Remember the game show where contestants would bid on the number of notes it would take them to name a song. The person with the bid for the fewest notes got to go first, but the risk was the contestant would bid the number of notes down to the point where it was impossible to recognize the tune.
And in politics, with the ever slick marketing and carefully crafted sound bites, when we elect someone, particularly for the first time to an office, we are playing a version of ‘Name that Tune’. The only way we’ll know the truth if someone can perform the job, is after the song has been played and they’ve been in the job.
But one way we can improve our chances of making a good choice in the voting booth is to look for other examples of people like the candidate we are evaluating.
And that’s where Illinois’ current political crisis is instructive, if not a little too late.
So Illinois has a crooked politician. What else is new? Turns out 4 of the last 8 govenor’s from the Land of Lincoln has either been indicted, prosecuted, or investigated.
Not a good track record, by any measure.
And as it turns out the illustrious Gov Rod Blagojevich, aka Blago, is probably headed to the pokey.
But what I found most interesting last week when I was reading a piece on the NYT were the characteristics they used in the story to describe Blago’s political playbook:
Whatever his [Blago's] current motivation, he came into office with a very different persona. As a young congressman representing the North Side of Chicago, Mr. Blagojevich was pegged as a rising star with a populist touch. Undistinguished as a lawmaker but with proven likability in and out of Chicago, he seemed hellbent on pushing reform and cleaning house in a state with an embarrassingly overt culture of political corruption.
Running on a do-good theme as a candidate of change, he swept into the governor’s office earlier this decade mainly on promises that he would be different, that he would restore integrity to the governor’s office after the previous chief executive, George Ryan, was sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison for racketeering and fraud.
“Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, Illinois has voted for change,” he told a crowd at his victory party on election night in 2002.
Back then, it was not a secret that Mr. Blagojevich had big dreams for himself that included the White House.
I got chills down my spine when I read that. Eerily that reminds me of another Illinois politician who was just elected. But this time it was for a much bigger office, the presidency.
Now, I don’t know anything and I am certainly speculating. But the takeaway for me is clear. I think this country has yet to learn the lesson well enough (as they didn’t learn it from Bush 43′s stance of “bringing a different tone to Washington”) that change can be co-opted by politicians to mask the lack of values and intellect so badly needed to lead this country to prosperity and freedom.
For the sake of this country and my children’s future, I just hope Barack Obama proves me wrong.
