{"id":906,"date":"2008-09-22T08:32:54","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T08:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/?p=906"},"modified":"2014-01-06T12:51:43","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T12:51:43","slug":"book-review-call-me-mike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/2008\/09\/22\/book-review-call-me-mike\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Call Me Mike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Call Me Mike: A Political Biography of Michael V. DiSalle<\/em>. By Richard G. Zimmerman. Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2003.xi, 322 pp. $34.00, ISBN 0-87338-755-4.<\/p>\n

In the years since his death in 1981, Michael V. DiSalle, the Ohio city mayor and state governor, and director of the Office of Price Stabilization under President Harry Truman, has received little extensive examination. He deserves more. Born in 1908 to Italian immigrants living in a New York tenement, Michael\u2019s father soon moved the family to the Midwestern industrial city of Toledo. There young Michael worked at many short-lived jobs before rapidly moving up the political ranks to city, state, and national office. After graduating from Georgetown University, he passed the Ohio bar exam and practiced law in Toledo. Meanwhile, local politics proved attractive in the suffering environment of the Great Depression, suggesting to him, as to New Dealers, that a compassionate government could lighten life\u2019s burdens for people. In 1936 he carried that liberal passion into his successful campaign to become a Democratic member of the Ohio House of Representatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The following twelve years brought positions as Toledo\u2019s assistant law director, five terms as a city councilman, two terms as vice-mayor, and one term as mayor of the city that many still called the \u201cglass capital of the world.\u201d Students of city government will find a Toledo councilman and mayor who was effective in calming industrial relations in a city noted for labor strife and, later, in bringing it financial stability. Reelected as mayor in 1950, DiSalle resigned shortly thereafter to become the United States\u2019 \u201cprice czar,\u201d a highly visible and difficult job that earned him good marks and in early 1951 placed him on the cover of\u00a0Time<\/em>\u00a0magazine. Defeated in a run for the Ohio U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Old Guard conservative John W. Bricker during the Eisenhower landslide in 1952, he returned to the practice of law in Toledo, was defeated again in a state election, this time for governor, but won on his second try, in 1958, and became Ohio\u2019s sixtieth governor. Decisively defeating incumbent William O\u2019Neill, the country-wide economic recession and heavy labor support in opposition to O\u2019Neill\u2019s backing of a right-to-work referendum were key factors contributing to the Democratic landslide. DiSalle was the first to serve as governor for a four-year term, before meeting defeat at the hands of Republican James A. Rhodes, who branded his opponent \u201cTax Hike Mike\u201d and went on to become Ohio\u2019s longest serving governor.<\/p>\n

In fifteen chapters Richard Zimmerman takes us through DiSalle\u2019s battles and accomplishments in these various positions before concluding with three others on his life in Washington, D.C., that included a brief, unhappy stint as chief administrator of the planned city project of Reston, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, D.C.), and establishing a private law practice in the nation\u2019s capital, where his work habits may be described as relaxed. Son of an Ohio Supreme Court Justice, a reporter for the\u00a0Dayton Journal Herald<\/em>\u00a0in the 1960s, and later, a national correspondent and Washington bureau chief for the\u00a0Cleveland Plain Dealer<\/em>, Zimmerman is well positioned to make this study. He knew DiSalle up close and over the years came to respect the rotund politician (5\u2019 5\u201d and upwards of 230 pounds) as a public servant, writing in his book,\u00a0Plain Dealing: Ohio Politics and Journalism Viewed from the Press Gallery<\/em>, that DiSalle \u201cmost influenced my concept of what government should and could accomplish to better the lives of citizens. He also taught me that politicians need not always be self-serving, loutish boobs but could be capable of genuine, selfless friendship\u201d (p. 15). This appreciative attitude does not prevent Zimmerman from chronicling \u201cMike\u201d in an even-handed way. Many others, too, saw the Ohio governor as a likeable and caring man, who they admired for his generosity and loyalty.<\/p>\n

For decades Ohio has not been counted among the nation\u2019s more progressive states. A lengthy list of governors, including Democrats like Martin Davey and Frank Lausche, and Republicans such as John Bricker, Thomas Herbert, and C. William O\u2019Neill had buckled with unnecessary enthusiasm to the low-tax, low-spending and pro-business sentiments of rural Ohioans and corporate interests. DiSalle came in near the end of Ohio\u2019s post-World War II economic prosperity before losses in its industrial base wreaked havoc on worker income and urban development. Population growth and new plant investment stagnated. Underfunding of state services for children, the mentally handicapped, and aged had long been chronic. It is to Governor DiSalle\u2019s credit that he attempted to reverse the penurious policies of his predecessors, beginning with a modest tax increase that he pushed through the legislature in hopes of improving the state\u2019s welfare system. The policies of this innovative, moderately liberal politician, together with his combative relationship with legislators and newspaper chieftains, and his vocal opposition to the death penalty, were key factors in his failed bid for reelection.<\/p>\n

Coverage of DiSalle\u2019s pursuit and conduct of the governor\u2019s office constitutes half \u2013 the most important half \u2013 of this biography.\u00a0Its biggest drawback is the author\u2019s over reliance on newspapers for material. Though excellent primary sources, they are frequently inadequate. For example, the full story of how the Kennedys in 1959-1960 badgered DiSalle into becoming the first major state governor to endorse John F. Kennedy\u2019s presidential ambitions remains to be told. \u00a0Zimmerman gives the matter a fair hearing, acknowledging that the Ohio governor \u201cmay have been all but blackmailed\u201d (p. 192). \u00a0Yet I suspect there is more to learn about the heavy pressures put on him to endorse Kennedy early in the presidential campaign. Oral interviews with living insiders would have been helpful.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, too, the author is reduced to using words such as \u201cit may be presumed\u201d and \u201cno doubt,\u201d when additional research might have supplied answers. One example is the yet unwritten story of DiSalle\u2019s troubled and (literally) distant marriage. Even though a \u201cpolitical\u201d biography, Zimmerman offers tantalizing information on this unhappy matter, as well as his relationship with his secretary and his subsequent liberated lifestyle. Readers will want to know more. The same holds for DiSalle\u2019s death in a hotel on the Adriatic coast of Italy, about which the author appears content with what he acknowledges is \u201ca primly sanitized version\u201d supplied by \u201ca discreet hotel official\u201d (p. 278).<\/p>\n

If this is not a definitive study of Michael V. DiSalle, it is one readers will enjoy and all future scholars will need to consult.<\/p>\n

Ronald Lora, Ph.D.<\/em>
\nThe University of Toledo<\/em><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Call Me Mike: A Political Biography of Michael V. DiSalle. By Richard G. Zimmerman. Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2003.xi, 322 pp. $34.00, ISBN 0-87338-755-4. In the years since his death in 1981, Michael V. DiSalle, the Ohio city mayor and state governor, and director of the Office of Price Stabilization under President … Continue reading Book Review: Call Me Mike<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1622,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39906],"tags":[42006,41994,41990,18770,41986],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-volume-5-issue-1-spring-2008","tag-5-1","tag-biography","tag-michael-disalle","tag-review","tag-ronald-lora"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1622"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":910,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions\/910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/nojh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}