State & Local Politics

When Rich Daley shocked Chicago on Tuesday by announcing that he would not seek reelection to a seventh term, speculation about his potential replacement heated to a boil — everyone from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D) to the Cook County sheriff to the Cook County assessor to a dozen aldermen whose names were obscure even to the political junkies among us.

As Tuesday wore on, the list of possibilities lengthened so quickly, I was surprised not to see on it the political basket case also known as Roland Burris (D), Illinois’s junior senator. (He’s the endless embarrassment whom disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich, D, named in the short period between his arrest and impeachment to replace Obama in the U.S. Senate; it was Blago’s way of saying, “Screw you” to the state’s establishment.)

When Mayor Daley announced that he was resigning, it made Washington liberals very happy. It should have put a smile on the face of Republican presidential candidates, too.

Let me explain.

For most of his career, Daley has been a pretty effective mayor for the City of Big Shoulders. He was able to pick up the pieces after the Harold Washington debacle and move the city past the racial political war that typified Washington’s epic battles against the City Council.

Breaking news: Texas Watch has just released a new poll in the governor's race showing that former Houston Mayor Bill White (D) has fought his way to a dead heat with incumbent Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R). In the poll, from the widely respected Hill Research, Perry is supported by 42 percent of voters, White by 41.

The poll tracks a June poll by PPP that found the race tied at 43-43. While Rasmussen's polling shows Perry with a single-digit lead, there are now two significant polls showing White has caught Perry.

Post verdict, former Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich dashes around the country slamming U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and his posse of prosecutors for conducting a “persecution,” not a prosecution.” 

Blago is everywhere — from the morning to the late night shows to his weekend venue, the Wizard World Chicago Comic Con in suburban Chicago.    

Blago’s PR guy, Glenn Selig, who also represents  the former suburban Chicago police sergeant  Drew Peterson — currently in prison and awaiting trial for the murder of his fourth wife; the death of his third wife is another story — is busier than ever signing Blago for appearances. Although Blago was lucky to get Tampa-based Selig pre-trial, watch for Blago to go big time now — as in a major New York or Washington lecture agency. 

At Comic Con on Saturday, Blago pocketed $50 a pop for autographs, $80 for photos and he had a lot of takers. Still, that’s chump change compared to the five- and even six-figure fees that agencies such as Harry Walker (clients include Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney and Al Gore) or Washington Speakers Bureau (Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich) get their clients.  

Five figures today, six tomorrow. Who knows? Think of all those business conferences that cover the disgraced-chief scenario and how he or she should respond. Blago might have a word of advice or two on that subject.

The list of federalist incompetencies is spiraling the country down the drain: healthcare, Medicare, a broken dollar, a $13 trillion deficit, Katrina, Arizona, Afghanistan, Blagojevich.

The turning began when Bill Clinton turned a prefect failure of a presidency into a cult movement of himself by having kinky sex with an undergraduate in the Oval Office. It was a Dada masterpiece. His generation understood. As an act of political nihilism, Jean Genet could not have topped it.

Now that the verdict is in, let’s tell it like it is: Blagojevich is everywhere in American politics, and in every corner of this capital in Washington, D.C.

Principled conservatives and principled liberals know the truth, that pay for play is everywhere. Washington is Blagotown.

Principled conservatives know that if money did not change hands Blago-style in the capital, the budget deficit would be far lower; useless pork would be far less; government spending would be much lower.

No one, certainly not the backtracking President Obama, gave a more full-throated endorsement of building a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan than the mayor of New York.

In a small item in Tuesday’s New York Times, Bernie Becker reported that Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Independent, was supporting Mark Kirk in the race here for Obama’s old Senate seat.

In the first free elections after the fall of the Soviet Union, the call spontaneously arose from a few who had lived under Hapsburg rule for a thousand years for a Hapsburg to seek elected office. No it wasn’t supposed to be like that they were told. It was supposed to be like America: Michael Jackson. Cal Klein. Coke. Democracy. The Hapsburgs graciously stepped aside. Perhaps the grand historic irony will be that just as Eastern Europe was breaking free, America was beginning to yearn for the Hapsburg model of dynastic governance.

So the jury in the Blago trial sends U.S. District Judge James Zagel a note admitting that it can agree on only two counts (out of a total of 28 when the 24 against Rod Blagojevich and the four against his brother Robert are totaled). The jury confides that it has not even considered the 11 wire fraud charges against Rod Blago, and no one in the press, none of the local law school experts, none of city’s former prosecutors — typically now in private practice defending white-collar criminals — whom the news stations trot out as tour guides can explain what the hell it means. Is it good for Rod? For Rob? Will the result be a hung jury, a mistrial, a conviction or acquittal on the two counts? Will the government be forced to retry the case? Who knows?

It is a little startling to hear Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox Business publicly explaining to millions of viewers ideas that were considered seditious and marginal five years ago.

Tea Party ideas demonized by the MSM. Crazy Jeffersonian ideas from the Libertarian ghetto suggesting that states have sovereign rights protected by the Constitution. “Are you serious?” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) replied when the idea was first suggested to her.