My memories go back to the `30s in Chicago, when my family lived there. I remember my grandmother`s home, which was a reconstructed castle on the corner of Bellevue and Michigan Avenue. And Libertyville, when we first moved here in the `30s, was farm country. You could only get there by foot or by horseback or by canoe on the Des Plaines River.
Well, the castle is long since gone, and just a mile away, there`s a huge shopping center. I`ve seen the physical transformation of this area over the years, but the transformation of our politics and the media is just as radical and has been compressed over a much shorter period of time.
I was involved in my father`s campaign for governor in 1948, and I saw a little of politics then. But for me, the political career began in the mid-`
60s. And I`ve seen a lot of changes in politics in those years. They start before television, which is, of course, the dominant medium now. They start with the days of the machine and ”the boss.”
Jake Arvey and Dick Daley weren`t the only bosses. The boss on the Republican side was the baiduhai. It was very active in politics back in the days of ”Bertie” (Col. Robert) McCormick, who was trying to make Chicago the capital of American isolationism.
And Bertie McCormick was an archenemy of my father, who was a leader of internationalism. I remember my father`s comments after Bertie McCormick`s death. He was groping for words that would be polite, and he came out with,
”He`ll be missed in Wheaton.”
My ward committeeman in the `60s was (43rd Ward Ald.) Paddy Bauler, who was a personification of the old regime. In fact, the only person to ever defeat him for alderman was my uncle, on my mother`s side, whose name was William Waller.
We`ve gone from one extreme to another, and I`d be hard-pressed to conclude that our politics today are better than they were then. Paddy Bauler summed it up pretty well when he was approached by a newly elected alderman in gray-flannel suit, carrying a briefcase and pointing an accusing finger at him, who said, ”You`re a thief.” To which Paddy responded, ”Yes, and the only difference between us is that I admit it.”
Depending on how you define corruption, I think there`s more corruption in our politics now than there was then. But there have been some very positive changes-for instance, integration and the rise of women and minorities in politics and in society in general.
But now politicians are caught up in the crosscurrents of racial politics, and governments are responding with quotas for jobs and contracts. We went through all those reforms in the `70s, which were intended to enfranchise people and bring them in after Vietnam and Watergate, and now the people are more cynical toward politics than they were before the reforms.
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Now that the old political bases, including the machines, are gone, the politicians are fending for themselves, and they`re at the mercies of the special-interest groups-including the racial groups-for the money they now have to raise for television and those 30-second jingles. It`s almost as if the old Nixonian ethic of ”anything goes” now prevails. In the old days a campaign was a device for informing people; now it`s almost a device for deceiving the people. It`s no wonder we`re cynical.
The money is now not the old-fashioned graft that Paddy Bauler could enjoy-the legal graft or what was sometimes called ”honest graft.” It`s the campaign funds that come in even when there`s no campaign fund. The slush fund, in the old days, was of very questionable propriety. Now it`s legalized. You never stop raising money. And as an elected official, whether it`s in the city council or the state legislature or the Congress or state elected offices-and I`ve been in almost all of them-you cannot make a decision or cast a vote without weighing your financial obligations and the financial implications for the future.
At the same time that the PACs-the political action committees-and the interest groups have been enfranchised in the federal elections, the good citizen, who used to give large sums of money, has been disenfranchised. He`s limited to $1,000 in the federal election. Those large sums are needed for the polls, for the consultants and for the jingles.
When my father was running for president in 1952 and 1956, he could, with very little money, take out half-hour blocks of time on national television and make eloquent speeches about the issues to enthusiastic audiences. Nowadays that`s not possible. Now, to keep the money coming in for television jingles, you have to keep pouring the money into television to keep yourself up in the polls. And instead of a half-hour or even five minutes, it`s a jingle that, as often as not, is a negative jingle. Its purpose is not to inform.
I was elected to the state legislature in 1964, and Harold Washington, whom I grew very fond of, was my seatmate. We used to receive what we called our ”idiot sheet” every morning. It was a little white sheet of paper telling us exactly what bills and amendments would come up and how we would vote. If you were a Cook County Democrat and you didn`t vote according to your orders, you lost your job. You didn`t get re-elected.
I was in the luxurious position of having a base: my own independence and a name, and they had to reckon with me. I think Dick Daley, whom I really adored (he never made an improper request; when he called, it was always to talk about issues) was willing to pay the price of independence in order to keep me on the ticket.
A really important lesson in my political upbringing was taught to me by Harold Washington in 1965. He was coming up out of the wards, and after I had broken ranks once, he turned to me and said, ”I wish I could do that.” It made me feel very humble, very fortunate to be able to represent the public the way I wanted to.
I feel so hopeful for the country if we could just adopt the most obvious reforms. And of all the states, Illinois is the richest; we`ve got everything here in the Heartland. It`s the transportation center of the United States. There are abundant supplies of water and energy, a strong work force, a science and technology infrastructure which, while eroding, still has potential, and a financial center.
We`ve got everything right here in Illinois, but by most criteria, we`re falling behind the other states. We pay a price for our progress, and at times that price is higher than it should be.