The behavior outlined in the Blagojevich indictment is so outrageous, and so hard to grasp on any logical level, it has left highly articulate people grasping for words to describe it -- and him.
"I have a hard time pronouncing his name," David Gergen told Anderson Cooper. "I just call him 'The Idiot'."
And I'm sure that Gergen, a man not normally given to name calling, didn't mean it in a Dostoevskian way. Indeed, Rod Blagojevich is the polar opposite of the author's Prince Myshkin, a man of pure virtue.
As Blago might say: Fuck that! Who needs virtue when there is money to be made shaking down anyone looking to do business with Illinois?
Rep. Jan Schakowsky searched for "a clinically appropriate word" to describe the greedy Governor's profane pathology -- finally settling on "crazy." This was her way of saying that there is no rational explanation for a guy who has been under federal investigation for three years, and has reason to believe his calls are being monitored, using his home phone to rant and rave and cook up dirty deals.
Dr. Schakowsky's opinion is in keeping with previous diagnoses rendered on Rod. It's like an old vaudeville routine:
"The governor is a crook."
"I demand a second opinion!"
"Okay, he's crazy, too."
In a lengthy February 2008 dissection of Blagojevich entitled "Mr. Unpopularity," Chicago magazine described the governor (or quoted others describing him) as "paranoid," "bonkers," a "madman," "insane," filled with "delusions of grandeur," and a "sociopath."
Blagojevich's serial sleaziness wasn't about alleviating what the governor called his family's "financial stress." Indeed, to understand what it was about, we must turn to literature and philosophy -- the only way to get a handle on this political Tony Soprano, a Big Machine capo with a little boy's haircut.
As my compatriot Heraclitus put it so succinctly 2,500 years ago: "Character is destiny."
Look at Blagojevich's life and his checkered tenure as Governor, and the amorality that led him to hang a For Sale sign on the Illinois statehouse door seems to have been part of his character for a very long time: he was a 78-page criminal indictment waiting to happen.
He married into a politically powerful Chicago family, a union that helped take him from a nobody prosecutor trying traffic court cases ("Running a red light is fucking golden. You think I'm gonna let you off for fucking nothing? I'm not gonna do it.") to the governor's mansion in little more than a decade. Soon after taking office, he began delivering favors to those willing to fill his campaign coffers.
As Shakespeare had Cassius lay it out for Brutus: "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves." And George Meredith described the psychological framework that set the stage for Rod Blagojevich's undoing: "Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what is false within."
But unlike recent fallen politicians such as John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer, Blagojevich's spinning passions were not circling his groin -- although he did once brag of his "testicular virility" in standing up to his father-in-law.
When the details of the indictment broke, I wondered where were the people in his life who could have staged an intervention and cried, "Stop!"? Where was his wife?
Then we found out: she was taking part in two-hour conference calls, discussing the selling of Obama's senate seat. Turns out that Patti Blagojevich was Rod's partner in crime -- and profanity. "Hold up that fucking Cubs shit," she suggested, scheming for a way to punish the Tribune's owners for the paper's critical coverage. "Fuck them!"
Countering Heraclitus, Freud contended "anatomy is destiny," suggesting that gender is the primary determinant of our behavior. But, clearly, Patti was not a woman suffering from subpoena envy. Indeed, before Patrick Fitzgerald lowered the boom this week, many reporters and politicos were predicting that Patti, up to her neck in questionable real estate deals with big contributors to her hubby (including some with Tony Rezko), would be indicted before Rod. You know what they say: The family that "pays-to-play" together...
The Blago clan obviously took this to heart. According to Chicago magazine, federal prosecutors "have been looking into the mysterious $1,500 check that Blagojevich's longtime friend Michael Ascaridis gave to the governor's then seven-year-old daughter, Amy, right around the time Ascaridis's wife received a state job."
One thing is certain: Rod Blagojevich is not a student of history. Since the 1970s, three governors of Illinois have been convicted of corruption charges, including the man who preceded Blagojevich in office, George Ryan, who is currently better known as Federal Inmate Number 16627-424. He is serving time in a medium security facility in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Probably not the location Blago had in mind when he said: "I can parachute me there."
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Patti Blagojevich is complaining about "the incredible bias of the press in this state" in a blog comment. Wow.
I am delighted with the Huffington Post. What a well designed web site. Really Arianna you and your staff have done an outstanding job with this web site and I would very much like to become part of the
editorial staff. Please email me with information. Happy new year.
Swiss-Ski
I seem to have been busy lately and haven't been commenting as much as usual. An oversight I intend to correct in the new year.
The reason I am writing to you now is to wish you, and all my favorite writers at Huff Post and the people whose comments aren't loaded with hatred, one eyed bigots, etc, etc. A very wonderful Christmas and a madly successful New Year. And I will read you in the New Year!
Cheers
Venise
Does anyone have a copy of David Hare's "The Sociopath's Checklist" nearby on their nightstand?
Blago's corruption is small-time: a million bucks for a senate seat - & practically harmless in its impact.
(Because his nominee would undoubtedly have come from a well-known, successful Democratic elected official. For example, rumors are that Jesse Jackson Jr. pledged Blago to raise a million for Blago's next campaign.)
By comparison, St. Louis millionaire Sam Fox helped the Bush reelection campaign fund the "Swift Boat Liars Against Kerry" for at least a quarter-million dollars - helping put BushCo. within range of stealing Ohio in that 2004 election.
The Wiley brothers' donations to Bush campaigns have been even more damaging. Those donations helped Bush take massive state lottery, pension, library, and other multimillion dollar funds & put them into private, autocratic, kleptocratic management hands.
But all that is easily topped by Harry Reid & Nancy Pelosi, who - with all the evidence that 8 years of Bush-GOP tax-cuts have WRECKED the US Economy - not only do ___NOTHING___ to CONFRONT that budget-busting treasury larceny, but have ADDED TO IT, handing (how much?) one, two, THREE TRILLION DOLLARS of "BAILOUT" funds over to former Goldman-Sachs Chairman Hank Paulson's tender mercies,
Emperor Paulson handing those funds to his friends in secret fashion, & Pelosi & Reid can't even haul the #$%*!! Treasury Secretary in to Congress to ask him why, out of all those billions of taxpayer dollars, he can't find a lousy $15 billion to rescue the auto companies & Detroit!
__"Blagojevich’s alleged crimes pale next to the larger scandals of Washington and Wall Street. Yet those who promoted and condoned the twin national catastrophes of reckless war in Iraq and reckless gambling in our markets have largely escaped the accountability that now seems to await the Chicago punk nabbed by the United States attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald."__
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/opinion/14rich.html
The end justifies the means.
So what's a little collateral damage.
No cost too little for a pay back.
Sounds lke good solid reasons. Yuck, your all a bit sick.
I am hoping that all the cockroaches all over the country are going to have their nests stirred up. And then the can of Raid shows up!
Focusing on the Senate seat charge (clearly the charge behind the attempts to remove him), on what basis can a court find him unfit now? As far as we know, although there is evidence that Blogojevich wanted to sell the seat, there's no evidence (yet) that he actually tried to. He may be on the hook for conspiracy, based on the conversations he had with his own staff, but does that make him unfit? Besides, the Illinois law which allows a court to unseat a governor was intended to deal with situations of physical or mental incapacity. Who's going to testify that Blogojevich is nuts? No psychiatrist has examined him. Anyway, if what Blogojevich said he wanted to do was crazy, then half the country belongs in asylums.
Impeachment? On what evidence? Same problem.
At this point, I see no legal basis to convict, remove or impeach him.
Democrats want him out of there so Obama gets a clean start. But dealing rationally with the situation would be helpful. All this talk only makes things worse.
Speaking of talk, what is Fitzgerald doing characterizing what Blagojevich did in press conferences, without even using the word "alleged"? Fitzgerald has violated court rules, and probably made it harder for Blagojevich to get a fair trial - which may mean he never does get tried. Why did Fitzpatrick do that? What are his motives?
There's a lot more to this thing than meets the eye.
Blago was talking big, but, while the way he was talking may seem odd to the average human, what he meant was that he expected people to scratch his back if they expected him to scratch theirs. If that's illegal then the entire American political system is indictable.
When he talked money, he was talking campaign contributions. It's not illegal to ask a political ally to raise money for you in return for a favor. Again, the whole system goes up in flames if that's not allowed.
Finally, when he talked jobs, he was (arguably) lining up employment after he left office. Unseemly, but not illegal. There was no explicit deal-making going on to point anyone toward an indictable offense.
What Fitzgerald did at the press conference is inexcusable. I think he just got over-excited and started running his mouth. It's clear that he was out of his professional comfort zone and a little unsure of how to act. Still, he may very well have damaged his case.