I get all misty eyed when I read Royko. I mean really. There is just something about politics in Chicago. The city, its culture, its history are all cut form the same cloth -burlap. FYI – Obama is from Hawaii. This hard scrabble sensibility that understands urban Americana - twisted. Daley reminds me of Robert Hansen, sociopathic ideologues who yearn for order. Sounds like someone we all know.

He wasn't graceful, suave, witty or smooth. But, then, this is not Paris or San Francisco. He was raucous, sentimental, hot-tempered, practical, simple, devious, big and powerful. This is, after all, Chicago. That's part of the Chicago style -- belly to belly, scowl to scowl, and may the toughest or loudest man win.

Well, Chicago is not an articulate town, Saul Bellow notwithstanding. Maybe it's because so many of us aren't that far removed from parents and grandparents who knew only bits and pieces of the language.

Daley was a product of the neighborhoods and he reflected it in many good ways -- loyalty to the family, neighbors, old buddies, the corner grocer. You do something for someone, they do something for you. If somebody is sick, you offer the family help. If someone dies, you go to the wake and try to lend comfort. The young don't lip off to the old, everybody cuts his grass, takes care of his property. And don't play your TV too loud.

The people who came here in Daley's lifetime were accustomed to someone wielding power like a club, be it a czar, emperor, king or rural sheriff. The niceties of the democratic process weren't part of the immigrant experience. So if the Machine muscle offended some, it seemed like old times to many more.

Growing up in the wake of “Papa Daley’s” world created a vision of politics on the streets, with old men waving a placard in one had and their 38 in the other. There was Harold and then Junior. Through it all, what mattered then still matters today – are the streets plowed and is the garbage taken out. That all time classic of Chicago politics still remains the one guiding tenet to power – never bring a knife to a gun fight; he sends one of yours to the hospital; you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way. That was Daley then and that is Daley now. Damn I love this city!