I do not for a moment believe that President-Elect Barack Obama was directly involved in the corrupt behavior for which Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested this morning. I even think it’s possible that he didn’t have first-hand knowledge of Gov. Blagojevich’s corrupt behavior. I find it very difficult to believe that he hadn’t heard of it from people who had reason to know.
Jake Tapper outlines a timeline of Obama support for Blagojevich (and vice versa):
According to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., Mr. Obama’s incoming White House chief of staff, Emanuel, then-state senator Obama, a third Blagojevich aide, and Blagojevich’s campaign co-chair, David Wilhelm, were the top strategists of Blagojevich’s 2002 gubernatorial victory.
Emanuel told the New Yorker earlier this year that he and Obama “participated in a small group that met weekly when Rod was running for governor. We basically laid out the general election, Barack and I and these two.”
Wilhelm said that Emanuel had overstated Obama’s role. “There was an advisory council that was inclusive of Rahm and Barack but not limited to them,” Wilhelm said, and he disputed the notion that Obama was “an architect or one of the principal strategists.”
(An Obama Transition Team aide emails to note that Emanuel later changed his recollection of this story to Rich Miller’s “CAPITOL FAX,” saying, “David [Wilhelm] and I have worked together on campaigns for decades. Like always, he’s right and I’m wrong.”)
Either way, others now around Obama were less enthusiastic about Blagojevich at the time, namely David Axelrod, Obama’s senior campaign adviser who will soon be a senior adviser at the White House.
Axelrod had worked for Blagojevich in his past races for the House, but he declined to work on his gubernatorial run.
“He had been my client and I had a very good relationship with him, but I didn’t sign on to the governor’s race,” Axelrod told the New Yorker. “Obviously he won, but I had concerns about it…I was concerned about whether he was ready for that. Not so much for the race but for governing. I was concerned about some of the folks — I was concerned about how the race was being approached.”
On the Chicago TV show “Public Affairs with Jeff Berkowitz” on June 27, 2002, state Sen. Obama said, “Right now, my main focus is to make sure that we elect Rod Blagojevich as Governor, we…”
“You working hard for Rod?” interrupted Berkowitz.
“You betcha,” said Obama.
“Hot Rod?” asked the host.
“That’s exactly right,” Obama said.
In 2004, then-Gov. Blagojevich enthusiastically endorsed Obama for the Senate seat after he won the nomination, and Obama endorsed Blagojevich for his 2006 re-election race in early 2005.
In the Summer of 2006, then-U.S. Sen. Obama backed Blagojevich even though there were serious questions at the time about Blago’s hiring practices.
The period in question is the period between Blagojevich’s election in 2002 and his re-election bid in 2006. There are only a limited number of likely possibilities. That Rod Blagojevich didn’t begin his corrupt activities until after 2006 stretches credulity. Perhaps Barack Obama genuinely did not know what Rod Blagojevich was about. That would demonstrate a stunning naïveté or willful ignorance, neither admission reflecting particularly well on the President-Elect. Childlike innocence is a wonderful thing but not in the President of the United States.
It may be that an ambitious young Barack Obama was willing to overlook his fellow partisan’s corruption under the principle “he’s a sonuvabitch but he’s our sonuvabitch”, not a particularly attractive viewpoint, especially for a post-partisan candidate running on a reform ticket.
Or it may be that he didn’t care—just business as usual in Illinois politics. So much for the reform candidate.
Note that I think all of these alternatives are venial sins rather than mortal ones.
If, indeed, he did know about it, I don’t believe that maintaining a highminded silence is President-Elect Barack Obama’s best strategy for dealing with it. I think he has a rare, brief opportunity to harness this incident to a good purpose. Americans believe in second chances, in second births. President-Elect Obama should acknowledge that he was aware of what was going on but had no real evidence and, consequently, couldn’t step forward and he should condemn this kind of corruption in no uncertain terms. No mincing words. No decorous silence.
If he fails to do this, at the best he’ll have missed an opportunity. At the worst it will dog him through his presidency.
“You betcha,†said Obama.
Oh, the Sarah Palin haters will have to choke on that.
I think the most interesting thing about the outer narrative is how much conservatives wanted to believe in Obama as a neophyte candidate. That someone might have come up through rough politics upset their conception of eastern dilettantes, etc.
If Rham Emanuel, annother Illinois pol, threw Blagojevich under the bus that kind of reinforces the rough politics story.
(BTW, did you see that Joe the Plumber threw McCain under the bus? Only in America!)
Just another great day in the neighborhood…does the Godfather ring any bells, perhaps we need another Eliot Ness…??
I remain of the view that Obama was not a significant Illinois politician until ’04. And shortly after that, he left Illinois for Congress to shortly thereafter run for President.
Obama supporters like to brag about Obama’s importance in persuading Blagojevich to sign the bill requiring police interrogations to be video-taped. I always throught the story was bunk, but let’s hear what kind of means of persuasion Obama found effective with the Governor.