Circle of life loops Blago, Fast Eddie
This morning, Rod Blagojevich embarks on a new life. He is a private citizen now, a man with time on his hands.
Meanwhile, another guy, one who gave young Rod his first job out of law school, is beginning his own new chapter. He’s about to be sent up the river to do some time.
If this were a Disney film, we’d call it the Circle of Life.
But it’s not.
It’s an Oliver Stone kind of story.
As some state senators Thurs-day beat their righteous breasts, denouncing the disgraced governor, more than a few seemed amnesiac about how we got here.
That’s why I bring up that other guy, the one headed to federal prison, someone who was instrumental in helping Blago launch his career.
You know his name.
Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak.
Clout-heavy, wealthy, handsome, Vrdolyak was once among the most powerful of the political class. He was an alderman and then a multimillionaire municipal consultant. A Democrat who ran the party in Cook County, he became a Republican candidate for mayor, then moved on to milk millions in legal fees out of mobbed up towns like Cicero.
Vrdolyak outfoxed the feds for decades. But in an abundance of irony, it turns out he was finally done in by the current investigation of that cocky, brash kid he hired back in the ’80s.
Eddie was one of a host of enablers who begat Rod, who, as governor, in turn gave bipartisan political players of the state money machine carte blanche to cut deals with state boards and commissions, pick up lucrative contracts, and along the way, deposit their gratitude in the Blagojevich campaign fund.
Now those bipartisan brokers — Tony Rezko, William Cellini, Stuart Levine, along with Vrdolyak — are at the mercy of the U.S. attorney.
So is Rod Blagojevich.
There was a tiny moment of acute honesty in Blagojevich’s closing argument at Thursday’s Senate trial. It was when he addressed those undercover FBI tape recordings on which he’s heard to urgently ask how soon he was going to receive a big campaign contribution in exchange for signing a bill favorable to the donor.
Our then-governor lectured the senators: “You heard those four tapes.
“I don’t have to tell you what they say. You guys are in politics. You know what we have to do to go out and run and run elections . . . those are conversations . . . all of us in politics do in order to run campaigns and try to win elections.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Not all politicians, certainly. But way too many.
Three little words tell that story:
Quid pro quo.
There were some refreshingly honest moments among the senators as well.
Amid some of the sorrowful sanctimony on the Senate floor that came after the governor left for his last state plane ride home, Sen. James Meeks, Democrat of Chicago, shed no tears.
“This is not a sad day for me, this is a great day,” Meeks said. “I say we have this thing impeachment, and it’s bleeping golden. And we’ve used it the right way.”
Sen. Jackie Collins went one better, telling colleagues, removal is not enough.
“True campaign finance reform,” she said, “would be a perfect and adequate follow-up to our historic actions today.”
In other words, Thursday was a start. Today and tomorrow and the next, they’re the real test of what this new governor and his legislature are made of.
Impeachment and removal. Those were the easy parts.