Richard the Second
I woke up this morning to Jason DeRose saying that our Mayor was named by Time Magazine as on of the nation’s best mayors. So I did a google search, and Daley’s right there.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I mean, I do have a favorite Daley Memory–Meigs Field–but one of the best mayors in the nation? I guess the executive’s Time talked to didn’t think the scandals that have plagued our mayor for two years matter all that much.
I think it’s more his cult of personality here. Most people think he’s great and funny, even when the scandal hits – it’s more of “Oh that crazy mayor!” rather than anger and resentment at the administration. In fact, speaking badly about Mayor Daley usually labels you with the (usually underserved) moniker of lame suburban conservative.
Case in point: plenty of people laugh and say that Daley had balls to do the Meigs Field incident. I personally think it’s both abhorrant and hilarious, so I guess that puts me in with the rest of the people under his spell. Also, Time really his it on the mark when they mentioned that Daley always manages to stay usually one or two steps out of citywide scandals.
All anyone needs to do with regard to Mayor Daley is take one look at the White House. Every time I do I am reminded of how fortunate I am to live in a city with decent management, a pretty solid (albeit sometimes patchy) dedication to the environment and good urban design (for God’s sake he told Trump to put a spire on his building – no one cares enough about this kind of stuff to consider telling Trump to do that).
After the deadly porch collapse on the city’s north side, inspectors fanned out across the city to begin cracking down on poorly constructed porches elsewhere. I know because I used to be a trustee for a church that got slapped with a summons to fix up its back porch. After all those people died in the stairwell of that fire a year or so back at the LaSalle building, the city got focuses on responding correctly to such incidents. . .And, sure enough the next similar fire was an example of proper fire response and no one was killed. Can any of us say with conviction that Bush has managed the country with similar effectiveness and focus in the wake of 9/11?
Say what you want about Mieg’s Field, but no innocent Iraqis were bombed under false pretenses and no American servicemen and women lost their lives (or were even rassled out of bed for that matter!) in Daley’s evening of power lust. And, the cost of destroying Mieg’s Field has nothing to do with our city’s current money woes. (If anything, a few streets and san workers had to move up their donut-eating by a few hours and some wealthy people can’t fly their jets into town whenever they want. Boo-hoo.)
Bush puts Daley and the abuse of power in perspective. We ought to enjoy Richie while he lasts. It could be much, much worse.