Irresponsible Political Speculation

While you wait.

So, imagine you're Democratic Party Boss with this problem: you have seen the revenue projections for the City of Chicago for the next 3-4 years, matched them up with expenses, and noted that the Windy City is about to go through Seven Years of Famine.

It is going to get very nasty -- much worse than anyone has let on outside of winks and nudges and pregnant pauses in public speeches.

To make matters worse, rather that use his Years of Plenty to build a municipal system with enough real stamina and financial strength to withstand the coming crash, Mayor Santa Claus used his raw, unchecked political power to pawn everything that wasn't nailed down (and quite a bit that was) to pay for his Going Away present to himself: one last year of Credit Card Prosperity and Praise as he walks out the exit and into history.

(For the record, I think its 6-to-5 that Hizzoner will end up as either the Ambassador to China, or head of the permanent U.S trade delegation there, and that this most recent visit from Obama and Hu Jintao finalized those arrangement.

As America's attention pivots from West to East, the China post is quietly becoming to 21st Century American ambassadorial prestige what the Court of St. James was in the 20th Century, and over the years, Daley has been a consistent and unstinting praiser of China. He has already visited several times, and hosted numerous, high-lever official visits and delegations in Chicago dating back as far as the Clinton Administration.

With his resume intact, his Democratic Party bona fides plated in gold, his pockets full of political chits, his brother in the White House and his great love of all things protocol-and-authoritarian-related, I would be surprised if the Man on the Fifth Floor doesn't end up on the other side of the Earth mangling the English language on behalf of corporate interests in front of an entirely different group of prostrate journalist-stenographers before the end of 2011.)

So, Party Boss, what do you do now?

You'll need someone ruthless to take Daley's place.

Someone who can summon the muscle to hammer the size of city government and scope of city services back inside the revenue curve far enough so that you can also start paying down the debt the city saddled itself with during the go-go-Goldman-Sachs days of borrowing against all the future lotteries you were going to win, all the future horses that were going to run in the money, and all the future inside straights you were going to draw.

Someone who can fire lots of people and slash lots stuff citizens really want and need while keeping the Clout Machine intact; who can bury hundreds of still-twitching gummint careers that do not want to be buried, and do it without unlimited access to the heaps of cash and make-work political sinecures that have always been the most reliable winding cloth for the unquiet political dead.

A loyal Party soldier who doesn't mind that no one is going to build statues or name parks to commemorate their reign. Someone whose first name is going to be "That fucking fucker" in every CTA bus barn, teacher's lounge, block organization barbecue and police locker room for years to come.

So if you are one of the major rising stars in the Democratic Party

how much better, then, to only almost be that person.

How much better for your long-term political heath to prove your Party Omertà by diving face-first into the bucket of flaming shit that the job of governing Chicago will be in the ugly, broke-ass, binge-hangover post-Daley days that are surely coming...

...only to be miraculously unhorsed at the last minute by an act of God, which not only leaves you free to fight another day, but also free to assert that you would have done it all so differently.

That but for the sake a fluky court decision, you could have saved the great city from Balkanizing along its deep ethnic and economic fault lines and sinking into the lake.

Not saying that's what happened.

Just saying that, if I were Aaron Sorkin, that's the way I'd write it.