26 August, 2001: American Pharaoh
I hate to be dismissive of American Pharaoh; it's a decently-written and obviously thoroughly-researched biography of a complex and emblematic man. But while I was reading, I couldn't help but think that the authoritative book on Daley has already been written. (It's Boss, by the late Chicago columnist Mike Royko.) American Pharaoh was, oddly enough, most interesting when it wasn't strictly focused on its subject.
Most of the details about Daley in American Pharaoh -- his plodding rise to power (helped by several lucky breaks, including a car accident that killed his main rival in the for head of the Cook County Democratic Party), his relationships with black Chicago and blue-collar white Chicago, his consolidation of power and cooption or elimination of potential rivals, the immense corruption in Chicago, the failure of Chicago's urban renewal, the reaction to the 1968 Democratic convention -- were familiar to me from Royko's acid-tongued essays. American Pharaoh is more measured than Boss, but correspondingly less fun to read. The book really shone, however, when it was dealing with Daley's interaction with two other political players in Chicago.
The extensive detail about his relationship with the director of the Chicago Housing Authority, anti-segregationist and former social worker Elizabeth Wood, and the fascinating account of his cat and mouse game with Martin Luther King. King was attempting to bring the civil rights campaign up north and chose Chicago as his first destination; Daley had a reputation for being a moderate on race issues, and Chicago was one of the most segregated cities outside the south. Daley rope-a-doped King, adopting a policy of "smile and smile": he agreed publically with almost everything King had to say, pushed through a few token programs (increased rat control in the ghetto; non-binding rules discouraging discrimination on the part of Realtors), and dragged his feet of everything else. Defeated, King eventually left Chicago after gaining a few face-saving concessions.
It was absolutely riveting to see King depicted not as a secular saint (nor, as in some revisionist biographies, as a scheming womanizer) but as a politician. I'd love to read a book focusing just on this period and the interactions between Daley, King, and some of the African-American activists (most famously Jesse Jackson) and politicians (Congressman Bill Dawson, at one time probably the most powerful black politician in America, had been largely defanged by Daley, and a number of politicians had jumped up to fill the void) who found an opponent or a home in Daley's machine. And if American Pharaoh only suggests what this book might be like, I suppose that is still a qualified success.