The Wise Man and the Fool

The Chicago Tribune telling it like it is about their hometown boy:

Sweet — and sour — home Chicago

City’s political image a risk for Obama

By Bob Secter and John McCormick

Tribune reporters

10:43 PM CDT, June 22, 2008

He meant it as a joke, but when Barack Obama recently parodied a famous line from “The Untouchables” he also dredged up the reputation of his longtime home as a place that is rough, raw and unlikely to breed reform.

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said during a Philadelphia fundraiser, explaining the Chicago-style approach to hard-nosed politics.

As the first African-American to lock up a major-party presidential nomination, Obama has been the subject of much analysis that understandably focuses on race.

But Americans also have never sent a Chicagoan to the White House, and one intriguing question posed by his candidacy is whether they are ready to now.

For all his talk about change, Obama remains a product of a Chicago and Illinois political culture renowned for corruption and filled with characters who range from felonious to just outrageous.

Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, Obama’s mentor in Springfield, is about as old-school as they come. Just last month, the Chicago Democrat publicly ridiculed an attempt to block a pay raise for legislators by sarcastically declaring: “I’ve got to get me some food stamps.”

Obama’s stable of political friends is populated with others like Jones, and when he has dabbled in city and Cook County politics in recent years he has frequently failed to come down on the side of progressives.

Whether any of that will matter in November is an open question, but Obama clearly is betting he can benefit from Chicago’s reputation for toughness without being tainted by its darker political side.

Rest of article.

Nearly every other mainstream newspaper and news outlet outside of Chicago is doing the best they can to help manage his campaign; it’s not a bad bet.