Welcome to the Blagosphere

In little more than a month, the mainstream media tells us, the city of Chicago has plunged from the proud heights of victory to the depths of shame. Barack Obama, its favorite son, captured the presidency with high-minded talk of reform, only to have Rod Blagojevich, the governor of Illinois, turn the nation's stomach with foul-mouthed dreams -- as alleged in an FBI affidavit -- of selling off the president-elect's Senate seat.

So why are some of my liberal friends in Chicago giddy? Because they've always disliked Mr. Blagojevich, a man who owes his career partly to family connections and partly to being the lesser of two evils. Because they have no use for some of the other bright lights of local Democratic politics -- from patronage hacks to the family that managed to pass the presidency of the Cook County Board from father to son. Because they hope U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald goes right on indicting, even if the biggest trophies on his wall turn out to be local Democrats.

To understand their reaction, take a look through the 76-page affidavit against Mr. Blagojevich. As I was choking my way through this remarkable document, I happened to spy my copy of Reinventing Government, the old handbook of the Clinton presidency, and its subtitle leaped out at me: "How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector."

Lord, is it ever! Not in the well-meaning ways that book's authors intended, of course, but Mr. Blagojevich is nothing if not entrepreneurial. If the affidavit is to be believed, the man intuits the cold ways of the market as well as any Nobel Prize-winning economist from Hyde Park. A seat in the U.S. Senate, in his immortal words, "is a [very!] valuable thing, you don't just give it away for nothing."

The schemes Blago allegedly invented to "monetize" his public authority, while never rising to the sophistication of, say, a credit default swap, still showed a cunning that would command the respect of any Wall Street Ponzi master. The governor allegedly speculated about trading the Senate seat for the job of energy secretary because, as "Deputy Governor A" helpfully informed him, that was the cabinet position "that makes the most money" -- by which he almost certainly did not mean that it carried the greatest salary. Blago also apparently cooked up a plan in which a labor organization would create a highly paid position for him in exchange for the seat.

The governor's fondest idea was allegedly to trade the Senate seat for a 501(c)4 organization that he believed the country's best-known billionaires would graciously fund and that he would get to lead. And why not? Washington is filled with advocacy groups funded by the very wealthy that sometimes appear to be little more than retirement homes for political favorites.

The right has been gloating about the alleged Blagojevich villainy because it interrupts, in spectacular fashion, a long stretch in which most of the Beltway scandal-makers had an "R" after their names. Besides, this would-be mega-grafter comes from the same city and the same party as the hated Mr. Obama; it's just a matter of time until the right blurs the two into one.

What outsiders seldom grasp about Illinois politics, though, is how bipartisan, how apolitical, the whole reeking thing is. John Kass of the Chicago Tribune, a connoisseur of the region's corruption, refers to it as "the Combine." Republicans run the machine when it's their turn, and then hand the wheel over to Democrats when the public has had enough.

With the exception of the labor scheme, none of Blago's ideas were identifiably liberal. And consider the particular political situation in which he flourished. Campaign contributions are basically unlimited in Illinois, making possible the deals he allegedly dreamed up, each of them so outrageous they reminded Fitzgerald of "a salesman meeting his annual sales target."

Which points us, finally, to the defining idea of machine politics: the conception of the state as a business in which every public function is for sale. "It is good business that causes bad government," a reformer told muckraker Lincoln Steffens over a century ago. When George W. Bush announced that "government should be market-based," he was merely applying an ideological gloss to this ancient and supremely bad idea.

The Blagojevich scandal is widely seen as a heavy blow for the incoming administration, but in fact it's good for Mr. Obama that it happened early on. Blago's alleged acts bring us face-to-face with what's wrong with American politics, and this time it can't just be brushed off as part of a Republican "culture of corruption." It goes far deeper than that. The rot is structural; it is trans-partisan; and it stinks to high heaven.

So let President-elect Obama recruit a thousand Patrick Fitzgeralds. Let him turn them loose on Chicago, on Washington, and on every corner of public life where the market-based ideal still survives. Sic semper tyrannis.

Thomas Frank's column, The Tilting Yard, appears every Wednesday at OpinionJournal.com

Also in Opinion Journal:

R. Glenn Hubbard and Christopher J. Mayer: Low-Interest Mortgages Are the Answer

Review & Outlook: Wait-Listed to Death

Comments

[jdharlem]

Mr. Frank,

Yes. The rot IS structural, as you suggest. But I can't help but wonder: Is it your WSJ audience (or editors) who compel you to indict the "market-place ideal" and not indict "capitalism"? I think we're at an historical moment when this question is not just a matter of semantics.

The world economic meltdown would seem to indicate to any rational mind that contemplates the future state of our democracy, that we DESPERATELY need to start naming the system-- or else we'll drown in the same water we're treading in. After all, even mainstream news weeklies give space to musings on the "death of capitalism"...

It's high time for thinking intellectuals to not shy away from saying what we all know is to be true ...democracy and capitalism, in the 21st century, are NOT compatible.

Yes, the WSJ permits a left leaning platform (just one at a time) in its op-ed pages. You are better than most liberals who came before you ...and you are definitely better than ultra-leftists like A. Cockburn who, I'm convinced, was allowed to pen articles to make all leftists look naive and pompous.

But you, Mr. Frank, familiar, no doubt with the Frankfurt School and/or Critical Theorists have a unique opportunity to be different and conduct a discussion at a unique level of influence.

Carpe Diem, brother ! You have nothing to lose but the pittance Murdoch throws your way each week...

[HyperInfluential]

I'm reminded of the first time I learned what "logrolling" was in a civics class. It's where legislators pledge to support each other's bills without even reading them, just because they owe each other favors. I felt like the floor twisted under my feet when I understood that this was not considered a huge problem that the country was up in arms about, but just how business is done in DC, and everyone is okay with that.

Logrollers don't see their jobs as promoting the general welfare, they think the point is to get the most bills passed with their names on them. Just like the market's Invisible Hand, we were duped into thinking this open quid pro quo legislature would somehow work out for the best through the magic of Compromise.

Thank god for the internet, all of that might really be coming to an end. With this tool, we can sift through massive amounts of data, thousands of individuals looking at a few pages apiece in realtime, picking out the important parts, and funneling the information back to the group as a whole.

It will be hard to hide pork in a bill that's pored over by a wiki community of policy junkies, who can spam their findings to the whole world when they discover corruption. Not to mention the end of the era where you could say different things to different crowds, as Karl Rove used to advocate back in the olden days before YouTube.

[twofish]

I grew up in Chicago and still have some tolerance for a certain level of personal corruption as long as the pols get the job done. Do the streets get plowed in the winter? Does the trash get picked up? Do the streets get repaired? Do the lights stay on? Well, then, a few greased palms are overlooked. But if the job doesn't get done, the heavens fall. By that measure, I suppose what Ted Stevens did in Alaska was small potatoes, since he is said to have directed plenty o' pork to the state.

If we're really going to clamp down on this stuff, we have to include campaign contributions as graft, and get the money out of elections. I just don't see that happening anytime soon.

[Libarchist]

When the economy falls into a depression, which it will -- they will be forced to face it; but unfortunately, they are not qualified to deal with the corruption.