The White House will be run like Chicago

10 December 2008

Clinton brought Arkansas to Washington, and Texas followed Bush. Now, says Alexandra Starr, Obama is bringing the take-no-prisoners politics of Al Capone’s city to the Beltway

Washington may not have had an architectural makeover in more than two centuries, but the city’s political culture has shown a chameleon-like ability to change with each incoming administration. When Bill Clinton arrived from Little Rock, Arkansas 16 years ago, for example, he brought a penchant for late-night rambling discussions and a Southern disregard for keeping to schedules. Most of his underlings emulated those attributes, imbuing the town with a swing-by-the-seat-of-your-pants ethos.

President George W. Bush’s Lone Star state heritage came through in his cocksure swagger, emphasis on loyalty, and a cowboy-like disdain for memos longer than three pages. Many of his staffers also spent their formative years in Texas; even those who did not were soon priding themselves on ‘following the gut’ and scorning overt intellectualism. At times it seemed like the oil-catting city of Houston had migrated to the Potomac.

Now the nation’s capitol is due another cultural shift. President-elect Barack Obama was raised in Hawaii, but migrated to Chicago after graduating from college. The politics of the Windy City are arguably the most ruthless in the country. As the Illinois academic Paul Green notes, many of Chicago’s streets are named after people you wouldn’t want to share a lifeboat with, if they were still alive. It’s a town where gangsters like Al Capone thrived, and the legendary Mayor Richard J. ‘Old Man’ Daley punished pastors who didn’t endorse his candidates by dispatching building inspectors to their churches on Monday mornings. Senator Obama alluded to the city’s reputation when some questioned his ability to combat the Clintons and later Senator McCain. ‘I’m skinny, but I’m tough,’ he said. ‘I’m from Chicago.’

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Anthony

December 14th, 2008 4:14pm Report this comment

"The fact that the president-elect was able to claw his way to the top in Illinois without a (literal) political daddy to pave the way is testament to his skill."

Yes, but what sort of skill is that? Toby Harnden in The Telegraph explains:

"Obama won his first election not by appealing to the better angels of the voters’ consciences but by successfully challenging the signatures on the proposal forms of each of his challengers, thereby ensuring that he ran unopposed."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/3725976/Chicago---Americas-most-theatrically-corrupt-city.html

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