What is Vallas thinking?

It has always been rumored that Paul Vallas, the one-time Chicago Public Schools boss who exiled himself from Illinois after losing a 2002 Democratic primary bid for governor, would someday return back home and try to make himself relevant on our city’s political scene.

Yet the man who has in recent years headed school systems in Philadelphia and New Orleans (and now is head of the Louisiana-run Recovery School District) seems to have a funny way of trying to make friends who would enable him to return home someday to a position of significance.

MOST PROMINENTLY, VALLAS contemplated running for the Cook County Board presidency – as a Republican – in the upcoming Feb. 2 primary.

As things turned out, Vallas elected not to turn himself into a member of the GOP (I wonder how many Republicans would have ever trusted him, but that is subject material for another day’s commentary). Earlier this week, it appears that he now thinks of himself once again as a Democrat.

It was on Wednesday that Chicago’s former inspector general, David Hoffman, made it known that he has Vallas’ endorsement in the same Feb. 2 primary – Hoffman wants to replace Roland Burris in the U.S. Senate.

Which means Hoffman is the candidate who thus far hasn’t gained much traction among Democratic primary supporters – most seem to be favoring the candidacies of Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias or Chicago Urban League head Cheryle Jackson. (Jacob Meister may have his name on the ballot, but his campaign has become so fringe I have trouble seriously acknowledging it).

IN FACT, ABOUT the only people who seem to take Hoffman’s candidacy seriously are those Republican sympathizers who like the idea of someone with a record of rooting out improper activity at City Hall.

Not that any of those people would actually deign to vote for Hoffman come next month – they’d rather have “one of their own” from the Republican Party, perhaps one whose ideology will more blatantly apease their conservative-leaning thoughts on issues.

So that is where Vallas has put himself. He’s backing the candidate that doesn’t seem to have much backing amongst his so-called partisan allies in the Democratic Party.

It makes it seem that Vallas is engaging in some sort of political hissy fit – still bitter about losing to Rod Blagojevich (who if I recall right won that ’02 primary because he convinced a significant number of rural Illinois Democrats that he was the best choice to be Illinois’ chief executive rather than Vallas or Burris).

IN FACT, HOFFMAN played off the memories of that ’02 primary when Democrats were trying to pick their first successful gubernatorial candidate in 26 years.

“I doubt I’d be standing here today running for the U.S. Senate if Paul Vallas had become governor of Illinois in 2002 instead of Rod Blagojevich,” Hoffman told reporter-types earlier this week. “Pay-to-play, the culture of corruption, the stain on this very Senate seat, we would not be talking about these things had we elected … Vallas.”

Instead, we get the sense of a person in Paul Vallas who is more interested in getting some sort of petty grudge settled by refusing to back other candidates who might be a bit more credible in this particular campaign.

Now I realize that every person has the right to support whomever they want and to make that support as public (or private) as they so choose. It would be un-American for me to say that Vallas ought to be silenced on who he wants to support in this election cycle – even though I’m not sure if he can even vote in our elections this time around.

AFTER ALL, HE is a former Illinois resident, even though I understand his family remains in the Chicago area and he has always made it clear he plans to return to the metropolitan area some day.

But for now, he’s the guy who’s trying to make sense of the school system in the New Orleans area, which was devastated along with the city back in the days of Hurricane Katrina (did that really occur more than four years ago?)

I’d like to think that his interests would be better served by focusing on his current circumstances, rather than trying to influence our circumstances before he’s fully relocated himself back to our midst.

Paul Vallas, who once was a budget director for Mayor Richard M. Daley, built himself a local legacy for the work he did in the 1990s to revamp the struggling Chicago Public Schools system

WHILE IT WOULD not be accurate to say he totally fixed the system (no one man could do that), he definitely gave it some seriously-needed kicks in the heinie to get it moving in the right direction when it comes to trying to provide the city’s schoolchildren with the tools they’re going to need if they’re going to take our city forward in future decades.

If Vallas were to depart this Earth, so to speak, in the near future, that would be the lede of his obituary. I’d hate to see him turn that legacy from one of an educator to one of a political crank with a few unwisely-chosen words such as these expressed this week.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Paul Vallas says he supports David Hoffman for U.S. Senate from Illinois because of his (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/chi-vallas-backs-hoffman-31dec31,0,2073274.story) “refusal to be bullied and intimidated.” Some interpret that as not quite (http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2009/12/31/paul-vallas-endorses-david-hoffmanthen-points-out-his-flaws-and-praises-his-opponents) a positive.

Vallas still has some work (http://www.rsdla.net/Home.aspx) to complete before he returns his focus to home.

Garcia campaign merely the latest Latino political bid to intrigue the city

Jesus Garcia is trying for a political comeback, but the conditions under which he is running show that little has changed about the ways of Chicago politics.

The one-time alderman back in the days of Harold Washington who later served in the Illinois Senate hasn’t held elective office in 11 years. But now, he’s going for a seat on the Cook County Board.

“CHUY” GARCIA WANTS to replace Joseph Moreno, whom some people think has become too cozy with the political establishment at the expense of the majority Latino population whose interests he is supposed to be representing.

The reality of Latino political officials in Chicago is that they don’t all think alike. In fact, there is a serious split in the approach that officials of Latino ethnic backgrounds take toward how they serve the constituents of the Mexican- and Puerto Rican-based neighborhoods of the city.

It’s not Mexican versus Puerto Rican. It’s Daley versus non-Daley.

Or, establishment versus activist.

WHAT IT MEANS is that there are those Latino politicos who believe that the way Latinos will benefit is by becoming part of the city’s establishment. In short, by becoming someone who is aligned with Richard M. Daley, which means Hizzoner Jr. will be inclined to include Latinos when splitting up the city “pie.”

There are other officials who believe that Latinos need to stand up for ourselves, and that we need to fight against the political establishment. Which means Latinos need to realize that Daley is the problem (similar to how former President Ronald Reagan once told us that “government IS the problem” rather than the solution to problems.

What is comes down to is that some Latino politicos are for Daley, while others are against. Come Election Day, it invariably turns out that the establishment Latinos work to try to get some of their friends elected in place of activist Latinos, while Latino activists try to dump on their establishment-oriented ethnic brethren.

That was what happened back in 1998 when Garcia lost the Democratic primary for re-election to his Illinois Senate seat. Garcia is perceived as an activist-type Latino, and the establishment types found Antonio Munoz to run against, and beat him.

NOW, GARCIA IS being used as an activist Latino candidate who hopefully can beat someone that activists are upset with for backing the establishment.

In this case, the activists are upset with Moreno because he was one of the five county board members who consistently voted in support of President Todd Stroger during the summer and autumn months when officials kept trying to repeal the county portion of the sales tax increase that had been approved one year earlier.

Getting too close to Stroger has some people thinking that Moreno is not fit to represent Latinos on Chicago’s Southwest Side neighborhoods.

In fact, two of the leaders of that tax repeal effort went so far Wednesday as to formally endorse Garcia, who has worked for various activist and community organizations in the Little Village neighborhood during the 11 years that he has not held elective office.

COMMISSIONERS LARRY SUFFREDIN and Forest Claypool, considered two of the more activist members of the Cook County Board who were most outspoken against Stroger and the sales tax issue, both said they want Garcia in office.

“For almost 30 years, people have turned to Jesus Garcia for help in hard times,” said Claypool, in a prepared statement. “County residents deserve a fighter like Jesus Garcia on the county board who will put their needs first.”

But it also would help if the two Latinos on the county board were to be aligned on a more activist mode.

For that is the current situation. Moreno and Edwin Reyes are the two Latino members of the Cook County Board, and they were consistently split on the sales tax issue – Moreno supported Stroger while Reyes opposed him.

BOTH WOULD CLAIM they were sticking up for the interests of lower-income Latinos – Moreno by saying that the money was needed to pay for county public health services and Reyes by saying Latinos could use a lower sales tax when they shopped.

That was even the case before Reyes was appointed to the county board in autumn. He replaced Roberto Maldonado, who was consistently opposed to Stroger on the sales tax issue before he gave up the county post to become a member of the City Council.

So if Garcia is able to win election to the county board in the upcoming election cycle, it would be an interesting story of a political comeback. But in another sense, it would be just the latest example of Latinos fighting amongst ourselves for the most effective way in which to represent the interests of the ethnic populations that account for more than a quarter of the overall city.

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Is Chicago supposed to apologize?

It almost seemed like a double hit on the perception of Chicago, as provided in recent days by two of the nation’s prominent newspapers.

Both the New York Times and Washington Post published pieces of copy in the past couple of days that seem to put the Second City in a negative light – the Times ran a full-fledged editorial calling for the closure of the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal as the only way possible to prevent the Asian Carp from destroying the ecosystem of the Great Lakes.

MEANWHILE, THE WASHINGTON Post (the newspaper that recently decided to recall its Chicago-based correspondents on the grounds that it could cover our city from Foggy Bottom) published a story Tuesday about the record of Education Secretary Arne Duncan back when he was in charge of the Chicago Public Schools.

Among the points made by the Post is that school systems in Houston and Miami showed higher average test scores for their students than Chicago, while places like Atlanta and the District of Columbia showed larger gains than did our city’s school system.

The Post, so to speak, is less than impressed with Duncan’s performance in Chicago. Or at least they gave credibility to the thoughts of the Chicago-based people who were glad to see Duncan leave when Barack Obama became president. The Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal has been around for more than a century, yet some out-of-towners are now anxious to give it full blame for the potential Asian Carp infestation into the Great Lakes. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

The latter report struck me as a whole lot of hot air being given credence by the national capital’s local newspaper – which may reflect the mood among some D.C. insiders who are somewhat resentful these days about the degree to which adopted Chicagoan Obama chose his Chicago colleagues for several significant political positions in his administration.

LET’S BE HONEST – that’s part of the reason some people are so willing to see former Illinois Lottery Director Desiree Rogers twist in the wind because those two nitwits managed to sneak into a White House party.

So while I’m not necessarily a Duncan defender, a part of me can easily try to read through the Washington Post report’s lines to figure out how many of the educational accusations are mere political whining.

After all, I don’t think anyone seriously disputes that the Chicago Public Schools still have a long way to go in terms of improvement before they can be considered to be offering an adequate educational opportunity to city-based school children.

Somehow, it was the Times’ editorial that got on my Chicago-oriented nerves more than anything the Washington Post reported.

THE TIMES EDITORIALIZED about the Asian Carp problem – the one involving the fish that if they become a part of the Great Lakes ecosystem have the serious potential to devour the substances that other life forms in the lakes feed off of.

That would lead to a devastation of life in the Great Lakes as we have known it.

It also would be a blow to the regional economy, which relies on that canal to provide the contact between the Great Lakes (through Lake Michigan at Chicago) to the Mississippi River and which considers its construction one of the great engineering achievements of all-time.

Even the Times conceded that point, writing, “that would be hugely costly and poltiically difficult, given the importance of shipping to the region.”

NOW I’M NOT going to downplay the threat caused by the Asian Carp, which managed to get loose from Southern fish farms into the Mississippi River and have been swimming their way up north ever since.

I also realize that the electronic fences installed by the Army Corps of Engineers to try to keep the fish away from the Great Lakes are failing, and I don’t trust the once-proposed suggestion of dumping a substance that is toxic to the Carp into the canal.

Simply put, even though I’m not a biologist by profession, I’m skept ical of the claims that the substance would be harmless to human beings that came into contact with the canal.

But it just strikes me as being a little to simplistic to say that the only solution is to cut off the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds. In fact, it may be downright unrealistic to expect anyone to take such a suggestion seriously.

THIS IS A serious problem that requires more thought than just saying “close the locks” (that would cut off the two water bodies from each other).

And while I usually give some respect to the New York Times for putting together a news report that tries to keep the trivialization of public events to a minimum, this editorial just comes off as a little too smarmy.

It’s almost like someone on 42nd Street having too much trouble comprehending what is happening out in the great Midwest.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The national newspapers are giving Chicago a touch of attention on educational (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/28/AR2009122802368.html) and environmental (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/opinion/29tue3.html) issues.

The Army Corps of Engineers offers its explanation of how it is trying to keep the Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes (http://www.lrc.usace.army.mil/projects/fish_barrier/index.html), while the Encyclopedia of Chicago recalls (http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/300018.html) the construction of the canal as part of a deliberate effort to connect the lakes to the Mississippi (while also giving us the side benefit of having our sewage flow down to St. Louis – rather than into the city’s drinking water supply.

Time to pay attention to election cycle

I know some people are going to grouse that it’s too early. They don’t want to have to think about Feb. 2 and the elections to be held that day until after they’ve recovered from their New Year’s hangover.

But considering that it was possible for some people to begin casting their votes for a U.S. senator, governor, other statewide officials and legislators beginning Monday, that probably means it is time for us to kick outselves out of apathetic mode and consider who they want to vote for.

NOW I’M NOT about to preach to you at this point who should get your vote. I don’t think you’d listen to me if I tried.

This is more about the whole concept of casting a ballot, and why it should matter.

People who are voting now are the ones who for whatever reason cannot make it to the polling place on Feb. 2. So they’re using an absentee ballot. Under changes in state law, it is being made easier to use the absentee process because one no longer has to give a specific reason why they can’t show up on Election Day.

Of course, the one time in my life I used an absentee ballot, all I told them was my job at the time would have me out of town on Election Day (which was true), and it was accepted. No one challenged me or demanded that I prove I had to be in another city.

SO WE HAVE the option of people headed to their clerk’s offices for the application to get the absentee ballot.

That is, of course, if they don’t just decide to wait a while for the early voting centers, which will be opening up soon enough (Jan. 11, to be exact).

For what it’s worth, I used an early voting center the last time I cast a ballot. I happened to be near a facility on other business and noticed they were virtually empty. I was able to get in, get my ballot, cast it and leave within minutes.

There was a certain convenience to it, and I may do the same thing some time during the coming month if I get the chance.

THERE IS A part of me that is a little saddened at the thought that the actual Election Day has the potential to become less important. Rather than being the collective day we gather to pick our leaders, it merely will be the day we expect to hear the results of elections that have been ongoing for over a month.

But at least it does encourage people to vote, which ultimately is a good thing.

Because for all too often, the people who can’t stand measures that boost the voter turnout are the political partisans – the ideologues who are so wrapped up in their causes that they can’t stand to think that other people might think differently.

And I’m not singling out any political party on this ground. I have heard the ridiculous rants from officials of all sides.

SO NOW, WE have to start thinking about what kind of electorate we truly are when we cast our votes. I’d like to think we are the responsible type who put great thought into picking officials who will represent our public interest.

There I go again, sounding as naïve as a Chicago Cubs fan who every spring thinks that this is FINALLY the year their favorite ballclub will win a championship of sorts.

It ain’t gonna happen on the baseball field, and it probably won’t happen at the voting booth either.

This is going to be the extremely partisan electoral cycle where we are going to hear the name “Blagojevich” screamed at us so many times like it is an epithet. How many voters will be swayed is something I am unsure of.

MOST PEOPLE I have encountered are either inclined to disregard it, or their disgust level with electoral politics has become so intense in the past year that they are most likely to ignore Election Day altogether.

I have no doubt that some people will say they are voting knee-jerk Republican as a response to the former Illinois governor’s behavior in office. Yet I can’t help but think that the bulk of those people are ones who NEVER under any circumstances would have picked the name of a Democratic Party candidate on a ballot. This is an election cycle where I am not inclined to predict now what will happen due to the ballots that are being cast over the course of the next 35 days.

Of course, I can think of one more positive aspect to the idea of early voting. If it means that fewer people actually wait until Feb. 2 to vote, it means there is less reason for candidates to engage in the last-minute bursts of negativity (particularly on television) that turns off many real people.

That would be a positive.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: There are going to be countless libraries, park district buildings and schools throughout Chicago (http://www.chicagoelections.com/page.php?id=9) and the surrounding suburbs (http://www.cookcountyclerk.com/elections/earlyvoting/Pages/EarlyVotingLocations.aspx) that will serve as polling places in coming weeks – for those people who just can’t wait until Feb. 2 to express their political preference.

This might have been written from the perspective of the suburban Cook County voter, but the procedures (http://www.cookcountyclerk.com/ELECTIONS/EARLYVOTING/Pages/default.aspx) for casting an early ballot are identical across the state of Illinois.

EXTRA: This is “reasonable” opposition?

Every time you hear the name “Blagojevich” screamed during the coming month, it will be by a Republican candidate who is trying to create the impression that the GOP represents some saner version of electoral politics.

Yet anyone who knows anything about government knows that the goofballs are to be found in all political parties. On Monday, we got a glimpse of some of the “Party of Lincoln’s” people who cause Honest Abe to roll over in his grave more than Illinois’ former governor ever could.

ANTHONY MARTIN TRIGONA, who these days prefers the name Andy Martin and likes to identify himself as a GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, is the beneficiary of a new radio spot – one that implies that the alleged frontrunner in the Republican primary – Rep. Mark Kirk of the North Shore suburbs – is not a heterosexual.

It is true that Kirk is divorced, but no one has ever come up with real evidence about Kirk’s sexuality (EVERY politician is some sort of freak – if you listen to the rumor mill). Kirk himself is making it clear that he considers the radio spot slanderous.

What caught my attention about this stupid exchange is that the Illinois Republican Party felt the need to intervene. State party Chairman Pat Brady issued a statement Monday saying that the Illinois GOP “disavows” the statements, adding, “Mr. Martin will no longer be recognized as a legitimate Republican candidate by the Illinois Republican Party.”

Not that it means Martin’s name will be removed from the ballot or that he’s no longer in the campaign. He’ll still be there in the Republican ballot when one shows up at a polling place, or casts that absentee ballot.

BUT IT DID strike me as unusual that the party would feel the need to get involved at all, which is something they ought to get a bit of praise for.

In most cases, we would have had party officials trying to pretend the incident didn’t happen, or that it doesn’t really matter much and shouldn’t be given any attention to. Instead, we got party officials going for the knockdown. Not that it hurts them much.

Chances are good that Martin (who has barely shown up in polls) has so few supporters that the number of people who will be offended at GOP head Brady for taking this step totals in the hundreds (out of 12.9 million living in Illinois).

It also means neither political party has a monopoly on nitwits within its ranks.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The Illinois Republican Party felt compelled to “take down” one of their own (http://www.weareillinois.org/connect/newsDetail.aspx?newsID=8235) for crossing the “line” in campaign rhetoric.

WBBM-AM reminds us they were obligated to air such a spot, while also letting us know in this report they’re (http://www.wbbm780.com/Political-Ad-Questions-Republican-s-Sexual-Orienta/5952370) not enthused about its existence.

Those of us who have been around for awhile remember Andy Martin (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/15/21251/3538) under his former identity.

A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Winter street “dibs” is anti-Chicago spirit

Now that the “holidays” are over with the completion of Christmas and Hanukkah (and proceeding through Kwanzaa), the bulk of us can move on and accept the fact that we’re now in winter.

And with the coming of the heavy snowfalls of recent days, we’re going to get to hear more blowhard rhetoric from people who claim they’re “sticking up” for their inalienable right to park in front of their home – even if it means they have to turn the street into a junkyard in their attempt to “claim dibs” on a parking spot.

COUNT ME AMONG the ranks of those who thinks it downright ridiculous that Chicago would want to claim this bit of selfishness as some sort of character trait.

But there are those who will claim it is part of what makes Chicago unique that some of us think we have the right to own a parking spot for our automobiles once we have dug them out of the heavy snow.

These people think that because they were inconvenienced by snow, they now deserve some sort of perk. That’s ridiculous.

To me, it is one of the realities of urban life that automobile parking is inconvenient. I accept it as a fact that when I venture into certain neighborhoods of the city, it will be difficult to find a parking spot if I choose to bring my car. On days when it snows and some potential spots get covered over, it becomes that much more difficult.

SO THE IDEA that some people think they can “own” the space where their car was just because they had to dig out the shovel is so anti-urban. If you’re really that determined to hang on to that parking spot, then perhaps you shouldn’t move your car.

My basic philosophy on this issue is “you move your car, you lose the spot.” If you want to be able to drive around and have some sort of guaranteed parking near your humble abode, go live in a suburb.

Those people who insist on cluttering their vacated spots with old chairs or other junk are merely one step up from litterers. I have no problem with the police treating them as such. The fact that the Chicago Sun-Times went so far Sunday as to editorialize on the side of the nitwits (http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1958985,shoveled-own-it-editorial-122709.article) is a holiday-season embarrassment for the newspaper.

What other “issues” are of concern to those of us who choose to live on the shores of Lake Michigan at this time of year, rather than along the Gulf of Mexico or some other place with warm weather?

I WISH THEY’D MAKE UP THEIR MIND: My brother, Chris, and I have always joked about Sam Sianis, the long-time owner (and nephew of the founder) of the Billy Goat Tavern, whom we claim will go along with any gag if it means free publicity for his chain of establishments.

So it wasn’t any surprise (to me, at least) that Sianis played along with celebrations marking the 75th anniversary of the opening of the original Billy Goat on Madison Street near what is now the United Center.

He even went so far as to correct Gov. Pat Quinn, who according to news reports botched the old “no fries, cheeps” line from the old Saturday Night Live sketches that allegedly were based on the Billy Goat shtick.

The problem is that I know that at least one of the Billy Goat locations, at 303 S. Wells St., actually serves fries, no cheeps. Not that they’re particularly good fries. Besides, there’s still the sentiment that the only “real” Billy Goat (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1960293,billy-goat-cheezborgers-122709.article) is the one on Hubbard Street underneath Michigan Avenue.

WILL LES EXPOS LIVE ON?: I understand that Chicago Cubs fans are going to get all worked up into a lather over whether former outfielder Andre Dawson deserves to be in the baseball Hall of Fame. He had a couple of respectable years playing with the Cubs in the late 1980s.

Perhaps I should say more than “respectable,” on account of that Most Valuable Player award he took while (http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/league-of-her-own/2009/12/chicago-cubs-headlines-for-sunday-let-the-annual-hawk-in-the-hall-discussion-begin.html) playing for a last place Cubs team.

Yet I’m just wondering how much Cubs fans are going to rant and rage if Dawson actually gets 75 percent support from the sportswriters who will vote this year, on account of the fact that Dawson actally played more seasons and had the bulk of his best years as a player with the now-shuttered Montreal Expos.

Will we have to endure some sort of claim that the Cubs are being slighted when Dawson’s bronze plaque depicts him wearing the “MB” logo of the Expos rather than the cutesy “C” of the Cubs? It will be even more ridiculous than the occasional White Sox fan who still rants that Carlton Fisk’s plaque emphasizes his time with the Boston Red Sox.

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Who’s the face of the GOP opposition?

Was I wrong?

http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/11/if-obama-is-harold-then-whos-national.html

NOT REALLY, WHICH is kind of sad when you think about it.

It was just over one year ago (on the day that Barack Obama won election to a four-year term as president, to be exact) that I wrote a commentary that I wish reflected bad on my comprehension of electoral politics.

It was a piece of analysis wondering how close the Obama administration’s ability to govern would come to those years from the mid-1980s that we now recall as “Council Wars” on account of the fact that a vocal opposition did whatever it could to thwart the governmental desires of then-Mayor Harold Washington.

About the only aspect of that commentary where I wrote that a segment of the U.S. population would, “spend the next four years doing whatever they can to thwart an Obama presidency from achieving its goals” that hasn’t fully come true is the part where I pondered which politico would become the national equivalent of Edward R. Vrdolyak.

IN ALL HONESTY, none of them seem to have become the “face” of the opposition the way that Vrdolyak is still remembered as the namesake of the City Council opposition that openly defied everything Washington tried to do during his first couple of years as Chicago mayor.

Which means either that this particular band of political people either is somewhat bland, or personalities such as that belonging to “Fast Eddie” are a rare breed indeed.

I’m sure that Sarah Palin’s followers would like to think that the one-time Alaska governor has that kind of pull about her to lead people in opposition to Obama. Yet I don’t count her because at this point, she’s all talk.

She has no political position with authority that can be used. She can only try to shame the Republican members of Congress into going along with her will, which is the same as Rush Limbaugh and the assorted right-wing rabble that wishes they had Rush’s ratings and “talent” when they go “on the air.”

BUT LOOKING AT this first year of the Obama administration makes me realize that the same mentality that once inspired 29 aldermen to band together to vote against anything Washington even hinted he liked is the same that creates the partisan political votes for what may well have been the two big accomplishments from the federal government this year – getting the Senate to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice and to approve a health care reform package that (while watered down considerably) still gets criticism as being “too radical.”

The mentality that allowed some members of Congress in good conscience to think we’d be better off doing nothing to resolve the situation of some 47 million U.S. residents without any form of health insurance is the same as the one that once allowed members of Congress to refuse to confirm mayoral appointments for years (meaning some people ultimately got confirmed to positions whose terms had already expired).

Some people thought that a short-term loss related to the daily operations of government would be beneficial in the long run if it meant preventing anything that a “disliked” chief executive might well be able to use as an “accomplishment.”

There are those who will try to give Obama credit for getting through a health care reform proposal (assuming, of course, that the measure is not killed off by a conference committee that can’t resolve differences between the Senate and House of Representatives’ versions of the bill), while others will claim that the big victors of 2009 were the Republican officials who were able to make Obama’s professional life so difficult.

FOR MY PART, I’m thankful that the U.S. Senate literally wound up this year with that “filibuster-proof” majority. For if there really were 41 Republican members of the U.S. Senate, then we likely would have had our government achieve absolutely nothing during the previous year. Which is why the 2010 elections will be interesting.

It usually happens that the opposition political party to the president gains some strength in the mid-term elections. And even if you believe there isn’t going to be a massive shift in political power during the upcoming year, all it will take is for a couple of states to shift and we really will get the stalemate that was “Council Wars” to occur on Capitol Hill.

Ultimately, the cheap rhetoric and namecalling that bordered on racial slurs was embarrassing to Chicago. But it was the willingness of some Chicago officials to do nothing out of spite to the chief executive that was the real shame of that political era in the mid-1980s.

I would like to think that we won’t experience the same offensive silliness some nearly three decades later on the national level.

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