Chicago Tribune
Patrick Quinn on Patrick
Quinn By Don Wycliff January 2, 2003
Patrick Quinn called the other day.
That's
Illinois Lt. Gov.-elect Patrick Quinn.
Why is it, he
wanted to know, that every time the Tribune refers to him in print
it accompanies his name with the phrase "self-styled
reformer"?
In literature such a phrase is called an epithet
and, when it's virtually always attached to a particular name, it's
a constant epithet. Anybody who has encountered Homer's "Odyssey"
knows the phenomenon: The sea is always "wine-dark"; the dawn is
always "rosy-fingered"; the goddess Athene is always
"clear-eyed."
In the Chicago Tribune, says Patrick Quinn, he
is always "self-styled reformer" and, since he has enjoyed more
success than most citizens and a good many politicians in getting
his ideas enacted into law, he wonders why.
A fair question
and one worth addressing--except that Quinn wasn't waiting for me
even to attempt an answer. It quickly became apparent that this
phone call wasn't about discussing, but venting--and so I let the
lieutenant governor-to-be vent.
"I'm not thin-skinned," he
assured me, but the Tribune's behavior toward him was "Mickey Mouse"
and "penny-ante" and far more appropriate to "the Pinkneyville
Bugle" than to a newspaper that considers itself great. "That's not
what the great newspapers do."
He ticked off his
accomplishments as a reformer: the Citizens Utility Board; the
so-called Cutback Amendment that reduced the size of the
legislature; cleaning up two public offices he has held (state
treasurer and member of the Cook County Board of Tax Appeals); and,
most recently, the Inspector Misconduct Act, passed in 2002 by the
legislature but which Quinn says he began championing back in April
1994.
The Tribune, Quinn contended, "blew the
[licenses-for-bribes] story back in 1994 and a lot of tragedy
ensued." But he was on the case, and was vindicated when the
inspector misconduct law, which forbids those involved in state
regulatory activities to solicit the regulated for political
contributions, was passed in 2002.
I'd be the last to contend
that the Tribune has always been ahead of the curve and as prescient
as we'd all like to be, or that we've always given Quinn the respect
and credit he deserves. Truth is, we've sometimes given him too
much.
Quinn's most notable "reform"--the Cutback
Amendment--arguably has turned out to be a deformation. It almost
certainly has made the Illinois legislature a worse institution than
it was and the state of Illinois a less well-governed state than it
was.
That's not just my humble opinion. It's the view of a
bipartisan task force, led by former U.S. representative/appeals
court judge/White House counsel Abner Mikva and former Gov. Jim
Edgar, which in 2001 came out in favor of a return to Illinois' old
system of electing multiple lawmakers from each House
district.
I almost wrote a column about this issue during the
recent election campaigns after hearing Quinn respond to a question
about it on WBBM-AM's "At Issue" interview program. To my
astonishment, Quinn couched his defense of the Cutback Amendment in
the narrowest, most simplistic terms, telling the questioner, "If
you think we'd be better off with more politicians in Springfield
..."
Fact is, we might be. The old system, by giving the
minority party in a district a chance, if not a likelihood, of
representation, encouraged moderation and consensus-building. The
new system puts a premium on partisan wrangling and rancor, and puts
an obscene degree of power in the hands of the four legislative
leaders.
But Quinn's approach made him sound like the very
embodiment of Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic: a man who knows
the price of everything and the value of nothing.
All that
said, I nevertheless find myself in agreement with Quinn on the
matter of the epithet "self-styled reformer." (It's not a constant
epithet--we applied it to his name only four times in 2002 in fewer
than 30 substantive references.)
Self-styled is one of those
terms that's most meaningful when the person being written about is
a virtual unknown. It's interesting then to know how the individual
thinks about himself.
But when used about a figure as
well-known as Quinn--and in combination with a term like
reformer--it becomes a sneaky way of editorializing: Well, he calls
himself a reformer but we all know he's just a publicity hound,
don't we? (Wink. Wink.)
This strikes me as one of those cases
in which we journalists, whenever we feel the urge to write
"self-styled reformer Patrick Quinn," would be better advised to
utter a small prayer: Lead us not unto that
temptation. |