Daley is Moses-like in keeping ruffians in line at Democratic convention
MAYOR CALMS THINGS DOWN | He's Moses-like in keeping the ruffians in line at convention
DENVER -- I'd swear Mayor Daley is channeling Ward Cleaver here in Denver.
If you're too young to remember the now-ancient TV series, it's on YouTube.
Jerry Mathers starred as Beaver Cleaver, a wide-eyed, excitable kid. Ward was his calm and reasoned dad.
"Gee whiz, Dad!" The Beaver would exclaim.
"Now, now, son," Ward would soothingly say.
That's Daley this week in the midst of a combustible bunch of Illinois delegates.
On Tuesday morning, Hizzoner strolled into the group breakfast, smiling easily. Dressed in a summery sports coat and checkered open collar shirt, the mayor stopped to chat with reporters before he and the assembled pols, union bosses and party leaders finished their croissants and got down to the business.
Not that there's a lot of actual business.
The daily delegation meeting is where candidates in the upcoming election portray their opponents as "cardboard cutouts" and party bosses rev up the troops.
On the dais, flanked by legislative warlords Michael Madigan and Emil Jones, Rich Daley's face almost screams composure.
It's genuine. Why not?
Daley's Illinois is the center of the political universe.
It's not just home to the history-making Barack Obama, it's the land where the second most powerful person in the U.S. Senate, Dick Durbin, and the Rudolf Nureyev of Democratic dominance in Congress, Rahm Emanuel, both dwell. But as we have learned at our peril in Springfield, where powerful Democrats also dominate, it doesn't stop them from eating their young.
And so this week, Daley has been Moses-like in keeping the ruffians in his tribe in line.
On Tuesday morning, after an unnecessary and embarrassing flap in which a black Clinton delegate's loyalty to her race was called into question, Daley, without scolding, offered a warm tribute to the losing team in this primary season.
"I want to personally thank all the delegates that supported Hillary Clinton," he said. "I have to reaffirm the passion and faith and belief they had in Hillary Clinton. We do like Hillary Clinton, we respect what she accomplished."
It was Daley as life coach.
"In 1983 . . . I wanted to be mayor of the city of Chicago more than anything else . . . and when I lost the election, the next day I supported Harold Washington, the first African-American mayor of the city of Chicago. Life went on. . . . Life did go on. . . . No one's a loser in politics. . . . Maybe you lost but you're not a loser."
Rich Daley, who was forged in the convention mayhem of 1968 and the acrimony of the convention of '72, is 66 years old now. There is a lot stored in his brain about the past and about the future. Invoking Teddy Kennedy and Michelle Obama, he spoke yesterday of the "tears in our eyes and a smile on our face."
It doesn't sound at all like the Chicago politics we know.
And yet, every now and then, the reassurance of a Ward Cleaver can be a welcome relief.