Precedented

From today’s installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

This is the first time in history a former United States president has been indicted, although it is worth remembering that it is not new for our justice system to hold elected officials accountable. Mayors have been indicted and convicted. So have governors: in fact, four of the past ten Illinois governors have gone to prison. Vice presidents, too, have been charged with crimes: Aaron Burr was indicted on two counts of murder in 1804 while still in office and was tried for treason afterward. And in 1973, Richard Nixon’s vice president Spiro Agnew resigned after pleading no contest to tax evasion to avoid prison time.

Illinois leads the nation in imprisoned governors: Otto Kerner, Daniel Walker, George Ryan, and Rod Blagojevich. As you may recall, Donald Trump commuted Blagojevich’s sentence in 2020. Blagojevich now calls him a “Trumpocrat.”

[Leaders of other democracies have been prosecuted as well.]

Trump* pardons miscreants

He wants the death penalty for drug dealers. Not so much for white-collar criminals, a number of whom just received presidential pardons or commutations. One miscreant whose sentence Trump* commuted: Rod Blagojevich, ex-governor of Illinois.

I can think of four reasons for Trump* to issue pardons and commutations today:

1. Send a message to Roger Stone.

2. Exercise power, because that’s what Trump* likes to do.

3. Eat up news time and distract attention from the Democratic primaries.

4. Send a message to Roger Stone. I have your back, Roger, Nixon tattoo and all.

And did you notice Trump*’s use of a plural pronoun in speaking of himself? “Yes, we commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich.” As in “I would like you to do us a favor though.” Himself, not the country.

And now that the disgraced Illinoisan is back in the news: How do you pronounce “Blagojevich”?

Related reading
All OCA Blagojevich posts

Public Official A

A new podcast series from WBEZ, Chicago: Public Official A, the rise and fall of the now-imprisoned Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois.

Blagojevich has been the object of infrequent but spirited mockery in these pages. Don’t miss Blagojevich taking the yearly ethics test for state employees!

Illinois in the NYT

In The New York Times, Julie Bosman reports on candidates in the Illinois governor’s race. It’s a disappointing article, in several ways. The article makes no mention of the state budget crisis being a manufactured crisis, nor does it address the profound problems that have followed (such as the decline of public higher education). Though Daniel Biss appears to lead Chris Kennedy in the Democratic primary race, Biss gets a mere namecheck. And thus the Times casts the Democratic primary as a contest between just two viable candidates, Kennedy and J.B. Pritzker, a millionaire and a billionaire.

Those who don’t follow Illinois politics should be aware that the Times article omits reference to the ugliest elements in a wiretapped 2008 conversation between then-governor Rod Blagojevich and Pritzker. What the article includes is ugly enough, but it’s far from the whole story. You can listen to excerpts from the conversation and decide for yourself.

My take: the last thing we need in Illinois politics is another billionaire running for governor. But if Pritzker gets the Democratic nomination, I have a campaign slogan that I’m prepared to donate: “A Billionaire for the Rest of Us.” All I will ask in return (because it’s Illinois, so I should get something in return) is that the Pritzker campaign stop calling our house and sending campaign literature.

Blagojevich sentencing poll

It’s not every state whose news organizations get to poll audiences on appropriate prison time for an ex-governor.

This poll is from WCIA in Champaign.

Update, 12:44 p.m.: He got fourteen years. U.S. District Judge James Zagel: “When it is the governor who goes bad, the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily repaired.”

Rod Blagojevich found guilty

In the Dog-Bites-Man Department: an Illinois politician has been found guilty on corruption charges.

If you’re wondering, here’s how to pronounce his last name.

A couple of related posts
Blagojevich and “Ulysses”
Rod Blagojevich, maker of metaphors

[Elaine and I are proud not to have voted for him, twice.]

Odysseus’s palace discovered (?)

Archaeologists claim to have discovered the remains of Odysseus’s palace on Ithaca. Five years ago, an archaeologist claimed Cephalonia, not Ithaca, as Odysseus’s home. Perhaps Odysseus, like Rod Blagojevich, commuted to work?

Related posts
Blagojevich and “Ulysses”
Recreating Aeneas’s journey

An Illinois coinage

Blagodoccio.

Related reading
All Rod Blagojevich posts

Rod Blagojevich, maker of metaphors

Rod Blagojevich has a book coming out tomorrow, with the reality-resistant title The Governor. The other words on the front cover, perhaps not an official subtitle: “Finally, the Truth Behind the Political Scandal That Continues to Rock the Nation.” Is the scandal, from Blagojevich’s perspective, his wrongdoing, or his impeachment? It’s doubtful that either one rocked, much less continues to rock, the nation. As his recent Elvis impersonation suggests, the ex-gov has difficulty rocking even the house.

He also has difficulty managing vainglorious, self-pitying metaphors, as a passage from the book, quoted in a New York Times article, reveals. It’s about Barack Obama and himself:

He’s now the president of the United States, like Zeus in Greek mythology, on top of Mount Olympus. I’m Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. And I crashed to the ground.

Uh, no. Icarus fell into Lake Michigan and was never heard from again.

If only.

A related post
Blagojevich and “Ulysses” (on Blagojevich as Odysseus/Ulysses, “reckless, thieving, vain”)

Something's coming

With a click, with a shock,
Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock,
Open the latch!

It's difficult to see how a midterm resignation creates a good foundation for a presidential campaign. And if resignation is meant to create that foundation, why announce it on the Friday before a national holiday? Politicians wait for Fridays to announce what they would prefer be ignored.

I suspect that something's coming, some deep complication, personal or political. Perhaps not in the form of a phone call at 6:00 a.m., as with my ex-governor, the inimitable Rod Blagojevich. But somehow, some day, somewhere in Alaska.

{With apologies to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.]

Update, July 7, 2009: Elaine thinks that the ex-governor-to-be wants to chair the Republican National Committee.

Naming names

People mentioned by name in Rod Blagojevich's closing argument to the Illinois Senate:

Phil Bredesen : George W. Bush : John Cullerton : Jimmy DeLeo : Willie Delgado : Dick Durbin : David Ellis : Rahm Emanuel : John Glenn : William Holland : Ted Kennedy : John McCain : Bob Menendez : Barack Obama : Harry Reid : Bill Richardson : Elizabeth Taylor : John Warner

Yes, Elizabeth Taylor.

Life imitating life

"Let me make this perfectly clear. Let me make this perfectly clear: I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing."

Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, on The View this morning, after declining an invitation to do his (reportedly great) Nixon impersonation

Blagojevich and "Ulysses"

Rod Blagojevich today:

"And so I'll leave you with this poem by Tennyson, which goes like this:

                                                          tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we
     are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Somehow I don't think that these lines, from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses," are meant to suggest that Blagojevich is ceding power to Telemachus and departing Ithaca. Drat. What must appeal to the gov in these lines is not the idea of setting out, once more, with diminished powers, but that final not to yield (i.e., resign) — thus turning the political life of our beautiful state into what promises to be a long-running farce.

Odysseus/Ulysses is in some ways a good model for Blagojevich: reckless, thieving, vain. Think too of Ulysses Everett McGill in O Brother, Where Art Thou?: "My hair!"



[I've quoted a transcript of Blagojevich's remarks that botches Tennyson's lines. I haven't heard the governor's statement and don't know if the botches are his. I've presented the lines accurately above.]

[Update: Blagojevich's botches: "the strength," "by fate." Watch here.]

What irony?

As legislators weigh impeaching Gov. Rod Blagojevich and federal prosecutors prepare to indict him on corruption charges, his acting chief of staff and a deputy governor will be keynote speakers Wednesday at an "Ethics in the Workplace" seminar for some 200 state employees. . . .

But is it wrong for any members of the Blagojevich administration to instruct state workers on ethics?

"That's a real tough question, but . . . I don't see the irony really," said Rev. Tim Fiala, executive director of University of Illinois at Chicago's Integritas Institute, an ethics forum.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich's staffers to speak at ethics lecture for state workers (Chicago Tribune)

Sold!

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is planning to appoint former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat:

The action comes despite warnings by Democratic Senate leaders that they would not seat anyone appointed by the disgraced governor[,] who faces criminal charges of trying to sell the post, sources familiar with the decision said.

Shortly after Obama's Nov. 4 victory, Burris made known his interest in an appointment to the Senate but was never seriously considered, according to Blagojevich insiders. But in the days following Blagojevich's arrest, and despite questions over the taint of a Senate appointment, Burris stepped up his efforts to win the governor's support.

I've added the comma and emphasis. I'll also add —

[here it is]

— a moment of baffled silence. After the arrest, after the disclosure of the content of Blagojevich's telephone conversations, Burris pursued the Senate appointment with greater fervor! I would like to doubt that he had much competition.

The Trib cites Burris as acknowledging that he has lost many Democratic primary elections but has "never lost to a Republican." If he is seated, I suspect that that loss will come in 2010.

Cliché gone wrong

Driving, listening to the oldies station, now a "holiday music" station, I heard the anonymous voice of a syndicated newsreader: ". . . winter storm cutting a wide swipe across much of the country."

The word the reader was needing is swath. Merriam-Webster OnLine explains:

Middle English, from Old English swæth footstep, trace; akin to Middle High German swade swath
Date: 14th century

1 a: a row of cut grain or grass left by a scythe or mowing machine b: the sweep of a scythe or a machine in mowing or the path cut in one course
2: a long broad strip or belt
3: a stroke of or as if of a scythe
4: a space devastated as if by a scythe

Winter of course might take (not cut) a swipe at us, but that would suggest a brief bit of bad weather, not unrelenting movement. "Wide Swipe" turns out to be the name of a spell in World of Warcraft, which might explain this cliché gone wrong.

In other clichéd news, "embattled" Governor Rod Blagojevich has vowed not to talk about his situation in thirty-second sound bites. Says Blagojevich, "I will fight, I will fight, I will fight until I take my last breath. I have done nothing wrong."

Rod Blagojevich's hairbrush

From the real news, making the work of The Onion more difficult:

Mr. Blagojevich, 52, rarely turns up for work at his official state office in Chicago, former employees say, is unapologetically late to almost everything, and can treat employees with disdain, cursing and erupting in fury for failings as mundane as neglecting to have at hand at all times his preferred black Paul Mitchell hairbrush. He calls the brush “the football,” an allusion to the “nuclear football,” or the bomb codes never to be out of reach of a president.

Two Sides of a Troubled Governor, Sinking Deeper (New York Times)

Rod Blagojevich, commuter

If you've seen the brief clip of Rod Blagojevich leaving his Chicago residence this morning, you may be wondering: Isn't Springfield the capital of Illinois? Wouldn't the governor be living in Springfield?

To which the answers are "Yes" and "You'd think so." But Governor Blagojevich doesn't live in the Illinois Executive Mansion in Springfield. He commutes to Springfield from Chicago. Wikipedia has some of the details.

Gubernatorial ethics test

From a 2004 press release:

Ensconced in the privacy of his office, long after his staff had left for the day, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich settled in front of his computer to test his personal ethics.

Scenarios rolled across his screen, offering up situations that any state worker might face: If a state contractor promises to put a new roof on his house in exchange for new business, can he take it? If a lobbyist wants to pay for a free weekend of golf, should he accept it? If a company seeking a government contract slips him season Cubs tickets, can he keep them?

Again and again, Blagojevich clicked on the "no" button.

Illinois Takes On Its Culture of Scandal (illinois.gov)

The context: Illinois requires all state employees to take a yearly ethics test. Oh, irony!

If the above link fails to work, here's a cached version of the press release.

Related post
How do you pronounce "Blagojevich"?

How do you pronounce "Blagojevich"?

"The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in a statement. "They allege that Blagojevich put a 'for sale' sign on the naming of a United States senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism."

Feds take Gov. Blagojevich into custody (Chicago Tribune)

If you are not from Illinois, you may need help pronoucing the name. Wikipedia has the answer: /bləˈɡɔɪəvɪtʃ/.

I.e., "bluh GOY uh vitch."

Wikipedia also has an .ogg file that lets hear you someone pronouncing the name with a funny passive-aggressive tone.

In newspaper headlines, our governor's name is often shortened to "Blago." I have no idea how to pronounce that.

Related post
Gubernatorial ethics test