A surprising number of the Chicagoans I met in Washington, on hearing of my interest in their growing ranks within the Obama Administration, delivered the same punch line to a well-worn story about home. Sixty years ago, when a future U.S. congressman and federal judge named Abner Mikva tried to volunteer at his South Side ward office, the boss there asked him, “Who sent you?” After the young Mikva admitted no one had, he was rebuffed: “We don’t want nobody nobody sent.” By reciting this kicker, the Chicagoans were staking their own claim to the city’s pugnacious political history while…