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Leadership Council. The council's chair, Bill Clinton, picked up Daley'S
themes in his successful 1992 run for president. "Daleyism," referring
to the father, was recently defined by John Judis writing in
The New
Republic,
as a "cross-racial, working-class and lower middle class vot–
ing majority with the financial support of business- which is what
every Democrat wants
to
bottle and imbibe these days." That is one rea–
son why older brother Bill Daley ran Al Gore's campaign.
If
there's merit
to
Richard
J.
Daley'S revival, it's oddly enough because
the elder Daley was a man behind the times. In the 1960s he was a fish
out of water, a localist in an era that demanded a universalist racial
ethic. But as cities have, for the most part, become more racially inclu–
sive, they've generally been able
to
return to the time-honored
approaches that have always worked . Daley'S passion for both private
homeownership and the details of city life point to the policies of
today's most successful mayors. But it's only as race has receded as a
defining issue that Daley'S parochial perspective, which sees affirmative
action as just another way of dividing the spoils, could once again define
the Democrats. In Chicago, an inclusive tribalism looks remarkably sim–
ilar to the multiculturalism of Jesse Jackson and the liberal wing of the
Democratic Party.
