The Columnists On Emanuel

At the Chicago Tribune John Kass remarks on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision not to seek re-election:

It’s always an earthquake, an explosion, a mad scramble. Desperate hands reach out to grab what they can. It all gets so tribal and ethnic. You’d think Rahm Emanuel would know this.

But he had to pull the plug. He might not have made it to the runoff. And then his Rahmulans would have no hope of holding on through someone else.

What cost him was his decision to hide that police video showing white cop Jason Van Dyke shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times, with most of the rounds penetrating the body as it lay on the ground.

Keeping the video from public view until after he’d won re-election in 2015 kept him in power. But that cost him black votes. And with the Van Dyke murder trial underway, and Emanuel fitted for the jacket if violence erupts on the streets, it was done.

Emanuel is smart. He doesn’t have to raise a moistened finger to know the direction of the wind.

but I see things much more as another Trib columnist, Eric Zorn, does:

So I was quite surprised when Emanuel bowed out, saying, “This has been the job of a lifetime, but it is not a job for a lifetime. You hire us to get things done — and pass the torch when we’ve done our best to do what you hired us to do.”

But I’m even more surprised that anyone really wants to grab that torch.

Yes, I know, power is seductive and electoral politics attracts people with sufficient self-regard to believe that they uniquely deserve it.

But the mayoral torch in Chicago is on fire at both ends. Gang violence is a chronic and seemingly intractable problem, long-term public pension obligations look likely to wallop local taxpayers in the near future, school enrollment is dropping and the teachers contract expires next June, Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods are not seeing their share of the economic good times, and many of us residents are increasingly irritated at the city’s effort to nickel-and-dime its way to solvency through exorbitant fines and fees.

The solutions are neither obvious nor painless. Whoever ultimately wins the right to grab the torch from Emanuel is by necessity going to inflame core constituencies and burn more than a few bridges. The job ain’t all ribbon-cuttings and victory parades.

Sadly, I think that Mr. Zorn is being overly optimistic in that last paragraph. I think the temptation to try to kick the can down the road again (and again and again and again) will prove irresistible. That’s how we got where we are in the first place. At this point the only force that I think can stop Chicago mayors from committing governing malpractice is the bond market.