Have you been watching impeached Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's media blitz this week? I confess that I have worked actively to avoid most of it--it reminds me of a car-train wreck. You don't want to look because of all the blood and gore, but somehow can't seem to turn away. But I did watch his one-on-one interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow last night.
I'll give Gov. B-Rod this: he's a very clever politician. He managed to stay on message (his message, which often had precisely nothing to do with addressing the questions actually asked) through most of the interview. In an odd way, it's amusing to see him, a Democrat, excoriate the Democrats in the Illinois legislature as being "out to get him" for his "legal" political moves with which they disagree. Amusing in a "through the looking glass" sort of way, that is. He wants people to think the legislature is out to get him because he wants to reduce seniors' health care costs by reimporting drugs from Canada, thus reducing seniors' prescription medication costs.
Note that the real issue in that case is whether how he did what he did was "legal" in the first place, not whether his stated goal was a good thing--but he won't address the issue in its true form, for he knows he'll lose.
Nor does the man have self-esteem problems. He's already compared himself favorably to the martyred Dr. King and to Gandhi. Who's next? Jesus Christ?
He also says he's the "anti-Nixon," because he wants ALL the tapes played, not just the ones he says the prosecution cherry-picked to make him look bad. This last is downright ironic, as B-Rod has made no secret of the fact that when he was growing up, Nixon was one of his first political heroes.
He also seems to think that by boycotting his impeachment trial in the Illinois Senate, he's somehow establishing that it's a witch hunt and not a legitimate proceeding. He keeps saying "the fix is in," knowing he'll be convicted. What else can he do? He knows he's guilty, but as long as he swears he isn't and that the trial is illegitimate, he preserves his image.
But he's guilty as sin, and he knows it. Not only does he know it, he made some mistakes in his interview with Maddow that prove it. When she asked him whether he tried to get the Chicago Tribune to fire its editors who were regularly attacking him as a "tit-for-tat" for help with financing to (as the governor put it) "keep Wrigley Field in Chicago," he said no one directly said so to the Tribune's owners. But he couldn't deny he'd wanted the Tribune's editors to lay off. And his mush-mouthed attempts to explain it away only confirmed that he knew he'd screwed up and was doing lame damage control.
I don't know that I agree with Madow that the governor's admission that he'd hoped for help from the Obama administration with getting certain legislation passed in exchange for a say-so on whom he'd appoint to take Obama's vacated US Senate seat was an admission of guilt. As ham-handed as the governor's answer was, I understand that he was trying to say "this is the normal give-and-take of politics." Since there was no PERSONAL gain in it for the governor, it could not be considered illegal extortion.
I do agree with Madow that Blagojevich's admission that he made the taped calls from his home phone because he didn't want to be seen as doing anything "political on a government phone" is a clear admission of guilt. "Doing politics on a government phone" is the essence of his job, for heaven's sake! He really botched that answer.
Two even more telling indications of his guilt: (1) his lead attorney quit, and (2) when he couldn't talk around a question any longer, he still never gave a straightforward answer. He reminded Maddow that the attorney who quit was "just one" of his attorneys, and claimed that their difference was one of tactics, not substance. I beg to differ. No ethical attorney quits on the eve of a trial (even if it is an impeachment and not a criminal trial) unless he/she has a really good reason to do so. Tactical differences alone are not sufficient.
Besides, if the governor has nothing to hide, why not give straight answers to straight questions, and why not give them during the impeachment trial instead of waiting until criminal charges are brought against him? Why not do everything he can to be vindicated as soon as possible? So what if "the fix is in" and he's going to be convicted in the Illinois Senate no matter what he does? He'll have proven the Illinois Senate to be a bunch of crass politicians, and his honor and martyrdom will remain intact.
I'll tell you "so what." As long as he stays away from official proceedings of any sort, there's no penalty for less-than-forthright answers to the questions he's asked. He's not under oath. He can claim whatever he wants with no fear of retribution. But he's only delaying his day of reckoning, not stopping it.
He's a clever man--too clever by half, as my great grandmother would have said. His cleverness isn't helping him, however. It's only dragging out the inevitable--not because "the fix is in," but because he's guilty as charged.
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