So a reader emailed me and asked for my take on this whole governor of Illinois getting arrested for being corrupt thing.
My take is this: it is only newsworthy because something is happening to him.
Yes, Rob Blagowhatever (I’m not going to bother trying to learn to spell it properly) is corrupt as fuck, and his misdeeds (including, most recently, trying to secretly auction off Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder) are amazingly venal and self-serving. The problem is that in any system of government of a reasonable size, this is inevitably going to happen – it happens in dictatorships, in monarchies, and in democracies. The longer somebody is in the top dog position, the more they will come to realize the innumerable number of ways they can use their power to benefit themselves over the long (or even medium) term, and the longer they will have to succumb to temptation.
Anybody familiar with the career of, say, Rudy Giuliani, Pete Wilson or Jean Chretien knows that Blagowhatever’s venality is far from uncommon. The best we can hope for is that they aren’t too greedy and that they do, in fact, have some interest in promoting the public good while they get theirs. (Chretien might have been a greedy bastard, but he ended his career using every last ounce of political fuck-you he had to get gay marriage rights passed in Canada, and for that he will always have my grudging respect.)
This, in a nutshell, is the argument for term limits.
Of course, the argument against term limits is equally simple: you need people who know what they’re doing in any sufficiently complex system, and government is a more complex system than most. Having a few corrupt bastards around is a relatively small price to pay for having a functional government that can respond well to emergencies and generally serves the public well. Blagowhatever is simply an example of a politician who vastly overestimated the public’s tolerance of his bullshit (and, perhaps more importantly, the tolerance of the movers and shakers upon whom he depended for his political livelihood). He wasn’t the first; he won’t be the last.
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The part that is really amazing is that this is our second consecutive governor to end up indicted for corruption (I am an Illinois resident). Everyone saw Blago getting indicted for awhile now – it’s just whether or not it was going to happen during the presidential race or not.
This, of course, leads to my idea to have a CBS reality show called “Two’s a Crowd”, in which former Illinois Gov. George Ryan and Gov. Blago are cellmates. Each week, Gov. Ryan will (probably) sell Blago for a pack of cigarettes or a poster of Raquel Welch. This also leads to a number of great gambling opportunities (what will Gov. Ryan get for Blago this week, how long will it take until Blago cries, etc.) that, in all probability, at least one of the two men will try profit from.
That puts us at 2 out of 2 on the “Illinois governors arrested during my political lifetime” count. Any bets on whether Fitzgerald goes for a hat trick?
As another Illinois resident, what really gets me is he was WELL aware of the fact that the feds where listing in on him, but he flat out said there was nothing they could do to him. The man has balls, I’ve give him that.
You’d think he’d try for AFTER the inauguration when all the hot press about Obama has died down a touch. Jeez.
Two consecutive indicted gov’s here in IL, and the two before them almost certainly were just as corrupt–they were just more deft at hiding the evidence and didn’t have a U.S. Attorney willing to do what it takes to take down the corrupt. (Frex, the whole “drivers licenses for bribes” thing that brought down George Ryan likely actually started under Jim Edgar, but they couldn’t make the charges stick.)
Blago is acting like a Democratic version of George W. Bush–since the people reelected him, that means he can do darn well whatever he pleases.
I can only hope that Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn gets to take over sooner rather than later, so we can have a governor who doesn’t think (as Ryan, Blago, and Topinka did) that he has a God-given right to the job of governor. (Quinn is also apparently a genuinely nice guy, who has, by choice, attended every funeral or close to it for Illinois soldiers killed in Iraq & Afghanistan.)
And I hope Obama lets Fitzgerald keep on doing his job cleaning house as U.S. Attorney, as I’m sure the leadership of both parties will be lobbying for Obama to promote Fitzgerald into the AG’s office so that someone a little less gung-ho can be put in his place here…
Heh, here in AZ we just kick ’em out. And now with Napolitano heading to DC to take over Homeland Security, we’ll have our 3rd L.G. to Governor in twenty years. Don’t know why we even bother with elections…
There are 3 ways a politician can screw up: he can be corrupt, he can be incompetent, or he can be an idealogue.But people will put up with one, or even two of those flaws- you really have to get the full hat trick before everyone turns on you (I’m looking in YOUR direction, Dubya).If Blago were up for re-election tommorrow, most people wouldn’t give a damn about his blatant corruption if he was keeping the trains running on time.
The true extent of Blago’s hubris is terrifying; how warped must his thought process have been to imagine he could position himself for a presidential bid in 2016?
As a newcomer to Chicago, every newspaper and news update for the last six months has featured the news on the Governor being under investigation. I mean _EVERY_ news feature.
So this was just stupid. Forget the fact that he was completely corrupt, he was utterly incompetent. If he didn’t know that he was under investigation? Than he deserves to go to jail.
Rumor is he was trying to get as much of this sort of shenanigans in as he could before new ethics laws kick in on January 1.
Way to excel there, Rod.
I don’t know that I’d agree that every politician inevitably becomes corrupt…well, scratch that. I don’t know that I’d agree that every politician inevitably becomes corrupt *to this degree*. I think that yes, over a lifetime of service in public office, every politician gives in to temptation a little, lets something slide he/she shouldn’t or uses his influence for someone he/she knows personally…
But I think that this is a degree of venality and sheer staggering sleaze that is pretty exceptional even by the standards of politics. ISTR someone saying about Nixon, “There is a certain amount of corruption that we are prepared to tolerate in all our elected officials, but there is also a line that we will not let them cross.”
you need people who know what they’re doing in any sufficiently complex system, and government is a more complex system than most.
Existing federal agencies already do this. There are a significant number of bureaucrats whose experience in their role transcends several presidents. This isn’t an argument against term limits.
This development utterly does not surprise me. Midwestern politics aren’t as squeaky clean as the pols profess(see: The Blunts, the Carnahans, the Daleys, the Clays, etc.). As cynical as it sounds, favor networks and dynasties seem to be inevitable despite term limits.
Well, we have crooked politicians in Philadelphia, but they tend to be better at covering themselves. I wouldn’t promise Ed Rendell would never sell a political appointment, but he wouldn’t be dumb enough to get caught so blatantly as Blago.