From reading the article, his son sounds like he voted Republican (at least in 2004).

Imagine the scenario - baby boomer parents (who probably protested against Vietnam) dealing with their kids volunteering (i.e. not drafted) to go fight in the new "Vietnam quagmire".

Shades of the 80s show Family Ties where ultraliberal parents had to deal with a conservative kid.

Your glowing opinion of Daley is somewhat misplaced. He still is the main reason IL is (and will remain) very blue.

His legacy is one of increasing corruption (both legal and illegal) brought about by his unassailable power.

Sure, his son sounds like a good kid, and may come back from service as a very electable (in either party) politician, but let's not enshrine his Dad, who is a hack of the worst type.

Daley's only saving grace is that he's not as bad as these large city "progressives" whose corruption doesn't even succeed in improving the streets. At least Daley has the city looking nicer.

BB:

IL is Blue because the GOP has produced crappy candidates.

Chicago never declined as bad as the other major cities like New York, Los Angeles, or Detroit in the 1970's and 1980's - and that's mainly a legacy of Old Man Daley. Likewise, his son has done a very good job in Chicago and tackled some very hard issues such as repairing the school system. He does not bat 1000, but he's been a very good mayor.

The Machine is always corrupt to an extent, but I don't see how any of the things that replaced it elsewhere was any less corrupt, just a different form of corruption. The one benefit of the Machine is that it holds politicians accountable to the ordinary citizen who expects his garbage picked up, his street repaired, and the plows to be ready when the snow hits.

I swear the lesson of Michael Bilandic has made Chicago Democrats the smartest in the nation.

And because the dead always end up outnumbering the living.

In Chi-town, once you die and are in the graveyard, you start voting Democrat forever.

So, does this admirable young man go into politics as a Dem, claim the family machine, and battle Barack Obama as the Great Blue Hope?

Or does he switch parties, and battle Barack that way?

He is 29 and Barack is (IIRC) 42 years old.

Patrick's finally growing up.

Mom and Dad were in Europe, IIRC, and he was staying w/the relatives.

Somehow he ended up at the family retreat at the Dunes and quite a party it was. Made the papers.

My poli-sci professor way back in the late 1970s lammented the decline of Tammany in New York in favor of non-accountable civil service appointments pushed by the Good Government types, and pointed to the Chicago machine under Daley as a far more responsive form of government at the grass roots level, even with the amount of corruption involved.

The more layers of government you put between elected officials and their constituents, the less those constituents are seen as people and the more they are as case numbers, especially among the civil service workers who can't be pried out of their jobs by anything short of a direct hit with a MOAB. The son's Chicago isn't as controllable as the one his father presided over, but the system is still in place enough so that the mayor can't afford to be aloof from the voters' concerns (Google "Jane Byrne" and "snow removal" to find out what happens when you break the covenant).

As a former Army Airborne man myself (82nd Abn. Div., and 173d Abn. Bde.), I think this is just plain old good news, whatever his political persuasion.

The professional (meaning permanent and unaccountable) civil service has been a disaster for the Republic.

The Republican woes in Illinois have been self inflicted. The chaos of corruption that brought down the last Republican governor and left them with out a senatoral candidate was their own doing.