What was Rod Blagojevich thinking?
As if the Tribune Company filing for bankruptcy protection on Monday weren’t shock enough for one week, on Tuesday the FBI arrested Gov. Blagojevich and accused him of trying to sell the vacant U.S. Senate seat from Illinois.
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My God.
The storm clouds were gathering around the self-proclaimed reformer for months. And yet news of the governor’s sudden arrest was met met with open-mouthed shock.
I hurried over to the Thompson Center, where the state government offices are located.
Silly me, I expected that stunned state workers might be congregating in small groups, pressing their palms to their cheeks in alarm.
No way. Business as usual, in more ways than one. If these charges stick -- and the feds do not arrest a sitting governor at 6:30 a.m. unless they feel confident about a case -- Blagojevich will be the fourth Illinois governor to go to prison in the past 35 years (for those at home keeping score: George Ryan is in the slam now for bribery; Dan Walker in the late 1980s for his role in the savings and loan mess; and Otto Kerner in the mid-1970s in the racetrack stock scandal).
If Blagojevich ends up in a cell next to Ryan,, that will mean four of our past eight governors have gone to prison. We’re batting .500. That’s a lousy average.
And Blagojevich will be the worst of the bunch, not only because he alone was busted while still in power, but his alleged crime -- trying to sell a seat in the U.S. Senate -- dwarfs the penny-ante pocket lining of the others.
There was no commotion at the Thompson Center. People lined up behind the metal detectors -- we’re better at screening those who would blow up the government from without than those who wreck it from within.
Near the elevators, a big sign, “HAPPY HOLIDAYS” in red letters, two feet high. Underneath, “Governor Rod Blagojevich,” written in an unmistakable cash green.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said it all when he summed up the governor’s “appalling” conduct:
“Gov. Blagojevich has taken us to truly a new low,” said Fitzgerald in his press conference Tuesday. “He attempted to sell a Senate seat.”
Nor was that all. Each detail jars more than the next. Blagojevich had a raft of other “pay for play” shakedown schemes. He tried to pull back $8 million for Children’s Memorial hospital because its CEO wouldn’t contribute to his campaign coffers. He was stealing from sick children. He tried to get members of the Tribune editorial board fired.
The actions that led to these charges transpired within the past few weeks -- that’s the most incredible part of all -- long after a rational corrupt official would know that the heat is on and he should lay low. Any idiot, any speeding driver with half a brain at least slows down when he passes a squad car with a radar gun out.
Blago sped up. What could he have been thinking? And what should we be thinking now?
“This is a moment of truth in Illinois,” said Fitzgerald.
Indeed it is. What next? We owe it to ourselves and to our children to be shocked, to be embarrassed, to be outraged and to look hard at this obscenity of governance -- Blagojevich may be the man going to jail, but many others have have a hand in this system. Every time a scandal erupts, we vow this time will be the end. If this doesn’t lead to reform, nothing ever will.