Willie Wilson for president? More likely for the Chicago Cubs outfield

Some people have an overly-bloated sense of their self-worth, particularly if they catch the political bug.

WILSON: Mr. President? Really?!?

Yet even for the overgrown egos I have encountered amongst political people, Willie Wilson is an outstanding persona.

WILSON IS THE guy who decided to give the people of Chicago the chance to vote for him to be mayor back in the February elections.

One look at the continued presence of Rahm Emanuel at City Hall tells us that Wilson was unsuccessful – he came in third in a five-candidate field, taking only 10 percent of the vote.

Yet because Emanuel fell short of a majority of votes himself in that election, he had to go to a run-off in April against the number two candidate – Jesus Garcia.

It really was an Emanuel/Garcia campaign, with the other candidates getting mere fringe vote totals. Yet Wilson wants to think he personally caused the run-off election, even though he barely did better than former Alderman Robert Fioretti in that February election.

IT STRIKES ME as being as ridiculous as those who think that Bruce Rauner won over the people of Illinois in the 2014 gubernatorial election – rather than accepting there was a significant number of people who voted against Pat Quinn and he was the one who was lucky enough to have his name on the ballot as the challenging candidate.

In the same way that Rauner thinks he has a mandate to tell a Democrat supermajority General Assembly what to do, Wilson now thinks that 10 percent of the vote in an election cycle that had a fairly poor turnout now makes him fit to run for the highest office in the land.

President of these United States!!!

Wilson on Monday let it be known he’s going to be a candidate in the 2016 Democratic primary election. He’s going to take on former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and anybody else who wants to succeed Barack Obama in office.

NOT THAT IT’S clear what his campaign would stand for. He tosses about the phrase “the people’s candidate” to describe himself. But insofar as details are concerned, he’s taken lessons from the Rauner campaign of last year – say as little as possible.

Willie Wilson is eyeballing this Pennsylvania Ave. home as his new humble abode

It helps to avoid saying something stupid by saying nothing at all.

The Wilson mayoral campaign was based on the notion that there would be a significant number of African-American voters who were so appalled at the thought of four more years of Rahm Emanuel that they’d vote for any black candidate – and Wilson was the most visual of the black candidates who ran in that election cycle.

In a federal election, that won’t matter as much. Somebody who can’t get votes outside of the African-American population isn’t about to win – particularly if there are no run-off elections to give him a second chance.

BESIDES, IT’S NOT like Wilson did all that well in that February election. He didn’t win a majority in a single ward – a majority of voters in those African-American leaning wards wound up preferring Emanuel, with Wilson finishing second.

Compared to Wilson being irrelevant elsewhere in Chicago. Which is what I suspect he will quickly become to the rest of the nation. He’s the equivalent of Lars “America First” Daly without the “Uncle Sam” suit.

 

Of course, there always are fringe candidates who feel the need to put themselves on the ballot – or at least go out and campaign even if they can’t get their acts together enough to get a ballot spot. Which could wind up being Wilson’s fate.

Which means that after next year, it is most likely that the name “Willie Wilson” will revert back to the image it has created for many people – the one-time Kansas City Royals star outfielder who actually finished up his playing career as Sammy Sosa’s backup with the Chicago Cubs in 1993-94.

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Will Facebook outlive us all?

I woke up Thursday morning to the sight and sound of a CNN-like news anchor type saying she thought it was bizarre that Facebook would feel the need to create an option by which people can easily turn over control of their pages after they are deceased.

I might have been inclined to agree; personally I don’t see a need to care about what becomes of the odd smatterings that appear on my own Facebook page once I am gone. But I have the experience of my aunt Charlene – who managed to figure out a way to do what Facebook says it will now allow many others to do.

IN THE CASE of mi tia loca (she would have laughed at my sarcastic description), she died about a year-and-a-half ago. But her brother also had access to her account, which means he has taken to making postings on her behalf.

I literally recall the day she died because I learned about it on Facebook. I happened to stumble on her page on a Sunday morning, only to see that a posting was made an hour earlier that read simply, “I’m in Heaven.”

Her brother later that day posted some details about her passing, all written in a first-person voice as though it were my aunt writing. Later, some video shot during her wake was posted on the page.

Since then, her brother has taken to posting various old photographs of my aunt, along with notices about the project that had become the focus of my aunt’s life in her retiring years (she had a career teaching in the Chicago Public Schools) – her “traveling Mexican museum” as she called it.

IT REALLY WAS a collection of the various artifacts and knickknacks she had compiled during her life’s various trips to Mexico; which she would periodically put on public display.

As a tribute to my aunt, her brother has kept the collection and occasionally sets it up (the one time I saw it, it took an entire banquet hall in Chicago to contain it) – using Facebook to let people know when those occasions will occur.

It sounds more bizarre than it is. It actually comes across as an interesting way of remembering my aunt – particularly when my own Facebook page gets an update from her page and I can have a quick, but pleasant, memory of her.

Somehow, I doubt my aunt is alone in having something interesting to say even after they’re gone. Let’s only hope that the people who get picked to carry on someone’s Facebook legacy have enough tact not to try to settle old grudges with someone once they’re no longer capable of defending themselves.

CONSIDERING HOW MUCH the rest of Facebook and the Internet is capable of being taken over by people with no sense of personal decorum, it is always a very serious threat.

Reading trashy updates about the dead is about as boorish of behavior that one could engage in. Let’s hope that this trend of Facebook pages outliving the people whose lives they were a part of is not something that has to be stifled because of those of us who can’t control the worst tendencies of our natures!

It should be said that I have no intention of delegating anybody to carry on my own Facebook page (which consists largely of posts from this weblog to expand the number of people who are capable of reading it). I don’t plan to try to figure out a way of filing copy from the great beyond.

As far as my own page is concerned, I’m inclined to agree with the musings of a few reporter-type people I know who said (on Facebook, if you must know) that a final posting of a simple “-30-” (the old typesetting symbol for ‘end of story’) is the best way to go.

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Chicago’s biggest “character” in 2011 – a brawl, of sorts, between Rahm and Ozzie

The sarcastic side of me wonders if 2011 is going to be the year that we Chicagoans have a challenge for who has the brassiest, hard-edged, tell-it-like-it-is mouth in all of the Second City.

What makes me wonder that is the word earlier this week that Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen definitely will be back at his job for next season, combined with the reports that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel may announce on Friday that he’s leaving his current post.

THEORETICALLY, THAT IS so he could move back to Chicago in time to establish residency and put together a campaign so that he could run for his alleged “dream job” – that of Mayor of the city of Chicago.

Of course, Guillen in the past has also referred to the White Sox managerial post as his “dream job” – running the ballclub for which he was once an All Star shortstop.

So 2011 could literally become the year that we get a couple of dreamers assuming posts of prominence in the city (why do I suspect that if Richard M. Daley could ever have had a White Sox job,  he would have thought long and hard about abandoning city government aspirations?).

There also is the obvious.

BOTH MEN HAVE reputations for being blunt-spoken; hard-edged in ways that occasionally border on the profane. Which literally could mean it would become a competition to see who has the bigger mouth – that is, if Emanuel is able to overcome the many political interests in Chicago that right now are repulsed at the very thought of him being mayor.

Just like there are some delusional people in this city who have problems with the idea of Guillen being a baseball manager (most of whom are crackpot Cubs fans of a certain age who can’t get over the fact that Ozzie was a better shortstop than Shawon Dunston).

All I can say is that if we really get these two public personas in Chicago, it will make for interesting copy. Because they both strike me as being underachievers on the job. Both can appoint to a significant accomplishment, but also have their share of failures in their records.

Guillen has that one World Series win in 2005 and a division title in ’08, yet many fans are going to focus their attention on the failures of this season and 2007.

BY COMPARISON, RAHM is the guy whose hardball tactics overcame the hardcore Republican opposition to healthcare reform so that President Barack Obama ultimately was able to sign something into law.

Yet the GOP partisans are determined to spin his likely departure as a sign of his political failure to overcome their obstructionist tactics – ignoring the fact that the timing of the election cycle seems to be setting this policy.

Just as I’m sure Guillen would view an American League championship in 2011 as a way of shutting up his critics, I’m sure Emanuel will engage in hardball tactics to try to win the mayoral post so as to silence his enemies who want to think he’s politically deceased.

There is one significant difference.

GUILLEN’S ANNOUNCEMENT THAT he’s definitely returning to Chicago next year (despite months of hints that he was feeling unappreciated enough to consider leaving) brings his “story” to a close. Now the ballclub can focus on improving for next season.

By comparison, Emanuel’s saga in Washington is merely starting, as the reports already are circulating about who would replace him as White House chief of staff (and some seem eager to discount the early reports that Daley/Obama loyalist Valerie Jarrett was a front-runner for the post).

Ozzie can sit back and relax this winter, while Emanuel will be in for the fight of his life to try to distinguish himself from the many other political minions who these days think they have a shot at winning the 2011 mayoral election.

At least they all have houses to live in, while (if we believe Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist Mike Sneed) Emanuel has rented out his house to a man who is now refusing to leave the premises – meaning that Rahm doesn’t yet know where he will live upon returning to Chicago.

ALL I KNOW is by next spring, Emanuel could be so frazzled out that he will need to find a way to relax. I’d suggest taking in a White Sox game, and checking out Guillen’s performance on the field.

Except that Emanuel is a former Northwest Side member of Congress, which theoretically makes him a potential fan of the Cubs. But Emanuel also is the guy who is on the record before a Congressional committee (in 1996) as saying, “I hate baseball.”

Perhaps we ought to lock Emanuel in a room with Guillen, where Ozzie could attempt to educate Rahm on the finer points of the game whose professional ball clubs during the past century have become an integral part of the city’s character.

Then again, we’d run the risk of Ozzie emerging from that room thinking he has what it takes to be a political consultant. Yet another political person with a big mouth, even though his candidates would run campaigns that would be interesting – even if they lost.

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