I'm a Missouri boy who grew to maturity in the historical shadow of Kansas City's political boss, Tom Pendergast. Now there was a miscreant much loved, at least by the many he didn't order physically assaulted on Election Day -- a man who dispensed New Deal largess with an exceptional fondness for personal gain, a man who put Harry Truman on the path to the White House, a man who ran the city's hooch and gambling industries and yet paid the proverbial hospital bills of the poor and provided the Christmas turkeys.
Yes, Pendergast was quite a guy -- undisguisedly corrupt and hated by those he did, most unfortunately, have beaten up, but on the other hand he rebuilt the city's infrastructure and kept a whole lot of people working in the worst of economic times.
He was seen as many things, to many people, but the one thing he was never seen as was stupid. I would bet one of those Christmas turkeys right now that Illinoisans wish they could say the same of their governor.
What a bleeping idiot.
Or perhaps criminally insane? It's hard to say; but his lawyers have got to be thinking about now that a mental competency hearing is the one hopeful thing in Rod Blagojevich's future, such as it is.
Assuming he's not legally nuts, however, about the best one can say about this perfectly coifed thug is that he has proven, beyond any reasonable doubt, that wretched stupidity is indeed a bipartisan disease. I must say, though, Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham are beginning to look downright brilliant compared to Roddy B.
One normally asks in circumstances such as these: What was he thinking? But the unmistakable answer is, simply: He wasn't.
He couldn't have been. Even a toddler who has ever glimpsed so much as a partial episode of "The Sopranos" would know better -- would know, for instance, that when you're under investigation by every law enforcement agency from the county sheriff to the FBI and Justice Department, you don't use the friggin' telephone to orchestrate your nefarious deeds.
Hence I sat and watched U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's news conference yesterday mostly in numb, jaw-dropping bemusement. Citing instance after fantastically corrupt instance, the feds had Roddy B. on tape, the latter of whom had been freely talking as though he surely was above reproach in virtually everyone's mind.
The dark tale, as told by Fitzgerald, grew from the merely seedy to the operatically bizarre. By the end of the news conference I was laughing out loud; because other than having wasted several years of potentially good and competent government, the most that Governor Blagojevich ever accomplished was in making a colossal jackass of himself.
His deeds -- the ones which Fitzgerald so correctly observed have "taken us to a truly new low" -- became instantly famous, so there's no need to again itemize them here. I did, however, wish to add one personal difference of opinion from Fitzgerald's characterizations of Roddy's malefactions.
He said that "the most appalling conduct Governor Blagojevich engaged in … [was] that he attempted to sell a Senate seat, the Senate seat he had the sole right under Illinois [law] to appoint to replace President-elect Obama."
Most appalling? Oh contraire. Wickedly hilarious, maybe, or perhaps hilariously wicked, but so utterly destined for public exposure as to mitigate our solemn condemnation.
No, for the genuinely "appalling" one must visit Blagojevich's attempt to either extort the chief executive officer of Children's Memorial Hospital to the tune of $50,000 or deny that institution $8 million in state funding. A children's hospital, mind you, one that, as Fitzgerald so disgustedly noted, "obviously takes care of children."
And again, this intolerable insult of a man to human decency is on tape -- "In the ensuing weeks, that contribution never came," said Fitzgerald. "And Governor Blagojevich was intercepted on the telephone checking to see whether or not he could pull back the funding for Children's Memorial Hospital."
It's behavior like that which transcends the merely corrupt. I seriously doubt that even a Gov. John Gotti would have pulled such previously unimaginable stunts -- which, thank God, were almost universally unsuccessful on Blagojevich's part, therefore the opening for amusement -- a finding which leads me to suspect that Roddy B. is just plain meshuga.
If Gov. Blagojevich fails to relocate to some estimable institution for the criminally insane, perhaps he'll be assigned Tom Pendergast's old room at Leavenworth. But frankly, he doesn't deserve the honor.
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