Obama comes clean on Rezko ties at last

As Sen. Barack Obama sat back in his chair Friday in a conference room at the Chicago Sun-Times, he talked at length for the first time about Tony Rezko who, that same day, had a steel bunk on which to rest in his narrow cell at the federal lockup in downtown Chicago.

What a distance these two friends have traveled. One is behind bars. The other is rocketing through the stratosphere of presidential politics.

There was a time not long ago when Rezko and Obama sat together over dinner or shared a weekend with their wives at Rezko’s summer home in Lake Geneva, Wis.

Rezko, a multimillionaire international businessman, now is on trial in a massive federal corruption probe involving his relationship to Gov. Blagojevich’s administration.

Reporters have tried for more than a year now to get Obama to explain in detail his relationship with his friend and campaign fund-raiser, but he has resisted as Rezko became more radioactive with every passing day.

One issue was exactly how Obama came to buy a mansion in Hyde Park next to vacant land that Rezko’s wife would purchase the same day. And, given press reports around the same time that the feds were tailing Rezko, why Obama would think it wise to enter into a real estate agreement to buy a slice of Rezko’s land.

We now know the Rezko/

Obama relationship was closer and warmer than we’d been told before. That the campaign money Rezko raised for the senator is five times more than Obama first said. And that Obama did ask Rezko what was going on with the feds, accepting him at his word that it was all being worked out with the U.S. attorney.

Watching Obama as he answered questions from this paper’s reporters and editorial board, I was struck by two things.

One, how much better it would have been if he had offered these details earlier. Because the senator’s description of his relationship with Rezko is entirely plausible.

“My guard would have been up had I seen a pattern of him asking for favors, or even being obtrusive. He wasn’t one of these people who wanted pictures taken all the time,” said Obama, “or was calling you to show up for things. He was a very gracious individual.”

Then again, Obama admits with regard to the land deal, “There is no doubt, it was a mistake.”

There were clearly a lot of things about Rezko that should have been setting off alarms somewhere in the vicinity of the senator or the law firm with which he was associated. The low-income housing Rezko was developing was going belly up, and some of it was in Obama’s district. But for whatever reason, Obama didn’t know.

I believe that too.

The second thing that struck me Friday had to do with loyalty.

This could not be a more intense time for Obama as he slugs it out with Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. And it arguably would be a fine time to throw Tony Rezko under the bus.

But Obama remains grateful that Rezko supported him in his failed congressional race against Bobby Rush when, given a relationship with Rush, it wasn’t easy. “That was loyalty that I appreciated,” the senator said.

And so Obama still calls Rezko “a friend, with the caveat that if it turns out the allegations are true, then he’s not who I thought he was, and I’d be very disappointed with that.”

So, candor — though delayed — gives us a clearer view.

And friendship — tested but not abandoned — looks more like a virtue than a fault.