The [Monday] Papers

I'm making my way through #TopCop coverage. All I can offer for now is what I said on Thursday on Ken Davis's Chicago Newsroom, before the mess (lightly edited for clarity):

Steve: If he gets this wrong, if it doesn't work out, if there are problems in the first few months or the first year of a new police chief, I mean what more could Rahm withstand?

There's a couple of questions - one is, who wants to work for Rahm Emanuel as a police chief? It's hard enough to work for the guy in any position, but as police chief, he called Garry McCarthy every morning, I don't know 6 or 7 in the morning or whatever to find out what went on overnight, and he probably was on the phone with McCarthy three or four times a day and he was probably berating him over and over.

And you know, one of the things I said even a couple of years ago is that one of the problems with Rahm Emanuel is he has three jobs. He's the mayor, the police chief and the schools' chief, right, you know. And so if you take a job like this, because I think applications were down from what you might expect . . .

Ken: It was only 30 something I thought, yeah.

Steve: I think there's a couple of reasons for that. One is if you take a job like this you have to know that Rahm is really the show and he's on you. He is on you every minute of the day and you've got to be willing to put up with that. And then I think the other thing that would account for a low number of applications is with the Department of Justice embarked on their probably year-long investigation . . .

Ken: That's going to consume your first year here.

Steve: You know, and then when that's done chances are good that there will be a consent decree in which the DOJ will essentially run the department for a while.

Ken: That's exactly right, yeah, yeah.

Steve: So it may not be that attractive of a job, but I think the guy from DeKalb County in Georgia who seems to be the frontrunner, he seems to be a very charismatic strong personality. The question is I think Rahm's hesitancy would be is this guy too big really of a personality for the job. He's a CNN commentator and that sort of thing.

Ken: This is really the crux of the matter isn't it? I mean even Garry McCarthy has made it fairly clear in these post superintendent interviews and public appearances, you know, [city general counsel] Steve Patton was running the police department. It was like he couldn't do anything without running it past the mayor's lawyer first, and I imagine that for a guy with an ego the size of McCarthy's that really rubbed him very badly. And you know, if you're going to come in and run this, what is it 13,000-member police department you had better have an ego bigger than Texas, right.

You've got to be so strong and so confident in what you're doing. And if you make a decision and then you get a phone call saying, "Ah, I don't think we're going to do that," that's just a deal-breaker. It's got to be. But on the other hand, you're the mayor. You're the guy who has been elected. People want you to be accountable for everything that this guy does, or woman.

Steve: Well, I mean that's the trick. That's the trick of how much you delegate. You know for Rahm he sees everything through a political prism. His concern is everything that happens within the police department or with crime or how it's going to impact him politically, and when you get that kind of hyper-sensitivity, that results in a lot of micromanagement. You have to be willing to say, "Okay, you're the police chief," at least to some extent.

Ken: And it is interesting in a way that this guy who came into the job as mayor with such blue-ribbon credentials really had never run anything like this, so he was learning on the job. And that raises the final question I have for you, which is about a 90-minute discussion that we need to condense it down to about 90 seconds. Is Rahm Emanuel learning on the job? Can Rahm Emanuel be rehabilitated? Can he actually even if he's only a two-term mayor, at the end of the two terms is it possible that he will actually go out with some positive feeling and people will think, Hey, you know, he had a rough start but he ended up being a much better mayor than I thought? Is that even conceivable?

Steve: Um, I want to say 'no'. I mean, I know that's a harsh thing to say, but . . .

Ken: It's okay. I've asked this question a lot and the answer has been 100% no.

Steve: I feel like he's not learning at all, and he'll make some comments or give a speech and he will say all the right things, and then two days later he's back to the same old Rahm. I think he is who he is and that's . . .

Ken: When we've had these conversations on the show and we've had this brief conversation many times and the answer has always been no, my explanation is that Rahm has always been a political operative all his life but he's never been a politician.

Steve: Absolutely right.

Ken: And boy those are different skills.

Steve: Absolutely right.

Ken: As Ben Joravsky once said, I can't believe how many of my conversations now are beginning with - 'Say what you will about Daley, but . . . '

Steve: [Laughs] Right. I know. I know.

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BeachBook

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TweetWood
A sampling.

.@AP reports administration's record failure to fulfill #FOIA requests; spokesman's non-response. See @jimrutenberg: https://t.co/Ia8HgZQPRO

— Paul Colford (@PDColford_AP) March 28, 2016

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It's by Ackerman, so the Chicago media will ignore it.

CIA photographed detainees naked before sending them to be tortured. Exclusive via @attackerman https://t.co/Uj1GlwGloN

— Lee Glendinning (@lee_glend) March 28, 2016

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At this point I would welcome Jim Belushi back into the fold. #Enough

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— Jesse Rogers (@ESPNChiCubs) March 28, 2016

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They were anyway.

Most people who blame Ralph Nader for Iraq War would have been enthusiastic war supporters if Gore had been president.

— Henwood's Suspenders (@firetomfriedman) March 28, 2016

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B2: Belly Button.

Chicago: "One Notch Above Junk" https://t.co/W100Whrzkp

— Robert Loerzel (@robertloerzel) March 28, 2016

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