WILLIAM DALEY

Born into a legendary political dynasty, William M. Daley has been a lifelong insider--son of a famous Chicago mayor, brother of that city’s current leader and, since January, a member of President Bill Clinton’s Cabinet.

“I think it helps,” the secretary of commerce said of the years of contacts he established as a political advisor, lawyer, lobbyist, banker and fund-raiser. “To come to this city totally without any relationships or experiences doesn’t necessarily make it easier for one to do a job here.”

Daley, 49, didn’t grow up like the rest of us: Life in the household of Mayor Richard J. Daley, where he was the youngest of seven children, was a front-row seat to a political machine that thrived in an era of blue-collar neighborhoods and built a reputation for Chicago as “the city that works.” Daley recalls politics then as a “door-to-door” operation, focused on city services and glued together by personal relationships. Once as a child, he picked up the phone to find President Lyndon B. Johnson on the other end of the line.

The dapper, down-to-earth attorney has drawn upon his political tutelage to perform a variety of tasks for Clinton. He pushed for the sweeping budget deal in Congress earlier this year, promoted an international accord to criminalize bribery by corporate officials and has pressed for companies to hire welfare recipients. Before joining the Cabinet, he spearheaded the successful drive for the North American Free Trade Agreement in Clinton’s first term. And now, increasingly, his name is winding up on lists as a possible White House chief of staff.

More deal-maker than ideologue, Daley offers no apologies for the role of politics in society. “Let me say without hesitation, as someone who has spent many years in and around the political process, that there is a place for politics in public life.” But, he added at a confirmation hearing earlier this year, “there is no place for politics in the Department of Commerce.”

Daley has moved to make those words reality in a department that had been tangled up in the political fund-raising scandal and not long ago ranked high on GOP hit lists for slashing government. He established new rules to prevent the misuse of trade missions. And in a direct response to demands from Congress, he cut the number of political appointees in an agency that had been perceived as a dumping ground. All the while, he painstakingly nurtured relationships with Republicans on Capitol Hill. Talk of disbanding Commerce is rarely heard these days.

Daley, with his wife, Loretta, has raised two daughters and a son in the affluent community of Sauganash in Chicago’s North Side. Daley sat down recently in a spacious Commerce Department office, relaxing in an old rocking chair--a favorite of his father’s--that his mother recently shipped to Washington.

Question: Dick Gephardt, the House Democratic leader, recently criticized the administration for a philosophy that lacks strong, core beliefs, for pushing small ideas instead of appealing to fundamental values. Do you buy that?

Answer: I think you have to take your values and turn them into action. The president has been about action. That’s the difference between someone who was a governor and was an executive and somebody who’s been a legislator all their life. An executive understands they’ve got to put things into action and get them done and not just talk about things.

Q: What would be one or two examples of the action you’re talking about?

A: Let’s take an attempt to try to address the budget and address the overall economy over the last four years. We announced a 4.6% unemployment rate--the lowest since 1973. That’s the result of a very aggressive action by the president and a commitment to balancing the budget, a commitment to expanding markets around the world for our products and our exports. You look at the spending that’s occurred in education, an attempt by a president to spend a tremendous amount of time on education, and seeing results, and encouraging local action like you have in Chicago and other places in the education field. There’s a whole host of things the president’s done . . . .

Q: In a blue-collar neighborhood in Chicago in the ‘50s and ‘60s, what was the view of the Republican Party?

A: Wealthy, stubborn big shots. They didn’t care about the average person, much less the person who was down and out or having troubles in their lives, whether it was economic troubles or racial troubles or, you know.

Q: Yet now many of these blue-collar people are comfortably in the middle or upper-middle class.

A: By virtue of a lot of what the Democratic Party did for 30-40 years: We moved an entire group of people from upper-lower class to middle class, suburban, opportunities--the kids can go to college, get professional jobs in areas that were locked out for many young people of working-class parents back in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. So the Democratic Party to some degree--to a large degree--allowed that opportunity to move on, and allowed many of the people to then become Republicans. (Laughter)

Q: How did that happen?

A: They felt less need for trying to get help from government than when their parents or grandparents came to this country and moved into neighborhoods that were difficult--they were getting acclimated to this country and our society and our culture. Many of the programs that the Democratic Party fought for helped them be the beneficiaries--to move on and move out and move up. I think back in the ‘60s or ‘50s, a lot of people moved to the suburbs and you wanted to fit in--you changed philosophically and became a Republican because that’s where they all live.

Q: In 1997, how should the Democratic Party appeal to those people?

A: You appeal to them not just philosophically--say here’s what we stand for, therefore you have to be a Democrat, and you don’t have any options.

Everyone has told people over the last 40-50 years, you can never vote straight party. That’s terrible. You pick and choose. So you’ve got to appeal to what has become a very diverse group of people economically in order to put a majority together.

So you’ve got to have a broader message . . . . No. 1, there is a strong role for government today in helping people day in and day out, but it is not the be-all and end-all solution to your problems. You’ve got to take responsibility for your situation as best one can, and the government has to stand there and help those who are less fortunate--whether it’s help them with education for their children, with housing, which we continue to fight for repeatedly, and the whole gamut of social issues. If you look at the president’s policies, they kind of reflect the philosophy of modern-day Democratic values

Q: Clinton has these high approval ratings, yet there are still many differences within the party. Does a high rating have practical benefits for the president?

A: I would imagine if his popularity wasn’t as high with the American people, he’d have a harder time . . . . This president’s got a very good legislative record. “Fast track,” obviously, was a disappointment, and it’s being highlighted because maybe it is his first major setback in five years. I mean, if you look at President Bush, President Reagan, they didn’t have 100% solidarity with Republicans during their time. If I remember correctly, Gingrich at the time, there were plenty of occasions where he and President Bush didn’t quite see eye to eye. That’s the nature of politics today.

But I think it’s extremely important--and it will be extremely important in 1998--that this president is popular, because he will then be able to help with an agenda that the vast majority of Democrats want. I’m sure there will be some Democrats who don’t agree with the president on different issues. There may be a few that don’t agree with him on any issues. A very small number, if any. But the fact is, the opposite would be true, and it would be devastating to the Democratic Party, to Democratic candidates, if this president [wasn’t] popular.

Q: Why couldn’t the president persuade organized labor that fast track was in the interest of working people?

A: I think organized labor’s been consistent. They’ve never been for fast track. I don’t think they’ve ever been strongly supportive of a trade agreement, short of maybe one or two. So there’s no question about where labor was going to be on fast track, and the fact that labor, for four years, had a very negative opinion of NAFTA, had a very negative opinion about where trade’s going in general worldwide. So it’s no surprise that they were going to be strongly against it.

Q: It may not be a surprise, but didn’t they have a point? Weren’t jobs lost to cheaper labor?

A: Yeah. There’s dislocation because of trade. There’s a lot more dislocation, job change that’s occurred over the last number of years more as a result of technology advances than trade agreements. But again, the very positive economy we have has been able to absorb those changes. People lose jobs, but overall, it’s an extremely positive climate for the labor market . . . . The fact is that this game plan with the president has gotten unemployment down to 4.7%. It’s a good thing for working men and women, whether you’re organized or unorganized.

Q: Let’s talk about economic policy. How should the Democratic Party distinguish itself from the Republican Party?

A: I think the Democratic Party always has to be first, very sensitive to the working men and women, sensitive to those who are in greater need than the rest of us--as they always have done. At the same time, what the president has done--laid out an economic strategy of growth, looking for opportunities as he’s done in the export area, made that a major part of his economic plan back in 1993 and opened markets . . . . We have to keep showing that we understand that there is a new economy out there. We have to be very supportive of our high-tech industry. We can’t and we shouldn’t become another Republican Party . . . .

Q: But aren’t there deep fissures within the Democratic Party on some of these issues?

A: It’s a democratic party--that’s what makes it so unique. Yeah, there are. There are major differences. Well, not major--there is a strong consensus among the Democrats. Obviously the deficit had to be attacked and had to be attacked aggressively. And, politically, this president has taken many issues off the table that the Democrats used to get beat up on for many years--fiscal policy, the ability to manage the economy of the nation; social issues, whether it’s crime, soft on crime, soft on so many other issues. We’ve been able to address those so that the American people saw Democrats, and saw him, as somebody who could manage the economy, be very successful, be sensitive to the needs of the poor, and those who aren’t as fortunate as us, but at the same time hold people responsible for their actions.

Q: The president has talked a lot about bipartisanship. Yet we look at some of the things that happened recently in Congress--the Bill Lee nomination, school vouchers, campaign finance reform--and it seems like whatever spirit of bipartisanship there was has disintegrated.

A: I think you will see bipartisanship on different issues. You obviously saw it in the Iraq situation: a very strong statement by the Republican leadership of support for the President and his actions. That’s the nature of politics--people don’t always agree, even though there’s been a spirit of bipartisanship. It’s not as though--take the budget--there wasn’t great debate and great strife over the last nine months. . . . You get into an election year next year, and, historically, it’s difficult to keep the rhetoric down--which is what fuels the flames of partisanship.

Q: But aren’t the American people sick of it?

A: I think they get tired of unreasonable partisanship; they get tired of the nastiness that comes through a lot of the rhetoric that we’ve seen in the last couple of years. They don’t mind honest disagreements and debate and campaigns that try to draw a distinction. What they don’t like is the real nastiness: People harassing people for pure political reasons they really are repulsed about.