Chicago Machine anger at being called machine

John Kass:

All it took was one TV ad by Republican Sen. John McCain daring to mention the Chicago Democratic Machine—the machine we're told does not exist—to unleash Mayor Chucky.

"If people start throwing dirt and mud—remember it comes back and hits you right in the face," said Mayor Richard Daley, snarling, pointing his finger on Tuesday, positively chuckified.

"I think, to put my brother Bill in there—they want to put me in there, fine, they put me in there all the time anyway," he said.

The McCain ad did not put him in there. But it put brother Billy in there as a lobbyist, and the mayor kept repeating "He's not a lobbyist! He's not a lobbyist! He's never been a lobbyist," even though Bill Daley was no mere lobbyist.

Billy was a lobbyist's lobbyist. And when he became U.S. Secretary of Commerce under Bill Clinton, Bill Daley traveled to Prague to teach American companies there how not to get themselves shaken down by local political bosses. I'm not kidding. Now he wants to be the next governor.

Others mentioned in the ad were Obama's real estate fairy, the convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko; outgoing state Senate President Emil Jones (D-ComEd); and Gov. Rod "The Unreformer" Blagojevich. Each was trotted out as a component of the Chicago Democratic Machine backing the machine's own self-professed reformer, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Rezko/Daley).

Obama wasn't born of the machine, as the McCain ad states. He didn't sprout fully formed from the mayoral forehead. But the former independent wised up to the Chicago Way, endorsed machine stooges and was warmed by Daley's embrace. Daley's own brilliant spokesman, David Axelrod, the Karl Rove of the Left, began to shape Obama as a reformer.

Obama repaid them by keeping his mouth shut on corruption. His stupendous silence has allowed McCain to outflank him on the reform/"change" issue.

Despite the great umbrage taken by Daley and my own paper's editorial board, which complained the McCain commercial engaged in "guilt by association," the ad was supremely effective and spot-on.

Actually, it didn't go far enough.

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How about Obama, standing silently as the mayor's white friends with Outfit connections, the Duffs, reaped $100 million in city affirmative action contracts even though the mayor knew his drinking buddies weren't black or female. Then Obama endorses Daley in the name of reform.

Or how about a little Daley and a little Obama, as happy kindergartners playing in a sandbox with trucks from the $40 million City Hall Hired Truck scandal? Or how about a President Obama dealing with a tricky foreign policy/Chicago corruption issue?

This one involves the fugitive drug dealer and self-confessed Daley administration briber Marco Morales, still fighting extradition to the U.S. from the comfy warden's office in his Mexican prison. On the day he fled Chicago—avoiding testifying to a federal grand jury about the bribes he paid at City Hall for contracts—Marco's son began mysteriously receiving $40 million in Daley administration business. Again, I'm not kidding.

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Would President Obama standby and watch similar events from his buddies back in Chicago? There is certainly nothing in his history to indicate that he has ever challenged Chicago's political elites on any issue. He has been a go alone get along kind of guy, who would never do what Sarah Palin did by taking on the powerful of her own party.

Kass is a go to guy when it comes to Chicago politics.