Crime and politics rule the Windy City
Toby Harnden
In the Windy City -- named after the boastful loquacity of its politicians rather than the gusts that blow between its towering grey buildings -- crime and public office have seldom strayed far apart.
In the 1920s, Al Capone would hold court at his headquarters at the Lexington Hotel beneath portraits of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and William Hale Thompson -- aka "Big Bill", the mayor, whose campaign he bankrolled.
The man who had brought Capone to Chicago was a Neapolitan crook called John Torrio, who had himself been lured there in 1910 by a brothel-owner known as "Big Jim" Colosimo -- a precinct captain for the infamous "Bathhouse" John Coughlin, an alderman who took bribes in return for contracts.
Ethnic groups were played off against each other by politicians. To this day, many Irish-Americans are policemen while Italian-Americans predominate among transport workers.
A year after Torrio's arrival, the political economist Charles Merriam remarked: "Chicago is unique. It is the only completely corrupt city in America." Nearly seven decades later, the late Studs Terkel, author and Chicago radio host, begged to differ: "Chicago is not the most corrupt American city, it's the most theatrically corrupt."
Either way, the gut reaction of most Chicagoans to the FBI complaint against Governor Rod Blagojevich, outlining his baroque plans to "monetise" Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat, was not shock or even disgust. It was surprise that he had been so reckless as to discuss them on a bugged telephone.
To this day, Illinois's campaign finance laws are astonishingly lax -- there is no cap on the amount of cash a politician can solicit. If Mr Blagojevich is jailed, he will be the fourth Illinois governor out of the past eight to end up behind bars.
The city might have been forgiven for thinking that it was about to undergo something of a rehabilitation, becoming better known for Mr Obama, thick-crust pizza, Michael Jordan and jazz, rather than Capone and political sleaze.
Last month, 'Time' magazine pronounced the corruption reputation was "based on an outdated caricature" -- but this week has ended that vain hope.
Mr Blagojevich's lawyer said that what his client had done was "just politics". Chicago's own Reverend Jesse Jackson, who once had a whole book written about him entitled 'Shakedown' (definition: extortion), remarked: "Politics is a contact sport. Only those on the sidelines have clean uniforms."
His son, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr, who denies wrongdoing, was identified in the FBI complaint against Mr Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, as "Candidate 5", whom Mr Blagojevich believed would give him $1m (€745,000) for the Senate seat.
In New York and Washington, many column inches have been devoted to the Soprano-esque profanity of the governor, who vowed not to give a friend of this "mother****er Obama" the Senate seat without a quid pro quo from the president-elect.
Even his wife, Patti, was caught on tape ordering, with salty directness, one of her husband's aides to stall a $150m sale of Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, which was owned by his tormenters at the Chicago Tribune. "Hold up that. F***ing Cubs, f*** them".
Mrs Blagojevich's father is Dick Mell, a Chicago machine politician who helped launch his son-in-law's career -- and that's how Chicago machine politicians talk when they're trying to extort money, shake down rivals and enforce the "pay to play schemes" that have made the city infamous.
Although Mr Obama has run on a platform of reform, this is the political swamp from which he emerged. He is a close ally of Mayor Richard Daley, a machine politician who has had aides convicted of corruption and whose father, Mayor Richard "Boss" Daley, helped deliver Chicago for John F Kennedy in 1960 with the help, as legend has it, of scores of stuffed ballot boxes.
Those who questioned the lucrative jobs Boss Daley engineered for his sons would be told to kiss the mistletoe that hung from his coat-tails.
Mr Obama won his first election, not by appealing to the better angels of the voters' consciences, but by successfully challenging the signatures on the proposal forms of each of his challengers, thereby ensuring that he ran unopposed.
In the Illinois state Senate, Mr Obama's mentor was Emil Jones, a traditional ward politician and Blagojevich ally who rose from sewer inspector to being a contender -- though he did not figure in the FBI's complaint -- for the president-elect's Senate seat.
An African-American who speaks in a low growl, Mr Jones regularly takes interest-free loans from campaign funds -- a legal practice in Illinois -- and once justified legislation approving a salary increase for state politicians with the words: "I need a raise."
Like many Chicago politicians -- though there are a lot fewer doing so this week -- Jones takes some delight in the Mafioso mystique of the city. When Mr Obama hailed him as "my political godfather", Mr Jones took to using Nino Rota's theme music from 'The Godfather' as the ringtone on his mobile phone.
Mr Blagojevich, a target of the FBI since he took office, appears to have operated with all the subtlety of a "Bathhouse" Coughlin.
Like most Illinois politicians accused of being crooked, he ran on a platform of cleaning up the state -- at his inauguration he vowed to end the "system of corruption that has become too commonplace, too accepted and too entrenched" -- before allegedly setting about enriching himself.
Bringing the case against Mr Blagojevich, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald remarked: "There's politics and there's crime. Sometimes people get into trouble when they try to blur those lines."
The truth is, in Chicago, there has often been no line at all. (© Daily Telegraph, London)
Heat is turned up on Obama's men: Page 32
