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It is August, and all the gardeners in Springfield
are harvesting their juicy red tomatoes to take to the state fair. They do
this not to compete in the produce judging but rather in hopes they will
sight Gov. Rod Blagojevich and take aim at the one they credit the most for
the current chaos at the Statehouse. This is unfair, because the governor
is by now largely irrelevant. It took only a few meetings with the governor
for the legislative leaders to realize that they could make more progress
without him. The legislative leaders think they could make more progress
without the other members of the legislature, too, but they keep hanging
around. Will Rogers had a similar idea back in the 1950s, then thought
better of it: “There could be only a quarter or a third as many
legislators, and we would pick better ones then. But it’s the system
we have always used, so there is no use getting all overcome with
perspiration over it. Things kinder run themselves, anyhow.”
I would be perspiring more if I had a state job, but
because I don’t I’m willing to sit back and watch lawmakers,
like Rogers did, as a “never-ending source of amusement, amazement,
and discouragement.” I think it will all work out. But the results of
a statewide survey conducted by the University of Illinois at
Springfield’s Center for State Policy and Leadership give me pause.
When the poll asked respondents, “How much of the time can you trust
Illinois state government to do what is right?” a whopping 23 percent
said “most of the time” or “just about always.”
Only 76 percent said “hardly ever” or “only some.”
Similarly, when they were asked whether things in Illinois are generally
going in the right direction or the wrong direction, 34 percent said
“right direction” and only 64 percent said “wrong
direction.” We should take into account that the survey was conducted
way back in May, before the true direction of state government became clear
to nearly everybody. Another troubling poll result said that 70 percent of
the 465 interviewed said that they would encourage a son or daughter in
their twenties to pursue a career in state government. After all those
years of telling the kid to get out of the cookie jar, the parents of
Illinois now want Junior to grab them a piece of the pie.
People in other states have a hard time understanding
the political confusion here, especially when they learn that that the
governor’s office, the House, and the Senate are all controlled by
Democrats. Will Rogers helps some: “Democrats never agree on
anything; that’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with
each other, they’d be Republicans.” That doesn’t make
Democrats any more likable: “There is something about a Republican
that you can stand him just so long; on the other hand, there is something
about a Democrat that
you can’t stand him quite that long.” The time House Speaker
Mike Madigan got mad at the governor for calling him a Republican was a
reminder that there is a difference, though it’s not always apparent
to the untrained eye. “A Republican moves slowly,” Rogers
explained. “They are what we call conservatives. A conservative is a
man who has plenty of money and doesn’t see any reason why he
shouldn’t always have plenty of money. A Democrat is a fellow who
never had any but doesn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t have
some.”
Many people think Barack Obama stumbled last week
when he caused a flap by saying that he would agree to direct talks with
Cuba and Iran. We have learned, however, that that was a move calculated to
divert the attention of reporters who were about to disclose that he had
spent eight years as a member of the Illinois legislature. Although it is
true that in his book The Audacity of Hope Obama confesses this embarrassing detail from his past, no
reporter had actually read the book until now. The book explains that it
was during the long drives home to face an angry Michelle after his work in
Springfield “ran two hours longer than scheduled” that he began
to question his priorities. “Even the legislative work, the policy
making that had gotten me to run in the first place, began to feel too
incremental, too removed from the larger battles . . . that were being
waged on a national stage. I began to harbor doubts about the path I had
chosen.” Obama had the good sense to grab the first political ticket
out of Springfield. But if every Illinois lawmaker who feels useless and
ashamed were to run for the U. S. Senate, the field would be, let’s
say, crowded.
Contact Fletcher Farrar at ffarrar@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Aug 2-8, 2007.
