A Tale of Two Governors

As Rod Blagojevich struggles to keep his office after trying to sell a US Senate seat, spare a thought for Eliot Spitzer who lost his for buying bed time with a hooker.

On the eve of Change in America, their stories reflect the extremes of old politics--the self-made thief and the self-righteous reformer--both brought down by failure to hide their raw ambition behind the smooth façade required by a 24/7 media culture.

Their 20th century counterparts operated in relative darkness, the first Mayor Richard Daley with a stranglehold on a corrupt Chicago, Thomas E. Dewey building a reputation as a cardboard crime-buster that led to the New York statehouse and a presidential nomination.

But in today's public life, Spitzer's hard-charging style in Wall Street prosecutions, prescient in the light of the current collapse, made him politically vulnerable and forced his resignation as governor when other prosecutors taped his pathetic private indiscretions, even though he was not charged with any criminality.

Blagojevich, on the other hand, faces a multitude of possible prosecutions but refuses to go gentle in that good night.

Their stories tell us much about culture as well as politics. Spitzer's privileged Ivy League background made him more vulnerable to public shame and peer pressure than Blagojevich, who worked his way through college by shining shoes, delivering pizza and in a meat-packing plant before marrying into a political family. Public vilification seems to roll right off his back.

As the Illinois scandal plays itself out, the former New York governor is edging back into sight by writing a column on public issues for Slate. The first this month, about bailouts, is provocatively titled "Too Big Not to Fail."

The hooker, by the way, is doing just fine, on her way to a celebrity career after being interviewed by Diane Sawyer.

Will Glib Be Good Enough?

Sooner rather than later (see below), Barack Obama has had to confront his twin albatrosses, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the decidedly secular Tony Rezko. In his rounds of the cable news shows last night, Obama was articulate, as always, but for the first time, glib bordering on shifty.

On Countdown with a deferential Keith Olbermann, he distanced himself from Wright's racist rants but asked voters to believe that, in 17 years of churchgoing, he did not hear any of the venom or he would have condemned it.

Even more tenuous was Obama's attempt to paint Wright as a spiritual leader caught up in the anger of his generation at racial injustice, a pissed-off Martin Luther King, if you will. That won't wash with those who remember how King stressed rejection of such attitudes at a time when Black Power advocates were promoting them. Senator, Wright is no Martin Luther King. Not even close.

In his attempt to "disgorge" Rezko, along with his campaign contributions, Obama stressed that he has not been accused of any wrongdoing or connected to any of the issues involved in the current federal corruption trial, but his opponents won't be deterred from harping on their long, close association, including the buying of the Obamas' Chicago home.

Obama's most fervent admirers will be tempted to pass off these iffy relationships as part of a misguided search for substitute fathers by a man who lost his own at an early age, and there may be truth in that. But Obama is now attempting to become the national father figure, and just asking him to show better judgment than George W. Bush would be setting the bar very low.

Obama, Scooter Libby and Saddam

The six-degrees-of-separation game starts today as Antoin Rezko goes on trial for corruption, prosecuted by Patrick Fitzgerald, Scooter Libby's nemesis, after being jailed for violating his bail terms by taking $3.7 million from a British-Iraqi billionaire previously convicted of smuggling arms to Saddam Hussein.

Barack Obama is on the far margins of this ripe stew of Chicago corruption, but Hillary Clinton's top campaign advisor and the Wall Street Journal, among others, are eager to smear him with the overflow.

Obama's campaign has returned $150 million of Rezko contributions, and the candidate himself has called "boneheaded" his involvement with the slumlord in the purchase of his own home in 2005. But that may not be enough to deflect pressure to explain more fully.

“Now the trial is beginning, and I think it will be more difficult for him to avoid these various serious questions,” Howard Wolfson, the Clinton communications director, told reporters last week. “(I)f the shoe were on the other foot...I’d be having to answer them to people who are very serious investigative reporters who know the right questions to ask and don’t take ‘no comment’ for an answer.”

In the Journal today, columnist John Fund predicts, "Mr. Obama will eventually have to talk about Illinois, if only to clear the air. After John McCain last month was attacked for cozy ties to lobbyists, he held a news conference and answered every question. Hillary Clinton held a White House news conference on Whitewater and her cattle futures. Mr. Obama must do the same for questions about Mr. Rezko and 'the Chicago way' of politics. If he doesn't, they may increasingly haunt his candidacy."

Obama's meteoric rise carries with it the threat of a media backlash against his unvetted history, and opponents in both parties will do their best to make Rezko an albatross to weigh him down. After tomorrow's primaries, he would do well to try to cut it off as he races from here to November.