dung and cell phones and street noise. Former Gov. Jim Edgar, who ratcheted down the fun level of Springfield to the nearly inaudible, was making the rounds of the media a few weeks ago, breaking his retirement silence to lobby for the introduction of a sort of statewide C-SPAN network. As envisioned, the network would turn the cameras on the state legislature so that Illinoisans (read voters) could watch government in action and inaction. "I must admit politics in Chicago is a little more interesting than it is in Springfield," Edgar conceded, trying to explain why the Chicago television stations rarely cover state government anymore, except for the waning days of a General Assembly session. The question, though, is whether the politics are less interesting or just the politicians. For the most part, the meat's no longer a' cookin' the way it was when Paul Powell was jamming boxes with motorists' checks, but that doesn't mean the public will want to order the cottage cheese whenever the odor of ribs fill the air. And, good responsible government aside, with whom would most Illinois residents really want to sit down and have a beer and a slab — Everett Dirksen or Dick Durbin? Pass the sauce. Robert Davis is a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He covered city, state and federal government and politics for more than 32 years at the Chicago Tribune, and still has some rib sauce stains on some of his older neckties.
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