Media's First Blago Instinct: Exile the Crook, Deny Any Link to Obama

The early days of the Rod Blagojevich scandal have some definite similarities with the Eliot Spitzer scandal earlier this year. Caught red-handed by federal investigators, the press quickly cast these Democrats out as impossibly stupid, far too stupid to be acknowledged as Democrats. On Tuesday night’s All Things Considered on NPR, anchor Robert Siegel interviewed Laura Washington, a columnist with the Chicago Sun-Times (and a senior editor of the Chicago socialist rag In These Times). NPR highlighted her analysis that the local power elite was stunned by Blago’s stupidity:

SIEGEL: First, I know that Chicago journalists are accustomed to corruption stories, but many of the remarks attributed to the governor and evidently recorded are just breathtaking in their cynicism and their corruption. If I followed Chicago politics the way you do, would I be less astonished by all of these?

WASHINGTON: Just slightly less astonished. I think the thing that is taking everyone by surprise is the hubris. Even for Rob Blagojevich, who's been known to have - to be a pretty nervy politician, to think that, at this point, when you’re under investigation for as many months as he has - to think that you can say anything even in the least bit unseemly even in a closed room is a huge mistake, and I think people are really shocked by, frankly, the stupidity of it.

This might be a little to surprising to Sun-Times readers, who might have read the lady finishing a column on December 1 with the line "And while the joker may be wild, he's not stupid."

Washington professed to be completely unsurprised that the Governor was trying to horse-trade the seat for cash or career benefits. But when it came to Obama, NPR’s Chicago guest saw no significant association to ponder:

SIEGEL: I want you to tell us a little bit about what relationship - if any there was between Governor Blagojevich and President-elect Obama. There's a critical moment in the criminal information where Blagojevich is quoted at least to saying, the Obama team wants person number one to get the Senate seat, but all they'll give me is appreciation. And then he says, well, bleep them for that. So clearly, they're not helping him at all in this alleged scheme. But more generally than that, were they cool to one another? Were they political allies? How do you describe that relationship?

WASHINGTON: They had a very - I would think cordial relationship. After all, Blagojevich is the governor of Illinois. Barack Obama until the last two, three years was seen as a young upstart politician. But Barack Obama made a very definite decision when he decided to run for president to distance himself from Blagojevich. Blagojevich was not happy with that, and I think that, in fact, it would have been unlikely that Blagojevich would have chosen someone that Barack Obama liked because there was no love lost there.

The picture above comes from the PBS NewsHour, which included Washington on a Wednesday night panel discussion with liberal historian Michael Beschloss and local Lehrer contributor Elizabeth Brackett.