The Man Who Wouldn't Be Vice President

By MARGARET CARLSON

William Daley called his top aides into his fifth-floor conference room at the Commerce Department last Thursday and told them how excited he was the night before. For one brief moment, he thought that Al Gore had called to pop the question about the vice-presidential slot. Why else phone after midnight? Alas, Gore was calling on Daley to play a more familiar role: 911 man for the Administration. Saying yes to campaign chair would take Daley off Gore's short list for Veep, but frankly, so would saying no. So on July 15, Daley will give up his elegant office across from the White House with its Teddy Roosevelt portrait, massive fireplace in use much of the year and staff of 30,000 watching everything from the weather to the census, all for a cubicle in Nashville to shore up a shaky campaign.

If anyone can rise to the task, it's Daley. Born on Chicago's South Side, a son of the legendary Mayor Richard Daley, he ran the 1989 campaign that elected his older brother to that job. He has been pulling Clinton's coals out of the fire since 1992, when he flew to Clinton's side in New Hampshire just as the draft and Gennifer Flowers threatened to doom the candidate. Later he delivered Illinois to Clinton-Gore.

Daley was rewarded for his efforts with...nothing. Many thought him a shoo-in for the first Clinton Cabinet. But the President wanted a team that looked like America, and despite a smile as wide as the Illinois prairie and feet firmly in the heartland, Daley didn't fit the bill. But Daley looked enough like America to be asked to salvage NAFTA in 1993, when the Administration was headed for an embarrassing defeat. The job was a killer. It lacked Cabinet status, had no staff and had less than a third of the Democrats in support. He jumped right in. Former U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor remembers that even before Daley had a desk, he was placing calls from a bench in Lafayette Park, across from the Oval Office. He relied on the arm-twisting and schmoozing skills implanted in his DNA. And Windy City theatrics: with great fanfare, he gathered three former Presidents for an East Room rally boosting the treaty. It passed.

In 1996, when Democrats returned to Chicago, Daley pulled off a dazzling convention, erasing the memory of the strife-torn 1968 debacle that for a generation had haunted his city, his party and his family. In 1996, after Ron Brown's tragic death, Clinton turned to Daley to pick up the pieces of the Commerce Department. The post wasn't the usual rescue operation but the fulfillment of a dream born when, as a 12-year-old, Daley visited J.F.K.'s White House and sat at the Cabinet table. He loved the job.

While Daley is a strict taskmaster--he is at his neat desk at 7 a.m., fires people who don't measure up and gets even quietly--he's a popular boss. He dines at his desk off Styrofoam, rides up front with the driver of his government car and thinks a perfect night on the town is a thick steak at the Palm with his son William Jr. (A second son died of lung disease when he was eight years old.) He's a neighbor of Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Fred Thompson in a downtown condo and visits his wife and two daughters in Chicago on weekends. Unlike some others in the Administration, Daley likes to throw on a tux and socialize with the Washington establishment. A colleague recalls Daley's sunny disposition failing him only once, when a G.O.P. House member suggested that the Census shouldn't be allowed to use a sampling technique because creating phantom people ran in the Daley family, a reference to the charge that as mayor, William's father raided Chicago's cemeteries for J.F.K. votes in 1960. Daley usually gets along with the opposing party. Rich Williamson, the Illinois G.O.P. chair, says his former law partner so impressed Senate Republicans that they have removed Commerce from their demolition list.

Taking on the toughest tasks in the darkest moments, seeking no credit and little reward, Daley is a type rare in Washington: hardworking, discreet, modest and loyal. Gore has dialed the right number. Now he had better listen.