Looking over his history its a wonder Rod Blagojevich made it as long as he did. This is a man who spent most of his time, or at least a significant portion of his time as Governor of Illinois, either out of his office or hiding in the men's room. In the roughly six years he held the office (he was about midway through his second term when he was impeached, convicted, and removed from office) his accomplishments, if you want to dignify them with such a term, were scant at best. Mostly they were boilerplate liberal initiatives-for example, a gun control bill. He also forced through a program that guaranteed universal preschool and health insurance for every child in Illinois. Yet, he did all this without paying for it. This might have been his first major mistake.
As a result he ran up deficits that he never got under control, and in fact the state of Illinois is still buried under a mountain of debt to this day. This leads us to what might have been his second major mistake, which came in the year that, in an effort to balance the state budget, he kicked the can down the road by not paying into the state pension fund for that entire fiscal year. And indeed, unfunded pension liabilities are one of the major problems Illinois faces to this day.
His third fatal error might have come about when, while refusing to raise taxes in keeping with his re-election campaign promise, he pressured the Illinois State Legislature to stay on the job until they passed a budget. But in the meantime, the Chicago Transit Authority was facing massive budget shortfalls. In order to prevent massive layoffs and potential cuts in services, Blagojevich pressured Chicago Mayor Richard Dailey to fund the CTA with the proceeds from the sale of city property, including Skywalk.
By this time, not only had the Illinois and political establishment had more than enough of his incompetence, so had the people. His approval ratings hovered somewhere around twenty percent or less. He became a an expendable target. Enter Patrick Fitzgerald, the Federal Prosecutor who decided to put paid to his political career, having in fact had Blagojevich under surveillance for some time.
Unbelievably, Blagojevich's malfeasance extended far beyond merely trying to sell the Senate seat formerly held by President Barack Obama. He did more than attempt to shake down the director of a children's hospital, among others, for campaign funds.
One of his more notable crimes involved the Herald Tribune. During a time of massive budget shortfalls, Blagojevich offered the publisher of the Tribune a one hundred million dollar tax break for the year. All that Blagojevich wanted in return was for the publisher to fire an editor who had written articles that had been critical of Blagojevich's administration. The publisher agreed to the governor's demands. The Tribune got its tax break and the editor was fired.
I started out researching this post secure in the knowledge that Blogojevich was probably corrupt, but that he was targeted by a corrupt political establishment with whom he was not a member in good standing. I also suspected, and still do, that Prosecutor Fitzgerald was and is angling for an appointment, perhaps to the office of Attorney General, or possibly to FBI Director.
But regardless of the veracity or not of those suspicions, there can be no doubt that Blagojevich made himself a far too easy target. As a result, he was convicted on seventeen of twenty charges and may well spend the rest of his life in prison. For those who suspect that he might know things, that he might have information about corruption among other Illinois officials, or even Barak Obama, my honest opinion is, don't raise your hopes too high. Blagojevich would not be the kind of politician that would fit in with the standard politician's clique. No one would trust him, for obvious reasons. He obviously isn't that smart, and he doesn't have the right connections. His political career, and the fact that he rose as far as he did, is as much a fluke of the times as anything else, a phenomenon easily explained by a man with ambition taking advantage of a climate of low regard for the traditional political establishment, yet who never really fit in once he made it through the door.
But do you want to know the real proof that he doesn't really know anything worth knowing about anybody else? The simple fact that he's alive tells you all you need to know.
