James Warren on the Old Chicago versus the New Chicago.

The disjunction between the city’s national image and reality was underscored by homages to Mr. Rostenkowski, the longtime Congressional titan who died last week at age 82. He was recalled as a tough, master dealmaker without a college education who brought home the pork and used his link to the city’s Democratic machine to create an imposing don’t-mess-with-me aura.

It played to an overriding caricature of Chicago: bad winters, Al Capone, slimy politics, the lovable loser Cubs. It can be found in the lame narrative advanced by critics of Mr. Obama and his top aides, which portrays them as products of a nefarious, indigenous "Chicago way" of politics in which backstabbing is a fine art.

Lost in the Rostenkowski coverage was this: He came from a very different Chicago than that of Mr. Obama, whose Harvard pedigree, sophistication, itinerant past and cerebral cool are far more in sync with the reality of this new, little-understood city.

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Coincidentally, much of the transformation of the city followed Mr. Rostenkowski’s departure from public office after a 1994 criminal indictment and an election defeat. Under his patron’s son, Mayor Richard M. Daley, the city began replacing a dying industrial economy with one built on information. Its exchanges now trade in foreign currencies, insurance risks and other complex uncertainties, not just soybeans, wheat and corn. Not even most Chicagoans understand the vivid symbolism of how the Sears Tower is now the Willis Tower, while the Standard Oil Building, the city’s fourth tallest, is Aon Center. Aon and Willis are the world’s largest and third-largest reinsurers.

THERE remains too much grinding poverty, too much violence and too many pols like Rod R. Blagojevich, the impeached former governor of Illinois. Still, the state has less public corruption than Florida, at least according to the Justice Department. And Saskia Sassen of Columbia University, an expert in the rise of so-called global cities, ranks Chicago as the fifth most important one economically, after New York, London, Tokyo and Singapore.

As someone who has lived here since the late 1970s, I find it pretty easy to see the change. All you have to do is walk through Millennium Park, a 24.5-acre downtown space mixing sculpture, architecture (Renzo Piano, Frank Gehry) and a video-adorned fountain. It’s by far the most democratic space in what remains the most segregated Northern city.

The print edition ends here. Online it continues:

Or take in the remade lakefront, the Lazarus-like downtown (with more high-rises built since 1998 than exist in total in Detroit, St. Louis or Milwaukee), the revival of community through a vast expansion of public libraries. There’s also, of course, the elevation to the White House of a Chicagoan and some shrewd and sophisticated former Richard M. Daley associates, notably David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, senior advisers, and Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff.

For sure, one cannot separate Mr. Rostenkowski from his Capitol Hill legacy. "There won’t be one like him again. He was a master of a system that’s been blown apart," said Jim McDermott, an 11-term Democratic representative from Seattle and a Chicago native who served with Mr. Rostenkowski on Ways and Means.

Mr. McDermott joked about some loud sweaters -- "they’re not chichi San Francisco colors" -- he retains as mementos from the weekend retreats Mr. Rostenkowski held for the entire Ways and Means Committee, Democrats and Republicans, whom he sought to fashion into a self-perceived elite. They listened to academics and other experts, talked shop and did heavy socializing. Broaching such a gathering these days is a nonstarter.

The concept of working together is by and large gone, Mr. McDermott argued, first blaming Republicans under Newt Gingrich for their mid-1990s-inspired partisanship, then conceding that Democrats "acted just like the Republicans" when they took over.

But there’s another Rostenkowski legacy, perhaps now echoed by Representative Charles B. Rangel, a Rostenkowski acolyte who stepped down as Ways and Means chairman to fight accusations of ethical violations. Too much power infused both men with a sense of entitlement. Each looked like a deer in the headlights when charges of misdeeds were leveled.

Change can be swift, even if not fully appreciated. It happens with individual politicians, and great cities, too.

Sam Stein reports Giannoulias vows to create Senate Progressive Caucus if elected.

What's curious about Giannoulias' move leftward is the timing. He's already cleared the hurdle of the primary campaign. And while Illinois is a decidedly liberal state, there doesn't appear to be any demands on him to cater to this crowd. If anything, Kirk's evolution from Republican moderate to reliable conservative (his waffling and ultimate opposition to a state aid bill being the most recent example) has provided Giannoulias an opening to vie for independent votes.

The calculus, in the end, might be that the Democratic base needs motivation. Among party activists and voters there has been intense frustration over the ability of Senate Republicans to obstruct legislative progress and the capacity of a handful of conservative Democrats to enable them. Giannoulias is exaggerating the power that the Progressive Caucus has over House politics (the caucus, while large in numbers, has lost several high-profile battles with Blue Dogs this year). But his pledge to organize Senate progressives will resonate with those who believe that the procedural processes are inherently weighted toward political moderation.