Before Barack There Was Harold

One of my prized political possessions.

On the occasion of his 100th birthday we pause to remember one of the greatest mayors that a great city ever had.  Hizzoner Harold Washington, who served a term and a half in the Big Chair on the fifth floor before tragically passing away on November 25, 1987, just as he was really hitting his stride.  

Barack and Harold (if you're from Chicago, such first name familiarity is legally permitted) share a lot of political DNA.  Both men were almost always the smartest guy in the room in any room they were in.  Both of them loved language and deployed it surgically and beautifully.  Both men were running against long odds to hold jobs that had never been held by an African American before.  Both men were incredibly charismatic, and when they radiated that joyful confidence in the future, you just wanted be on that team.  

But more instructive are the differences between them.  Barack began running for president at the age of 46 after spending about a minute in the U.S. senate, and a few years in the Illinois state house.  He was a Constitutional law professor who understood how government worked...on paper and in Springfield, Illinois.  He was a young man on a very fast track trying to get through a very narrow political window.  

Harold began running for mayor of Chicago at the age of 60, about the same age as Barack is now, and sporting about the same shade of dignified gray that now salts Barack's crown.  After spending his entire adult life in politics (from ward heeler to terms in both chambers of the Illinois statehouse to U.S. Representative) and working within the constraints of Chicago machine, Harold knew the system intimately and knew what it took to win.  He knew the assholes would come for him hard, and they surely did.  From me a few years back:

God bless Adam Doster over at Chicago Magazine (although you can stop sending me offers to "Win Dinner and West Side Story Tickets!" already) for disinterring what Mr. Doster aptly describes as "one of the great ledes in Chicago journalism history", penned, you will not be shocked to discover, by the late Mike Royko:

”So I told Uncle Chester: Don’t worry, Harold Washington doesn’t want to marry your sister”

Which, in one sentence, describes with machine-lathe precision exactly what was galloping 'round and 'round through the terrified minds of hundreds of thousands of Chicago's ethic white "Uncle Chesters".

Royko went on to explain just how much Harold's experience had differed from the ethnic white Chicagoans who loathed him on-sight, and just how extraordinary it was that Harold had not allowed their hate to drag him down to their level:

First, Washington was born in an era when they still lynched people in some parts of the United States. By “lynched,” I mean they took a black man out of his home, put a rope around his neck and murdered him by hanging. Then they went home to bed knowing they were untouchable because the sheriff helped pull the rope. Washington suffered through it. God knows how he did that. I think that most of us–white, privileged, the success road wide open to us–might have turned into haters. Washington didn’t turn into a hater. Instead, he developed a capacity for living with his tormenters and understanding that in the flow of history there are deep valleys and heady peaks...

It's a cliche, but the crucial difference between the men comes down to the fact that Harold understood and played politics "the Chicago way" -- 

-- and Barack either would not or could not.

Harold was battle-tested by years in the business, so when the "Vrdolyak 29" set themselves up as an openly racist opposition party dedicated to obstructing and sabotaging Harold's administration at any price...and then running against him as a dictator, he stepped right to them.  He knew who his enemies were and knew that trying sweet talk and back-slapping were a waste of time, so he pounded on them mercilessly in the press and from behind his podium at the city council.  

Barack, on the other hand, worshiped at the altar of Process and Compromise.  After all, it had always served him well in Springfield.  Even after it was painfully clear to the rest of us that the playbook Republican's were going to run against Obama administration was going to be virtually identical to the playbook that Vrdolyak and his gang ran against the Washington administration-- relentless racist sabotage followed by endless whining that nothing was getting done and that the Scary Black Man was acting like a tyrant  -- Barack kept playing into their hands.  He had never been battle-hardened like Harold had, and had never learned the political knife-fighting skills Harold had learned.  And so, over and over again he deployed his greatest weapon -- his intellect and his massive vocabulary -- in one doomed attempt after another to appeal to the Republican's better angels.  

It never worked, because it never does.

So crack open a Goose Island Bourbon County Stout or a Daisy Cutter Pale Ale or any of the hundreds fine local Chicago beers and hoist a cold one in honor of a better mayor than the Windy City deserved --

-- and who left us long before his important work was done.

Burn The Lifeboats