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CLOUT: MAYOR DALEY AND HIS CITY
O’Connor surveys the life and leadership of Richard J. Daley as the longest serving mayor of any major American city in history - four year terms up to the time of writing. He maintains the tone of his repeated description “The Greatest Mayor Chicago Ever Had” with respect, honesty and insight while doing some probing investigative reporting of the machinations, power plays, and manipulation that many associate with the city of Chicago and this leader. O’Connor opens by describing Daley “as the ultimate pragmatist in the sometimes bawdy and sometimes cruel world of politics.” He also notes that Daley maintained his birth family’s training of attending mass every day, even though it becomes very clear that faith had little impact on how he got his work done. Daley is a classic case of compartmentalization as he worked the system to his accomplish his well intended but narrow advantages to loyal south-side neighbors and cronies. One poignant description says: “City Hall can aggravate the constituents of rebellious alderman by ordering disruptive street repairs in his ward, by ripping up sidewalks and parkways in overly prolonged street lighting projects, by harassing business people of the man’s ward with fire prevention inspections and building inspections, by rudely ignoring complaints of bad housekeeping from the ward office, or simply by stopping the collection of garbage....” (Page 89) Daley used the “jobs for constituents reward or deprivation” card to keep his ward bosses loyal and off balance when needed. This is a painful study of how disconnected faith can baptize the misuse of power and privilege. |
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Book Titles From The Marketplace Annotated Bibliography, used by
permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove,
IL 60515, USA. www.ivpress.com
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