Everybody’s already said his piece on Rod Blagojevich’s book The Governor, and it’s fair to say the reactions have been largely unfavorable. State rep Jack Franks told USA Today that the book, like Blago himself, was full of fibs. “His legacy is one of corruption, it’s one of scandal, it’s one of shame,” he said. The Trib‘s John Kass mocked Blagojevich for his awkward and sometimes imprecise allusions to Greek myth and Shakespeare and posited that the book was nothing more than a maneuver to improve his prospects in court. “It’s all very frightening, with Blago the tragic hero of every story, until you realize that he’s just seeding the jury pool,” he wrote. And then there was the local politician I told that I was reading the book. “Jesus, why?” he asked. “The guy’s a psychopath.”
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Blagojevich has been ridiculed for comparing himself to Icarus, Teddy Roosevelt, and George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life, so there probably aren’t many readers who’d tolerate the notion that he’s got anything in common with Socrates. But Blago’s story—that is, the version of it that he’s trying to sell—shares a big theme with the philosopher’s. Both are about the potential excesses of democracy, the kinds of things that can happen when majority rule warps into mob rule. When the masses become hysterical, they can come to believe that a philosopher who questions the conventional wisdom is an enemy of the state who has to be executed, or, as Blago sees it, that a governor who’s obsessed with expanding health care is a lawbreaker who deserves to be removed from office.
Let’s just say that the available evidence—which The Governor frequently glosses over or avoids altogether—suggests that Blago’s account doesn’t quite square with what really happened. But he’s still got a right to make his case. Blagojevich wants us to believe as vehemently as he does that he was framed by his father-in-law, 33rd Ward alderman and political boss Richard Mell, because he refused to dole out jobs and favors to Mell and his minions (see Ben Joravsky’s piece); that Illinois House speaker Michael Madigan thwarted his agenda in order to pave the way to the governor’s mansion for his daughter, attorney general Lisa Madigan; that convicted Blagojevich advisers Tony Rezko and Lon Monk orchestrated pay-to-play schemes while the governor was busy trying to help “the people”; that those infamous recordings that appeared to catch the governor selling Barack Obama’s old Senate seat were taken out of context; that he was actually trying to cut a deal that would bring jobs and health insurance to his constituents; that he was the target of a witch hunt by U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald; and that the media was so eager for juicy headlines that it aided and abetted all of these injustices.
In 1992, when he was an undistinguished city lawyer, Alderman Mell drafted him to run for the Illinois House so Mell could take out a rival. Blagojevich says that when he asked whether he could take his own positions on issues, Mell told him, “I don’t give a fuck about that.” But Blagojevich was as disinterested in the workings of government as Mell was in crafting policy, and he ceded management of his office and reelection campaigns to others, including his father-in-law’s precinct workers and wealthy benefactors like Rezko.
This has happened before (cough George W. Bush) and, more disturbing, it will surely happen again. The politician who told me Blago was a psychopath went on to add that his rise wasn’t improbable or unusual. “Most people who get into this business are chosen by somebody to run because they have nice teeth to show when they smile, they’re good at shaking hands, and they can recite a few talking points. You’d be surprised how often it happens.”
