Leon Despres's Challenging the Daley Machine

Read Leon Despres's Challenging the Daley Machine: A Chicago Alderman's Memoir on a flight home last week.

I wondered what Despres thought of the younger Daley because the book's silent on him. I don't think Despres mentions him once.

Despres said Harold Washington was Chicago's greatest Mayor ever. I lived away Chicago during the Council-War years. I remember coming home one winter and talking with a white cab driver about Washington. The cabbie didn't like him but said Washington fought for his people with real feeling of respect for Washington.

I thought at the end, when the Council Wars were over and Washington victorious, that he had convinced all Chicagoans they were all Washington's people and had high hopes for his second term.

His premature death a great tragedy we'll only realize after the younger Daley departs and Chicago goes through the agony of building a political culture not centered on a machine with a benevolent dictator.