SORRY, THERE IS NO MONEY TO PAY IT.
I n September, Rahm Emanuel surprised the political cognoscenti when he announced that he would not be running for re-election as mayor of Chicago, where it had been routinely assumed that he’d win a third term. Emanuel was a big-city mayor of national stature with a near-pure political pedigree that included a stint as a Clinton White House “leg-breaker,” and four terms in the House of Representatives. He also served on the board of Freddy Mac, where he failed to see the housing crash coming and turned a nice dollar, but not as nice as the one he turned handling mergers and acquisitions at investment firm Wasserstein Perella. Emanuel talked tough and dirty which, in the days before Trump, was considered sort of colorful. There was informed speculation that he might even, one day, run for president. And why not? If he could govern Chicago, then running the country ought to be easy work. So why did he choose not to run? Could it have been the murder rate in Chicago, where the papers run weekend body counts and put the blame on Indiana for its less-than-draconian gun laws? This seems unlikely. Chicago is a famously
tough town where the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is treated as a sort of charming bit of cultural history. Chicago without gangs is as unimaginable as New Orleans without crawfish. Emanuel had nothing to fear on the “law and order” political front. One suspects that, as on so many matters, his problems were with money. Still, when the mayor made his farewell speech on the city’s finances on October 17, he bragged about what had been accomplished in his two terms in office and indulged in a bit of self-pity over not getting the kind of credit he believed he deserved: One thing I have learned is that they do not build statues for people who restore fiscal stability,” he said. “But without sound, strong, stable finances, nothing else is possible. In a way, this was a legitimate beef. He had tried to make Chicago fiscally healthy. His administration had, after all, raised taxes in six of his first seven years. And raising taxes is the most unpleasant duty a politician can perform. Still, his administration did the necessary and jacked up the 911 phone tax, taxes on Uber
By Geoffrey Norman
CLICK HERE TO READ THEWEB VERSION
American Consequences 35
Made with FlippingBook Annual report