President-elect Obama’s daily visit to the gym at the Regent’s Park apartment building in Chicago ran long on Wednesday.
Perhaps the president-elect was just blasting his abs or catching up on his cardio. But Obama may have just wanted someplace to hole up while his city and state are having a political meltdown.
While he was hitting the gym, Obama was getting ready to send spokesman Robert Gibbs forward not to condemn Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but to second the motion of other Illinois lawmakers that he step aside for the good of the state.
With Blagojevich looking at plenty of time to get buff downstate at the federal prison camp in Marion, it’s understandable that Obama might want to lose himself in a few more sets and reps.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald dropped a 10-megaton bomb on Blagojevich Tuesday. Some Obama backers are breathing sighs of relief that this unsavory character from Obama’s past had been laid low.
And what timing. The ICBM strike on Blagojevich came after the election but before the inauguration. The bust produced neither campaign clouds nor conflicts of interest.
Despite the clamor for Obama to now pile on and further distance himself from Blagojevich, the president-elect played it cool and joined the sober chorus of state politicians expressing high-minded regret at the situation, 10-megaton bomb or not.
They say that only roaches can survive a nuclear blast, but Blagojevich’s hair looks pretty close to a hard exoskeleton.
Blagojevich and Obama are from the opposite poles of the same planet. The Daley Machine once harbored both the high-minded Harvard grad organizing communities on the South Side and the wanna-be gangster squeezing ward bosses in Serbian neighborhoods on the North Side.
In time, Obama rose to be the greatest success the Daleys have ever had, far eclipsing even star pupil Dan Rostenkowski. Obama glided past, and no doubt was protected from, the ugly, mercantile nature of Chicago politics.
Fitzgerald’s filing is instructive. Obama was said to be offering only his “gratitude” if Blagojevich filled the vacated Senate seat with the president-elect’s preferred candidate.
That’s the Harvard way. Favors are done and friends are remembered, but the quid is always tendered before the pro quo is spelled out.
Aides and allies, like the successor to Blagojevich’s seat in Congress, Rahm Emmanuel, can handle people who don’t do things the Harvard way.
At the same time that Obama was soaring in the South Side, Blagojevich was fighting his way, block by block, through the North Side.
In a place where the lines between organized crime and organized politics are sometimes fuzzy, Blagojevich (Lane Technical High and the University of Tampa) couldn’t afford to do things the Harvard way.
The pro quo part had to be on the table before the quid was ever out. Blagojevich has probably seen plenty of people go bust betting on the honor of others, especially his own.
In time, Blagojevich’s bare-knuckled ways became too much even for the Daleys, which is saying something. But by the time the rift had come, Blagojevich had already landed in the governor’s mansion in Springfield.
The man who started as an assistant prosecutor under then-State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley and took over the revered Rostenkowski’s seat in Congress had finally bullied and bartered himself out of all his patrons’ good graces.
Marooned as an unpopular governor, Blagojevich apparently decided to trade on the only thing he had left, Obama’s vacated Senate seat.
And while Blagojevich has been nuked by Fitzgerald, he’s not likely to break the pattern of his life and suddenly develop a sense of shame.
Governor Rod is still governor and still has plenty of tales to tell about the less hopeful and change-oriented aspects of Chicago politics.
Picture Fitzgerald prosecuting a trail with both Blagojevich and “Slumlord Rezko” both on the stand telling wild tales of payoffs and shakedowns.
Obama is wise to stay cool, at least until Blagojevich makes his demand. The president-elect surely knows that this isn’t a moment for the Harvard way.
Chris Stirewalt is the political editor for The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected]
