Politics & Power Quote by Richard J. Daley

Daley’s question is a small masterclass in machine-era self-justification: flip the insult into a résumé line, then dare the audience to admit they’ve been sneering at public service itself. “Politician” is treated like a slur in American vernacular, a shorthand for vanity, corruption, or careerism. Daley’s move is to reframe it as vocational honesty. If a man spends his life winning elections and running government, what else should you call him?

The intent is defensive, but not apologetic. Daley isn’t asking for absolution; he’s challenging the moral theater that separates “public servant” (noble) from “politician” (dirty) while still demanding the very skills politics requires: coalition-building, dealmaking, discipline, loyalty. The phrasing “the fellow” performs folksiness, shrinking a power broker into an everyman. “Trying to do something for his people” is the crucial soft-focus clause: it makes intent the metric, not method. In Daley’s Chicago, where patronage was often described as corruption by outsiders and as delivery of tangible benefits by insiders, that ambiguity is the point.

Context matters: Daley governed through a famously centralized Democratic machine, and he was perpetually in a legitimacy contest with reformers, journalists, and federal investigators who equated longevity with rot. His rhetorical strategy is to claim the moral high ground of continuity: a life “devoted” to office reads as sacrifice, not self-interest.

Subtext: stop pretending politics can be purified by pretending politicians don’t exist. If you want roads paved, jobs found, and neighborhoods protected, you’re going to get a “politician” involved. Daley is betting that results still beat sanctimony.