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And then again, Blagojevich is in the process of being impeached and indicted, and Burris is damaged goods. Blagojevich’s appointment has done Burris the disservice of causing some people to look closely at his record for the first time in his long political career, and there isn’t much to see. Burris has his own pay-to-play history to explain away, and in a defining moment in his term as attorney general, Rolando Cruz’s appeal of his death sentence, he’s accused of ducking and covering when the the right thing to do would have required political courage. Cruz’s innocence, says an assistant attorney general who resigned in protest, wasn’t enough for Burris to get involved.
By caving on Burris and ducking a special election, are President-elect Obama and the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate and Illinois General Assembly priming angry Illinois voters to elect a Republican to the Senate in 2010? Maybe. And maybe Obama and the Senate leadership are willing to run that risk to add the docile, go-along Burris to the ranks of sure Democratic votes for the next two years. Obama obviously has some pretty contentious legislation in mind, and Burris would be the 59th Democrat in a chamber that requires 60 votes to get anything controversial passed. Finding one friendly Republican could be a lot easier than finding two.
