Christopher Hitchens once observed that sometimes the mighty are brought low for the least of their offenses.
Last week, longtime Chicago Alderman Ed Burke appeared in federal court to answer charges he tried to shake down a Burger King franchisee for business at Burke’s law firm.
Burke’s indictment won national attention because he is also the Chicago fixer-of-choice for President Trump. This shouldn’t be ignored, but Burke didn’t need any help from anyone to get himself dirty. His corruption, and Chicago’s, has long been ecumenical.
It has also been multicultural. At least some of the Burger King money he had been demanding was destined for Cook County Chairwoman and reformist mayoral candidate Toni Preckwinkle, the Chicago Tribune reported last week. Preckwinkle, of course, was an early mentor to Barack Obama (before he traded up).
This represents a perverse form of progress: Burke, who has been on the city council for nearly 50 years(!), made his bones as a deputy to “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, who led a phalanx of 29 white ethnic aldermen against the reformer Harold Washington back in the 1980s. One of Washington’s young cadres had been Toni Preckwinkle. (No hard feelings, eh, Toni?).
Shortly after Washington died, Burke clearly realized that openly racist politics was bad for business. He and his wife — now an Illinois Supreme Court Justice — famously adopted a black boy (who had his own coming out a couple of years ago as a Hillary Clinton delegate), and Burke made sure to modulate his tone.
Despite its Democratic politics, Chicago has long been a conservative city in the old-fashioned sense that its leaders don’t change much. In the 100 years between 1915 and 2015, four men occupied the mayor’s chair for a combined 68 years; two of them were named “Richard Daley” and they governed for 43 years.
As for Burke, he has survived more Chicago corruption scandals than most people even remember — not just the Council Wars, but ghost-payrolling and other scandals as well.
This time, things may be different. Since the white flight era that gave Burke his opportunity, the children and even grandchildren of baby boomers have moved back into Chicago. They seem less interested in the old nudge-and-wink politics of their forebearers, where corruption could be laughed off as a form of Celtic resistance — especially now that they hear that laughter being played back to them from the White House. And among the older generation of black folks, there are still long memories on the South and West Sides of Burke’s role in the Council Wars. This can’t be looking too good, jury-wise, as one of Burke’s old constituents might put it.
Burke seems to sense this himself. The day after his court appearance, he did what would have been unthinkable by resigning his post as chairman of the council’s Finance Committee. (He was shepherding through $1.5 billion in tax breaks to politically connected developers, but something tells me that “community” will pull through all right.)
At the risk of sounding like one of those pointy-headed reformers Burke used to rail against, I really hope that this new indictment doesn’t end in a plea deal. Burke has questions to answer from half a century of “service,” and the public might just profit by those answers (including, but not limited to, how Burke acquired some 23 firearms in a city with some of the nation’s strictest gun laws).
But if he should finally meet his fate by shaking down some poor goof in a junk food shop, well, as Hitchens once said of another corrupt Democrat, any nemesis is more educational than none at all.
Bill Myers lives and works in Washington. Email him at [email protected]. He tweets from @billcaphill.
