CHICAGO--Even those most cynical about politics here, who buy intothe facile notion that nothing is legit, are moved to demurely ask,"Do you fu**ing believe this?"
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich seems to have pulled his own Guantanamo;blindfolding himself to all playing out around him. As a result, weall have a graduate school primer on how so much of politics work, andan ultimate challenge facing Barack Obama.
Since 2004, there have been many reports about criminal investigationsinto the nitty gritty of the Illinois system, which one columnist seesas nefariously run by an interlocking group of private and publicbigwigs he tags The Combine. They've focused on appointments to stateboards, the seeking of contracts, lobbying fees and the steering ofpension fund business, among other routine acts.
At the center are agencies that are both little known to the generalpublic and critical to the mundane but high-stakes decisions ofgovernment most anywhere. They make decisions about whether a hospitalcan expand, who'll get lucrative bond business and on lettingcontracts for everything from highway concrete to toll road pizzaparlors.
The governor, whose predecessor is doing time in what the countrysingers call the Crossbar Motel, knew full well that 13 people in andaround state government have been indicted or convicted, and about howkey fundraisers and even his own wife had been implicated (due toquestions about real estate commissions she received frompolitically-connected clients). And, yet, he vented and bragged andplotted on his home telephone even after word got out that he wasbeing secretly tape-recorded.
In so doing, he apparently forgot about the wondrous, ancillarybenefits of public parks, expansive parking lots and dank alleys. Evenin this age of declining personal privacy, they do afford the TonySopranos of the world a chance to discreetly transact their business.
But there was the governor on the phone, padding the coffers of Sprintor AT&T, while exhibiting a seemingly remarkable mix of recklessness,compulsiveness, vanity and hubris.
If Abe Lincoln wasn't necessarily rolling in his grave, as U.S.Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald suggested was the case with an image bothvivid and banal, you can imagine the clicking of heels in at least theChicago FBI office as they listened to audio far surpassing anythingto be found on the financially beleaguered combine of Sirius and XMradio.
And, at the heart of it all, is money -- as is the case in about 49other states, regardless of all the television chatter Tuesday about apeculiarly "Chicago" brand of corruption.
Whatever the sources of the governor's angst (perhaps significantlegal fees from the tony law firm he's now ditched), the obsessionwith how to "monetize" his post-political life was as unabashed as hisseeming desire to beat an imminent new state ethics law. The law wouldmake the so-called pay-to-play schemes harder and limit politicalcontributions by those doing state business.
What he reveals is a rather commonplace craving of a few too many inpublic life. They get to party with the high and mighty, even impacttheir lives, but never really feel part of the club, of the truepropertied class. They sit in their executive offices, with so manynice perks but without the filthy lucre they see possessed bythose of equal, maybe clearly inferior, acumen.
"Where's mine?" they say.
And that brings us to Obama.
By most accounts, the Obama-Blagojevich relationship is a cool one.And, for sure, one can imagine many in the Obama camp thumbing theirnoses at the governor and his somewhat craven, tacky ways; all ofwhich give the aura of an early, too cute-by-half David Mamet hustler.
They are, after all, emblems of a new politics.
Sincerely wish them luck when they get to Washington and face the mostpotent force in the District of Columbia: the lobbyist- and lawyer-ledstatus quo. It's an army enriched by generic PowerPoint presentations,Rolodexes of decades-old chums and quid-pro-quos, and many a latedinner in a Capital Grille corner booth.
And many of their names are probably to be found on the mile-long listof Obama contributors, part of that record-busting grand total of $750million. They are nothing if not pragmatic.
And just like Rod Blagojevich knows that a vacant U.S. Senate seat is"a fucking valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing,"these folks know the value of access, influence and changing -- or notchanging -- laws and regulations. Obama will see many of their faces ashe looks up from his TelePrompter at the Inauguration.
They are the many other reasons for Honest Abe to be rolling.