The Outrage Aimed At The Normal
Dec 12th, 2008 | 4 responses
In thinking about the new Obama-Blagojevich Affair (doesn’t roll off the tongue to well does it?), is the President-Elect just unlucky to be the next Leader of the Free World (who happens to be black) where millions upon millions of microscopes are aimed at? Because this whole dust up just doesn’t sound new and isolated to Chicago. Governor Blagojevich’s reaction when the president-elect didn’t “play ball” (along with his outright brashness) just sounds like it happens way more often than not. Oh let’s just cut out being nice about it; this type of political power playing happens all the time. It happens on federal, state, county, township, city, town, village, and hamlet level. And let’s not go into business. The amount of power plays, leverage seeking, back-stabbing, conspiracies, and other “intrigue” in business is legendary. What about our personal lives and relationships with friends? More “intrigue” there as well.
What I am talking about is the politics of politics; an altogether normal activity of elites and non-elites. So why is there so much outage? Because that’s how we are supposed to act when a government official crosses the line even though we know this is the way it goes in politics. Let me make an educated guess on President-Elect Obama’s dealings with Governor Blagojevich amounted to:
1. A little fund raising here and there for the governor.
2. A little advising on some issues and “intrigue” talk concerning various players within the State.
3. Some influence in the State government (making some connections here and there)
4. And a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
But Obama didn’t like Blagojevich or many of his ways. So he did the usual photo op and hand shaking along with the mandatory 1 through 4 above. But didn’t take it any farther knowing how ol’ Blago was. Now after Obama won the presidency, he cut the honorable governor off yet gave him a name or two about who should take his vacant Senate seat. Ol’ Blago screamed bloody murder because Obama didn’t make him feel “happy” enough. Case closed. American political normalcy at its best.
Now I’m not saying this isn’t newsworthy. We still need to find out the roles of folks like Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod in this. I am saying is that we shouldn’t just act like this a “Chicago thing”. This is an American Political Thing that’s been around since George Washington’s days. The question we should be asking ourselves is this:
How much does it take to make us REALLY outraged and tired of this normalcy? Because right now, we seem to like it. Yours truly included.
4 Responses to “The Outrage Aimed At The Normal”
Well, speaking personally, even as a convicted cynic I was stunned by this story.
A Governor of a major US state, attempting to “sell” a seat in the US Senate…the seat formerly occupied by the President-elect of the United States…whose name, incidentally, said Governor cannot apparently ennuciate in everyday conversation without adding a “motherf….” or “f….” to modify the President-elect's name in order to illustrate the Honorable Governor's opinion of the President-elect.
It was a breathtaking vision of corruption and venality.
“Because right now, we seem to like it.”
You make an interesting point, T-Steel. Yes, there is a bizarre sense in which this is entertainment.
People are arguing about which state is more corrupt etc.
But this is corruption on a Third World scale.
People should be enraged. But they just nod and go…yeah, you know how it is…Chicago.
There is way too much tolerance for this type of corruption and way too many gray areas that we seem to be stumped on dealing with.
I actually find it quite shocking that a governor who is arrested while in office can remain there- he should be forced out at the time of his arrest- I feel the same abput Congress- why was Sen Stevens allowed to serve (I'm sure his colleagues would have voted to expel him but what if they didn't??
Obama probably would have had trouble winning election to the Senate and the presidency without having SOME relationship with the governor of his home state. Thankfully, he was smart enough to curtail his involvement with the sleazy SOB and his even sleazier wife.
I'm in a no tolerance mood. In our schools we have no tolerance for weapons- even butter knives in lunches are viewed in this category, sex or drugs– so why are we tolerating illegality –politicians who have been convicted of actual crimes in our political system?
Obama no doubt has dealt with the Chicago people (not only Rezko)
He seems fine to me, though, more like a (very rapidly) rising political star that happened to be in Chicago (longer, and more legitimately, in Chicago than Hillary Clinton exploited her “New York” Senate seat as a springboard to the Presidency) and my thought when learning about Blagojevich's latest behavior was that Obama must be more glad than ever to be leaving Chicago for something much bigger and better.
Hopefully this “winter” we're anticipating economically will extend to other realms, such as the political, and will enable us to do some much-neglected pruning and re-designing in other ways, too.
Note that ya lib'r'ls out there who are also on a youth kick might want to read about Obama's likely favorite for running the FDA:
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/12/11/who-is-j…