Burris to haunt Obama?
Novelists couldn't invent this kind of drama involving a political party-crasher arriving just in time for a landmark inauguration
You can read too much.
Maybe not so much that you actually contract "word poisoning," the ominous-sounding ailment I'm proud to have invented during yet another futile attempt to prod my boys to close their books and get the heck outside on such a nice day.
But books can color your perception, so that you develop irrational expectations of the world -- you believe hard work and merit will be rewarded, for instance, or that good must eventually triumph over evil.
Read too much, and coincidental events can seem to reveal careful structure. Take the parallel twin tracks of Illinois politics -- one represented by Roland Burris, the first-person-plural-spouting senator-designate, boldly crashing the party of power in Washington, D.C., and demanding his unearned title. The opposite track is, of course, Barack Obama, the golden-tongued phenomenon, God's chosen vessel, floating to Washington to permit the mantle of the presidency to be draped over his shoulders in accordance with the will of the people.
Would that not look trite in fiction? Even skillfully handled, by a Dostoevsky, would it not be an Obvious Literary Device, the way in Crime and Punishment he names his conflicted murderer Raskolnikov ("razkol" means "split" in Russian) and his supportive friend Razumian ("razum" means "reason").
Were I teaching the novel Our Political Moment, I would try to draw my students into seeing how the author -- in this case, fate, or God if you prefer -- so handily supplied Burris, that moldy opportunist, rising out of his political grave to dog Obama's inauguration.
"Why is he there?" I'd purr, eyebrows raised, spurring the class with a quizzical look.
Perhaps as foreshadowing -- should Obama eventually be caught straying from the straight and narrow. Perhaps to give our story a Gothic twist -- Blagojevich is not yet dead, but his ghost child, Burris, haunts the ramparts; his remarks lifted from the speeches of Shakespearean clowns, grandly struggling to turn his benefactor's cheap stunt into democracy's bright lamp.
That's why I don't write fiction -- you can't make this stuff up.
Has Rod Blagojevich given reform a bad name? It certainly is more difficult for the next guy to look us in the eye and promise to sweep away corruption. That's what Blago did, and we see how well it worked out -- it's like catching the cleaning lady pouring dust behind the sofa.
As soon as Blago gets the heave-ho, next in line for the job is Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn. While no prize himself, Quinn does provide welcome contrasts. Whereas Blagojevich had that head of hair that looked Kennedyesque, before we got a taste of what lay under, Quinn is bald, mostly, a little rumpled, and gives off the comfortable mien of a good podiatrist or a popular high school principal.
I had lunch with Quinn on Tuesday -- well, there were 320 other people also at the City Club to hear him speak, but I lucked out and sat at his table -- so could observe him closely. He seemed a little dazed, which makes sense, given all that's happened -- can it be less than a month since Blago self-immolated? -- and I asked Quinn how he is holding up. He said, "one day at a time," and I observed that that is a good credo for enduring crises.
Quinn is not the speaker that Blagojevich is, and probably a good thing too. The governor degraded eloquence as well as reform. Though in his talk, Quinn displayed a sly humor.
"When I was invited, I didn't expect to have so many people in attendance," he began, surveying the standing-room-only crowd. "We're all happy to know that the lieutenant governor's office has such interest."
His biggest laugh came after a Freudian slip, when he announced, "I'm naming a reform commission headed by Patrick Fitzgerald ..."
When the howls and applause died down, a red-faced Quinn explained he meant Patrick Collins, a former federal prosecutor who will lead his ethics panel to analyze what the heck is wrong in this state.
With all due respect -- and realizing that his predecessor did for reform what John Wayne Gacy did for clowns -- is further study really necessary? Cannot any sentient person save Mr. Collins and his staff a lot of work and reel off their conclusions right now? Let's give it a try:
1. Bribes are bad. Collins is the prosecutor who put George Ryan in prison, in part for receiving an envelope with $1,000 in it, a kickback to cover the check he wrote pretending to pay for a Caribbean vacation.
2. "Pay to Play" is bad. Companies that do business with the state should be barred from making campaign contributions. This will either strike you as obvious or naive, and is probably both. But the problem is that the people receiving the benefits of government are the same people funding politicians, and encourages a game where everybody pretends that Big Check A doesn't lead directly to Big Contract B.
We don't do that in other areas of life. I want my kids' teachers to like them, and I'm sure teachers have financial needs, but I already pay their salaries through my taxes, and so don't stuff big wads of cash in their pockets with a wink, whispering, "Penmanship isn't all that important, comprendre?"
I could go on -- don't lie, don't hire your cousins, don't put the machinery of government to your personal use -- but you get the point. We don't need an ethics panel, and you have to wonder why our governor in-waiting would mark his pre-debut with such a pointless and symbolic gesture.
Quinn was right when he slipped and named Patrick Fitzgerald to head his reform commission, because that's the only way reform gets done in Illinois -- at the tip of a federal bayonet. The rest is just talk.
From Richard Jeni:
Going to war over religion is basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.