I suppose the easy thing to do would be to
follow everyone else’s lead and write a column about Rod
Blagojevich’s potty mouth.
So much has been written about the
governor’s self-proclaimed “testicular virility”
that you’ve probably gotten the point, however.
Instead, I’ll tell you a story.
Two years ago, I was at a party at the
Executive Mansion. The governor’s first spring session was
winding down to a successful close, and his top advisors were
jubilant.
One of those advisors, deputy governor
Bradley Tusk, took me aside for a little chat. Tusk was a
29-year-old New Yorker when he was made the governor’s
right-hand man. The press didn’t care for him much, and I had
taken a few potshots myself.
Tusk wanted me to admit that I had been wrong
about Blagojevich. I criticized the governor so much during that
first year that my own mother had asked me to lay off.
“He’s such a nice young man,” she said.
“He’s fresh. He’s different. Cut him a little
slack.”
Tusk, like my mom, thought I had been too
harsh.
I was pretty harsh. I repeatedly slammed the
governor for his brash, campaign-style approach to governance. I
was down on his constant press conferences, his perpetual need to
spar with an enemy whom he more often than not created himself. I
didn’t care for his blatant disrespect for other elected
officials or the cavalier way in which he railed against
institutions just because they were there. I thought that he
didn’t apply himself enough to details of government and too
often seemed immensely ignorant of basic things, such as what was
contained in the state Constitution.
But the governor had just wrapped up one of
the most progressive sessions in Illinois history. A raft of new
labor-friendly laws were enacted, new social programs were created,
new protections for women were assured, and much more seemed to lie
on the horizon. Whether you agreed with him or not, it was a pretty
impressive session, Tusk noted.
Still, I wasn’t convinced. Most of
those new laws had been blocked for years by Republican governors
or Republican legislative leaders. The steam valve was released in
2003, and all Blagojevich had to do was sign everything that
arrived on his desk.
And then I tried to warn Tusk that even
though his boss was riding high in the polls and people such as my
mom thought he was doing a good job, big trouble lay ahead.
“You can’t sustain this,” I
said.
Eventually voters would tire of
Blagojevich’s overly confrontational mannerisms and the often juvenile behavior emanating
from the governor’s office. The governor had set expectations of
political and government reform so high that even a little old-style
patronage would be big news. At the time, he was still new, and, more
important, he wasn’t George Ryan. Eventually he’d have to
grow into the office and start acting like a responsible adult.
And so I waited. And waited. Nothing changed.
Rod Blagojevich is the same man today that he was two years ago. He
uses the same old shtick, the same lines, the same enemies. He even
plays the same songs at his campaign-style swings through the
state.
I pulled this from a column I wrote about the
governor during his 2002 campaign:
“Rod Blagojevich is a poll-driven,
over-handled goofball who can’t seem to think on his feet and
whose political connections are a bit on the shady side.”
Sound familiar?
The creators of the TV sitcom Seinfeld kept a
sign above their desks that read, in part, “NO LESSONS
LEARNED.” The idea was that the characters were not supposed
to “grow” in the way characters do on most other TV
shows — and in real life, for that matter.
Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld might want to
make a pilgrimage to Illinois soon, because their brilliant idea
has been playing out here for more than two years now.
The governor never learns. He never grows.
And, just as I predicted, he’s become vastly unpopular. The
latest Chicago Tribune poll shows that just 34 percent of the
state’s voters approve of his job performance. He’s
embroiled in so many scandals and corruption investigations that
even I have lost count — and I do this for a living.
I don’t care how many millions he has
in his campaign account. If he doesn’t grow into this job,
he’s in for a big surprise next November. Mom, it turns out,
now agrees with me.
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 1, 2005.
