The Machine

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The headline and the tone of your editorial on Chicago's recent election (3/1)prejudge the new Democratic nominee for mayor and accuse him of using "A new populist" machine.

It would have been hard for Washington's coalition to have used "machine methods," since these tactics are by definition only used by those in power. Comparing the recent unprecedentd registration drive among the inner city's politically silent majority to altering registration lists, as The Crimson does, is nothing less than offensive. Legal registration seems to fall more under the rubric of "democratic process" than of "tactics...strictly of the old-fashioned machine type." The people of Chicago did not vote for Washington because they were "infirmed" (sic) or guided to the voting booth by precinct captains.

As for the easy and formulaic dismissal of Washington as more of the same, that is certainly a posibility. But because of his record of reform and the recent decay of the machine, it would seem more prudent to beed Chicago press sage Mike Royko's injunction for the standard of innocent until proven guilty: "Until he fouls up, give him a chance." Mark Csikszentmihalyi'86