Editing Political machine (section)

==Evaluation==
The phrase is considered derogatory "because it suggests that the interest of the organization are placed before those of the general public", according to Safire. Machines are criticized as undemocratic and inevitably encouraging corruption.<ref name=safire/>

Since the 1960s, some historians have reevaluated political machines, considering them corrupt but efficient. Machines were undemocratic but responsive. They were also able to contain the spending demands of special interests. In ''Mayors and Money'', a comparison of municipal government in Chicago and New York, [[Ester R. Fuchs]] credited the [[Cook County Democratic Organization]] with giving Mayor [[Richard J. Daley]] the political power to deny [[labor union]] contracts that the city could not afford and to make the state government assume burdensome costs like [[Welfare (financial aid)|welfare]] and courts. Describing New York, Fuchs wrote, "New York got reform, but it never got good government." At the same time, as Dennis R. Judd and Todd Swanstrom suggest in ''City Politics'' that this view accompanied the common belief that there were no viable alternatives. They go on to point out that this is a falsehood, since there are certainly examples of reform oriented, anti-machine leaders during this time.

In his mid-2016 article "How American Politics Went Insane" in ''[[The Atlantic]]'', [[Jonathan Rauch]] argued that the political machines of the past had flaws but provided better governance than the alternatives. He wrote that political machines created positive incentives for politicians to work together and compromise – as opposed to pursuing "naked self-interest" the whole time.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/|title=How American Politics Went Insane|author=Jonathan Rauch|publisher=[[The Atlantic]]|date=June 2016|access-date=January 31, 2018|author-link=Jonathan Rauch}}</ref>