Chicago's retiring mayor, Richard M. Daley and his father Richard J. Daley together ran this wonderful city for 42 years, with several variously successful, and unsuccessful, incumbents in between the father's death in 1976 and the son's election in 1986.
Both Daleys were phenomenally devoted to the city, it's people, and its prosperity. Both have been painted with the brush of corruption. But I never minded that, because both used their possibly less-than-pristine ways of doing business not for personal betterment, but for the betterment of the City of Chicago. No one ever doubted that.
Richard M.'s retirement at the age of a very young 68 reflects his determination not to die in office, but to get out while the going is good, and to make the best of what is left of his, and his ill wife's allotment on this good earth. But we'll miss him greatly, and greet with some trepidation who, and what, comes next.
That kind of "corruption" I could live with....
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