[Rhodes22-list] POLITICAL-The Good News from Illinois (NYTimes)

[Herb Parsons]

Are you sure that's from the NY Times? I would have thought the last 
line would have been "Besides, it's all George Bush's fault anyway".


Ben Cittadino wrote:
>  Rhodies;
>
> This NYTimes column by one of my favorite contributors is offered as a
> mildly amusing diversion. While the subject is not really funny I suppose,
> sometimes a little gallows humor can get you through the day. Enjoy.
>  
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> December 11, 2008
> Op-Ed Columnist
> The Good News From Illinois 
> By GAIL COLLINS
> These are troubled times when people yearn for diversion. We like stories
> about a simple crisis in which somebody does something incredibly stupid
> that will not cost 100,000 people their jobs. Yet Hollywood starlets and pop
> singers have been unhelpfully quiet. Then, suddenly, there was Rod
> Blagojevich seeking bids for Barack Obama’s Senate seat with all the
> subtlety of a tobacco auctioneer.
>
> That’s the ticket! Now, if only we could indict the economy ...
>
> Feel free to indulge in a little schadenfreude at the expense of the
> governor of Illinois. Sure, the last couple of months have been tough. But
> at least you didn’t have to spend your birthday listening to the nation
> debate whether you were the most corrupt elected official in living memory
> or simply out of your mind.
>
> Some people might wonder why Blagojevich chose to say potentially
> incriminating things like “I want to make money” over the telephone at a
> time when he knew he was the subject of multiple federal investigations.
> Perhaps his legal problems sent him off into his own little world. There he
> was, sitting around the house in his blue jogging suit, dipping into
> delusions of grandeur in which the empty Senate seat becomes a magic key to
> a Cabinet post, a big-money job for the missus, the presidency in 2016. 
>
> Lord knows we’ve all been tempted to retreat into fantasyland when things
> get rough. Really, the only thing saving us from succumbing was the lack of
> a Senate seat to sell.
>
> Those of us who do not live in Illinois had generally not given much thought
> to Rod Blagojevich until this week. We had never wondered how a person with
> a 13 percent approval rating ever managed to get elected in the first place,
> though now I am personally leaning toward the theory that it was the hair.
> Blagojevich tossed his thick brown mane and the voters told each other:
> “Yes, he sounds a little dumb. But truly, this is the hair of a reformer.” 
>
> Illinois is not the only place going through empty-Senate-seat turmoil. In
> New York, the departure of Hillary Clinton for the Cabinet has set off an
> unseemly scramble, the like of which you usually see only when someone drops
> a pound of hamburger in the middle of a pit bull convention. 
>
> Still, as far as we know, nobody has actually tried to trade anything other
> than political advantage, the hope of future campaign contributions and the
> gratitude of one or more special interest groups. You know, the normal
> stuff. On behalf of my state, I would like to thank the governor of Illinois
> for making us feel as if this is a good record.
>
> The Senate seat sellathon is actually not the most damaging thing
> Blagojevich is accused of trying to do. There are, after all, 100 senators,
> and we know from several centuries of experience that the nation can survive
> quite nicely even if a sizable minority are brain-dead bank robbers. 
>
> Worse, he’s upped the already hearty level of cynicism in Illinois voters.
> He ran for governor as an antidote to the culture that had sent an average
> of one Illinois chief executive to the clink every 10 years. (“Our state has
> been adrift. Corruption has replaced leadership,” Rod and his hair said in
> early campaign commercials.) Now look at him. It’s the sort of experience
> that sets the public wondering if there’s a way to get reform while avoiding
> reformers. 
>
> In New York, of course, we elected a reform governor two years ago, and he
> was driven from office by some unpleasantness involving the Emperor’s Club
> V.I.P. escort service. Now, post-Rod, all that seems kind of petty —
> especially since, as far as we know, Eliot Spitzer even used his own money.
>
> That’s something else we have to hold against Blagojevich. He’s definitely
> driven the bar of acceptable political behavior below sea level.
>
> Look at Delaware, where the election left yet another Senate seat vacant and
> Gov. Ruth Ann Minner quickly announced that she’d be appointing Joe Biden’s
> longtime aide, Edward Kaufman, to the job. Given the fact that Biden wants
> his seat to eventually go to his son, Beau, who is currently serving in Iraq
> with the Army National Guard, some observers found it a tad convenient that
> Minner happened to choose a person no one has ever heard of who is intensely
> loyal to the Biden family and has already promised not to run in the next
> election.
>
> But now Delaware is looking like the gold standard. It was only political
> expediency! The State Legislature isn’t going to have to set up an emergency
> election so the governor won’t have time to barter the seat away. And
> everybody in Washington knows the aides do all the real work anyway so
> nobody will even notice Biden is gone. Good work, Governor Minner!
>
> One thing is clear. We cannot have any more vacant Senate seats hanging
> around, creating temptation. Next time we have a presidential election,
> let’s try to limit the candidates to governors, retired generals and failed
> movie stars. Much safer. 
>
>
>
>
> Enjoy,
>
> Ben C. 
>   
>   

-- 
Herb Parsons