Roll Over, Abe Lincoln By TIMOTHY EGAN

December 10, 2008
Op-Ed Guest Columnist
Roll Over, Abe Lincoln By TIMOTHY EGAN

For some time now, the most unpopular governor in the United States, Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, has been treated like a flu virus at a nursing home.

"He's kryptonite," one state representative called him in a Chicago Magazine profile last February. "Nobody wants to get near him."

But it wasn't until Tuesday, and the filing of a 76-page criminal complaint centered around the auctioning of a Senate seat, that we got a full X-ray of politics at its sickest.

Putting aside the peculiar dialect of desperation that made the governor sound like a John Malkovich character in a David Mamet play, the complaint showed a man trolling the depths of darkness.

The beloved Cubs, the sainted Warren Buffett, editorial writers from the Chicago Tribune, even financing for a children's hospital — all were targets or leverage points for a shakedown.

The surprise is that he didn't offer to sell out exclusive rights to deep-dish pizza.

If the world was roused by the sight from Chicago barely one month ago, hundreds of thousands of people streaming into Grant Park to celebrate the triumph of possibility over tainted history, the arrest of Governor Blagojevich on a dark and drizzly Chicago dawn was quite the opposite image.

Abe Lincoln may have rolled over once in pleasant surprise at the election of Barack Obama, and another time in revulsion at Blagojevich's arrest, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said. More likely, Abe did a triple lutz in his grave on Tuesday.

If nothing else, Blagojevich did Obama the favor of a nonendorsement quote for the ages. According to the federal transcript, the governor showed disgust, barely a week after Obama's election, that he could not get anything in return for offering the Senate seat to an ally of the president-elect.

"They're not willing to give me anything except appreciation," the governor says, as outlined in the criminal complaint.

It would be somewhat comforting if there were a larger lesson here, or a map out of the banality of evil. But there is no trend or modern twist, no evidence of a greater criminal web, no overarching moral. Like a kid who beats up old ladies just because he knows no other way, the allegations against Blagojevich amount to what Fitzgerald called a crime spree, of the political variety.

The prosecutor's narrative of plotting bad intentions and narcissism — Blago actually thought he was a viable candidate for president in 2016 — is a particularly graphic example of why some men see things as they are and ask: what's in it for me?

Fitzgerald, who prosecuted Scooter Libby under the pressure of a White House not used to getting questioned by anyone, is the son of a Manhattan doorman and the product of Catholic schools at their finest. It's unlikely that his dad ever heard anything to match the conversations captured by federal wiretaps in Illinois.

Like all damaged politicians, the Blagojevich in the complaint knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

What's a Senate seat worth? "Golden," and the governor vowed that he would not give it up for nothing.

How about help for the Tribune Company's attempt to sell Wrigley Field and the Cubs? That would require getting rid of editorial writers who had called for his resignation. Fire them all, Blagojevich is quoted as having said, adding, "And get us some editorial support."

Aid for a children's hospital? That would require a contribution of at least $50,000.

On and on it goes, trash talk of the want-to-be-rich-and-infamous. Even by Illinois standards, where the path from the Statehouse to the jailhouse holds the footprints of numerous governors, Tuesday's arrest and complaint was breathtaking.

"If it isn't the most corrupt state in the United States," said Robert Grant, a F.B.I. special agent, "it's one hell of a competitor."

On Monday, the eve of his arrest, Blagojevich showed that he could include hubris among his many flirtations with disaster. At a rally of out-of-work factory hands soiled by his presence, he all but asked to be followed and recorded.

"I should say if anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead," he said. "I can tell you whatever I say is always lawful."

Then, like Huey Long at his most egregious, he cast himself as the person who has nothing to sell but an honest day's labor. If you were to tape him, he added, you would hear a governor "who tirelessly and endlessly figures out ways to help average, ordinary working people."

Substitute one word — himself — for working people, and you have the essence of Governor Blagojevich.

Timothy Egan writes Outposts, a column at nytimes.com.

Maureen Dowd is off today.

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