For the Democratic Party, going back to Chicago for its convention is rather like the Rolling Stones deciding to return to Altamont and stage a free rock festival. Chicago 1968 and Altamont 1969 were the twin gravediggers of 1960s counterculture. The bad vibrations they generated shook asunder a certain kind of American optimism. Hovering over this week’s gathering is the question of whether that kind of hope can be born again in the place where it died.

There’s also something else that ended at the Chicago convention of 1968. It’s not entirely parochial to remember that it was the last hurrah for a phenomenon of huge importance in our own history: the Irish-American political machine. The 1968 convention was supposed to be its apotheosis. It turned out to be its nemesis. And this, too, has continuing consequences in US politics.

If you travelled to Chicago in 1968, you could not have avoided a famous name and a jowly face reminding you that you were entering a feudal fiefdom. From O’Hare airport onwards into the hotels and streetscapes, signs proclaimed “Mayor Daley Welcomes You to Chicago” and “You Have Arrived in Daley Country”.

The Kennedys – glamorous, eloquent, tragic, progressive – were the heroic side of Irish Catholic politics in the US. But Richard J Daley – squat, double-chinned, tongue-tied, meaner than a junkyard dog – was the side the Irish emigrant’s bread was buttered on. He was the last great operative of the Democratic Party’s urban machines that processed........

© The Irish Times