The Chicago Way

So it turns out that no one really doubts that Illinois Governor Rod Blagejovich was trying to sell the appointment to the U.S. Senate seate about to be vacated by President-Elect Obama. (Although note that he hasn't been convicted or even indicted yet.) The Obamamen are not even trying to defend Blagojevich; they aren't even invoking the "presumption of innocence" bromide. Blagojevich's actual guilt is neither questioned nor relevant. That's the Chicago way.

Now, Blagojevich's corruption in this matter is simply an assumed fact. Given that of the last fifteen Governors of Illinois, six have fallen under clouds of serious criminal conduct in office and four moved on to careers manufacturing license plates and small rocks, Blagejovich's conduct would be greeted with a massive yawn by an Illinois electorate that understands the need to put a little mustard on the hot dog of elective office. (But not ketchup, that's not the Chicago way.)

No, what's interesting has been the question of whether Rahm Emanuel, President-Elect Obama's designated chief of staff and the functional head of the transition office, coordinated efforts with Blagojevich to pick the new Senator. That would taint the President-Elect by association with Blagojevich's corruption. More interesting than that is if he did discuss the sale of the appointment with Blagojevich, was Emanuel or anyone else in the Obama circle scheduled to be cut in for a piece of the action? That would, after all, be the Chicago way.

But you can rest easy, Obama fans. The office of the President-Elect's transition team has conducted an internal investigation and concluded that Emanuel had no "inappropriate" contact with Gov. Blagojevich. Whew! I'm sure you're as relieved as I to know that an office headed by Emanuel, under the investigation of an attorney hand-selected by Emanuel, has indicated that Emanuel did nothing wrong. Now, we're gonna kind of have to take their word for it because they're not going to release the statements or documents uncovered in that investigation, and the lawyer's going to just keep those as part of his work product. But you can trust them. After all, waiting to see what the prosecutor has to say isn't really the Chicago way.