ROLAND, ROLAND, ROLAND, KEEP THEM PUNDITS ROLLIN’…

12/30/08

The big news flash today (This is being written before Governor Blagojevich’s press conference; who knows what Governor Goofy will really say?) is that Blago is going to appoint Roland Burris to Barack Obama’s senate seat. The national media, showing their characteristic ignorance of Chicago politics, is opining that this is a plausible, perhaps even a brilliant move. I say “Balderdash!” It isn’t going to happen. Well, it might happen in the sense that Blago may appoint Burris (perhaps following the admonition that it never hurts to make your enemy suspect you are a little nuts, perhaps because Blago genuinely is nuts), but Roland Burris will never sit in the U.S. Senate. Why?

First, one of the arguments being employed to advance the notion that this is a brilliant political move on Blago’s part is that, by appointing the next Senator from Illinois, the Governor removes one element of pressure on the politicians in this state to remove him from office: the urgency to get him out of office before he can name the President-elect’s replacement. But what the national media don’t seem to know is that the political power structure in this state wanted to get rid of Governor Goofy long before the latest titillating revelations came to the forefront. Impeachment has been seriously discussed for at least the last year. Now the Governor’s, er, impetuousness has presented a golden opportunity to finally get rid of this silly person. Mike Madigan and his cohorts are not going to let this opportunity slip through their fingers. They want to keep the pressure on; therefore, any move to mitigate this pressure will be fiercely resisted by the people who matter in Illinois.

Second, one of the reasons, besides the obvious, that the politicians in Illinois, and especially Mike Madigan and Pat Quinn, want to dump Blago is that the deal has already been cut: Pat Quinn becomes governor, as the state’s Constitution stipulates, and he appoints Lisa Madigan to the Senate seat (perhaps pending a special election, but whether Lisa is appointed until the next scheduled election (2012) or pending a special election makes little difference. In a special election, she will be running as an incumbent with the backing of the Democratic Machine against a flaccid (okay, dead) Republican Party in Illinois. The job will be hers as long as she wants it.). This puts a reformer, but a reformer who wasn’t born yesterday, in the governor’s office, satisfies Lisa Madigan’s ambition to move up (though perhaps not to the office she wanted, but she is young and there is plenty of time for her to become governor if she still harbors that ambition after enjoying the perks of a Senate seat for a few years.), and makes House Speaker Mike Madigan happy, thus insuring that things go much more smoothly for Governor Quinn (I like the sound of that, don’t you?) than they did for Governor Blagojevich, at least in the short run. The only thing standing in the way of this deal, which is as classically Chicago as our hot dogs and Old Style, is Blago’s sticking around like Banquo’s ghost.

How do I know the aforementioned deal has been cut? I don’t know any more than I read in the papers, but I know a little about the politics of my home town from having followed it the last, oh, 45 years or so.

Third, the U.S. Senate will not seat Roland Burris or anyone whom Blago appoints. Harry Reid has already said so and, while I am not naïve, don’t think he will go back on his pledge despite his desire to get a 59th Senate seat (58th if Al Franken loses in Minnesota). First, it would look really bad at the dawn of a new Congress. Second, the seat is going to be filled by a Democrat no matter what happens; it’s just a matter of time. Third, and more importantly, anyone who thinks that Illinois Democrats do not have enormous clout in Democratic politics at the national level is incredibly naïve. For the reasons outlined above, the local guys will make their desires sufficiently clear to the national guys, and the national guys will listen.

And another thing….

At the expense of being redundant, the national press really does know nothing about Chicago politics. Why else would we be subjected to the hagiography that constitutes reporting on Mr. Burris’s background? We are told that Mr. Burris is such a stellar citizen that the Senate will have no choice but to seat him. Roland Burris? A knight in shining armor? C’mon! Roland is a nice enough guy, and his wife is a genuinely wonderful person. But he is little more than a garden variety Chicago politician. He was comptroller of the state of Illinois for three terms and Attorney General for one term (both offices he obtained with generous and fulsome Machine backing) and has been desperate to be governor (or mayor or senator, but primarily governor) ever since. His political life for at least the last twenty years has best been characterized by his frustration at never having become governor (This I do know, or at least strongly suspect, from personal experience.). It is even speculated that he was run by the Machine (probably unwittingly, on Burris’s part) in the 2002 gubernatorial primary in order to siphon Black votes away from Paul Vallas (Mr. Vallas, after a very successful stint as Chicago schools boss was extremely popular in many quarters, but especially among Black voters who were the primary beneficiaries of his largely successful efforts to turn around the Chicago public school system.) and insure the nomination of Rod Blagojevich, who enjoyed Machine support in his first run for governor largely due the patronage of his father-in-law, 33rd alderman and ward committeeman Dick Mell, and Blago’s willingness to carry Machine water in Washington as the Congressman from the Fifth District.

There’s nothing wrong with being a Chicago politician, and Roland Burris has been a mildly successful one, though it would be hard to convince Roland of the latter. But before the national media makes Burris a crusader on a white horse for all that is good and pure, perhaps they’d better do their homework regarding the inner workings of politics in the nation’s greatest city. Oh, I forgot…that would involve living here, a horrifying prospect for the New York and Washington based national media.