Corruption in the Land of Lincoln: Obama’s Reformist Image Tarnished

From left: Rod Blagojevich, Barack Obama and Richard M. Daley. Photo credits: John Gress/Reuters

Google the name of any major operative from the Obama campaign now serving on his transition team with the phrase, “Daley machine politics in Chicago,” and you’ll see that Obama’s carefully crafted reformist image was already tainted by the city he calls home before the indictment this week of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. I can name three members of Obama’s inner circle right off the top of my head who have long-time Daley connections: Michele Obama, Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod.

Last March, Ben Joravsky wrote in the Washington Independent: “Obama settled in Chicago a couple of years after {Mayor Harold} Washington died and this is the political universe he knows. His wife, Michelle Obama, used to work for the Daley administration. His campaign strategist, David Axelrod, ran some of Daley’s campaigns. Many of Obama’s closest advisers, like Valerie B. Jarrett, are Daley appointees and insiders — it would be hard to find big players in Chicago who aren’t. And last year, Obama mustered his oratorical powers to endorse Daley with a speech so reverential it made some of the senator’s fans cringe in embarrassment.”

Obama’s ties to the old politics of Chicago were never fully vetted by the media who continue to be under his spell. So it’s in the category of better late than never that Time Magazine’s Massimo Calabresi actually raises an eyebrow over the latest revelation of corruption in the Land of Lincoln.

Calabresi writes:

“On more than one occasion during his stunning press conference Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald bluntly said he has found no evidence of wrongdoing by President-elect Barack Obama in the tangled, tawdry scheme that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich allegedly cooked up to sell Obama's now vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. But for politicians it's never good news when a top-notch prosecutor has to go out of his way to distance you from a front-page scandal. And indeed, there are enough connections between the worlds of Blagojevich and Obama that the whole thing has the potential to grow beyond a colorful Chicago tale of corruption to entangle members of the Presidential transition team, to test Obama's carefully cultivated reformist image and to distract the President-elect just as he is preparing to take office.”

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Transcript: President-Elect Obama’s First News Conference

The NY Times has posted a full transcript of President-Elect Obama’s first news conference Friday afternoon in Chicago, as provided by Federal News Service. Read the transcript here.

An Earlier Event in Chicago’s Grant Park: Marching for the ERA on Mother’s Day, 1980

The Equal Rights Amendment:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

***

It’s late afternoon in the Midwest on this long-awaited election day. The prospect of watching an Obama victory celebration at Chicago’s Grant Park this evening has brought back memories of another event that occurred there some 28 years ago.

On Mother’s Day, May 10, 1980, I joined several members of the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Rochester, Minn. for a bus trip to Grant Park to march in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. We’d been instructed to wear the same colors for a show of unity. I stood stock still in amazement that day when I stepped off the bus to see 90,000 women in green and white converging on Carl Sandburg’s “city of the big shoulders.”

According to the Feminist Chronicles: “Marchers came from every state of the union and represented over 300 organizations and delegations. The massive event was conceived and coordinated by NOW. Mayor Jane Byrne, the first woman mayor of Chicago, addressed the crowd, together with Jessie Jackson, Ellie Smeal, TV celebrity Phil Donahue, and Marlo Thomas.”

With hope in my heart, I sat on the ground that day, listening to our speakers while imagining what it would feel like at some far away future date to tell my grandchildren about my participation in this historic event.

To my dismay, Ronald Reagan was elected president that November and ultimately the ERA failed to win ratification by its deadline.

When Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy in the Democratic primary, I’m sure that many of those 90,000 women with whom I marched in Chicago in 1980 felt as uplifted as I did. I’m equally certain those same women were as stunned as I was by the tsunami of misogyny against Sen. Clinton in the primary that helped sweep Barack Obama to victory as the nominee.

The tidal wave of irrational hatred of women crested again during the general election when Sarah Palin set foot on the national stage and quickly became the object of slander and ridicule amplified by a media still under Obama’s spell - objectivity be damned.

Just for the heck of it, I’ve scanned the readers’ comments on election-day coverage this afternoon at a couple of leading so-called progressive blogs. To my consternation, I suddenly realized these mostly young Obama supporters aren’t even aware they’re being sexist with their crude, offensive comments that once targeted Hillary Clinton, but are now primarily aimed at Sarah Palin.

Obama’s millions of online supporters don’t appear to know the difference between sexist attacks and civil discourse in discussing political issues; their mindlessly offensive comments are their normative behavior.

But here we are on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008 and what more can I do or say? I confess that a part of me grieves that on a day when many are gleefully anticipating a potential landslide for Obama, my principles dictate that I must sit on the sidelines. A life-long Democrat, there was a time when I longed to see my party return to the White House. But the wounds from the primary and the obviously rigged Democratic convention are still too raw. And having recently left the Democratic Party to re-register as non-affiliated, I can’t bring myself to vote for the lesser of two evils. What a travesty in these perilous times that the name of Hillary Clinton, obviously the best qualified of all the candidates who announced in 2008, is not on the ballot.

Guess I’ll skip TV coverage of the gathering in Grant Park tonight; it would feel sacrilegious.

UIC to Release Documents from Obama-Ayers Connection

The Chicago Tribune reports:

“Documents related to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's service for a nonprofit education project started by former 1960s radical William Ayers will be released Tuesday from an archive at the University of Illinois at Chicago library, the university announced.

“UIC said Friday it will make public its archive of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in the library's Special Collections Department. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was formed in 1995 to fund education reform initiatives in the city.

“The university's Richard J. Daley Library had refused to release records of the project, which had put Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, in contact with Ayers, who now is an education professor in Chicago.

“The university said it had determined after an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the gift that it has legal authority to allow public access.”

“How Chicago Shaped Obama” or "Whatever It Takes to Win"

Barack Obama received the title of presumptive nominee of the Democratic party over a month ago, and the latest LATimes/Bloomberg poll shows President Bush’s approval rating is at 23%. Given the circumstances, you could legitimately expect Obama to have a solid lead over his Republican opponent John McCain, especially since Obama has repeatedly charged that McCain’s election would essentially mean a third Bush term. Instead the RCP average shows the national race in a dead heat with Obama barely maintaining a 3.8 lead.

Over at Newsweek, Jonathan Darman suggests that Obama’s falling poll numbers might result from his vigorous efforts to reposition himself after his left-wing base - with a mighty boost from the DNC and the liberal (except for women’s rights) media - propelled him to victory in the primary.

Hang tight, Obama supporters; your candidate knows what he’s doing. Ryan Lizza’s well-researched, 13-page article in the New Yorker, Making It, How Chicago Shaped Obama, could just have easily have been titled, The Obama Saga: Whatever It Takes to Win.

Here’s how the story begins:

“One day in 1995, Barack Obama went to see his alderman, an influential politician named Toni Preckwinkle, on Chicago’s South Side, where politics had been upended by scandal. Mel Reynolds, a local congressman, was facing charges of sexual assault of a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer. (He eventually resigned his seat.) The looming vacancy set off a fury of ambition and hustle; several politicians, including a state senator named Alice Palmer, an education expert of modest political skills, prepared to enter the congressional race. Palmer represented Hyde Park—Obama’s neighborhood, a racially integrated, liberal sanctuary—and, if she ran for Congress, she would need a replacement in Springfield, the state capital. Obama at the time was a thirty-three-year-old lawyer, university lecturer, and aspiring office-seeker, and the Palmer seat was what he had in mind when he visited Alderman Preckwinkle.”

Palmer lost the congressional race and decided to run again for her former seat in the state senate. Lizza describes below how Obama used Chicago-style operators to win the race:

‘“… Publicly, Obama was conciliatory about the awkward political situation, telling the Hyde Park Herald that he understood that some people were upset about the “conflict between old loyalties and new enthusiasms.” Privately, however, he unleashed his operators. With the help of the Dobrys, he was able to remove not just Palmer’s name from the ballot but the name of every other opponent as well. ‘He ran unopposed, which is a good way to win,’ Mikva said, laughing at the recollection. And Palmer said last week, ‘Anyone who enters Chicago politics and can’t take the rough and tumble shouldn’t be there. Losing the seat was just that—not the end of the world.’”

Here’s the eye-opening message to Obama’s left-wing base in the Democratic party who earnestly believed that Obama represented the answer to all their prayers. As Oprah put it: “He’s the one we’ve been waiting for.”

Lizza explains:

'“Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them. When he was a community organizer, he channelled his work through Chicago’s churches, because they were the main bases of power on the South Side. He was an agnostic when he started, and the work led him to become a practicing Christian. At Harvard, he won the presidency of the Law Review by appealing to the conservatives on the selection panel. In Springfield, rather than challenge the Old Guard Democratic leaders, Obama built a mutually beneficial relationship with them. 'You have the power to make a United States senator,' he told Emil Jones in 2003. In his downtime, he played poker with lobbyists and Republican lawmakers. In Washington, he has been a cautious senator and, when he arrived, made a point of not defining himself as an opponent of the Iraq war.”'

Lizza points out:

“Like many politicians, Obama is paradoxical. He is by nature an incrementalist, yet he has laid out an ambitious first-term agenda (energy independence, universal health care, withdrawal from Iraq). He campaigns on reforming a broken political process, yet he has always played politics by the rules as they exist, not as he would like them to exist. He runs as an outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering the inside game. He is ideologically a man of the left, but at times he has been genuinely deferential to core philosophical insights of the right.”

After reading Lizza’s article in its entirety, no Obama supporter should suffer any further pangs of disillusionment as the remainder of the general election campaign unfolds. The would-be-inheritor of the legend of Camelot (as promoted by Ted and Caroline Kennedy) has already been revealed as just another calculating, poll-driven, old-style Chicago politician.

Obama, the Old-Style Chicago Politician, Plays Hardball

The Obama camp, in league with its media allies and using every tactic at its disposal, has been trying to force Hillary Clinton out of the Democratic race ever since New Hampshire. The DNC Rules Committee meets this Saturday and CNN’s Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston remind readers that Barack Obama resorted to similar old-style Chicago political tactics to eliminate his opponents in his first race for office, when he sought a state Senate seat on Chicago's South Side in 1996.

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Obama Supporter Tony Rezko Faces Trial Monday

Photo credits: Courtesy of Politico.com

Barack Obama has offered himself to the electorate as the harbinger of “the new politics” throughout the Democratic race, and he’s poised to seal the deal in next Tuesday’s primaries. However, voters in Ohio and Texas would do well to tune into the corruption trial of one of Obama's longtime friends and supporters set to begin Monday in Chicago.

According to ABC News, “reform watchdogs say it {the trial} will reveal the ‘cesspool’ of Illinois politics in which Obama came of age and has said little about in his campaign for president.”

The report continues: "'We have a sick political culture,’ said Jay Stewart, the executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, ‘and that's the environment that Barack Obama came from.'

“Stewart says he does not understand why Obama has lectured others about corruption in Washington and Kenya but ‘been noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state, including at this point, mostly Democratic politicians.'"

To read more of the ABC News report, go here:

Note:

Jeralyn at TalkLeft posted on Rezko's upcoming trial this past Tuesday:

"Let me start out by saying, as I have before, that I don't think Barack Obama did anything illegal in his dealings with Anton "Tony" Rezko. Obama has labeled his involvement with Rezko and his wife in the purchase of his home "boneheaded." In other words, since Rezko was under federal investigation by a grand jury at the time Obama bought the $1.65 million house, it was bad judgment, nothing more."

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Gloria Steinem Speaks Out Against Sexism in 2008 Campaign

Photo credits: CBS News

After the “Iron my shirt!” incident at a Clinton campaign event last night in New Hampshire, Gloria Steinem’s op-ed in today’s New York Times was a much-needed lift to the morale of any self-respecting woman.

For me personally, Steinem’s article titled Women Are Never Front-Runners was like a chance encounter with an old friend from the trenches of the second wave of the feminist movement a couple of decades ago.

I’ve met Steinem in person two or three times over the years, but the occasion I remember most vividly was a 1980 gathering in Chicago of over 90,000 supporters to march on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment. The event was coordinated by Jane Byrne, the first woman mayor of Chicago, who was joined in Grant Park by Steinem, Marlow Thomas, Ellie Smeal, and other feminist leaders.

Years later, Steinem’s words still have the power to stir both the mind and the heart. She began her op-ed today with a leap of imagination followed by challenging her readers to be honest:

“THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.

“Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?”

After giving her reasons for supporting Hillary Clinton in this election, Steinem listed her worries about the 2008 campaign, worries that we should all pause to carefully consider:

”But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.

“What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.

“What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.

“What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama’s dependence on the old — for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy — while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo.

“What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.

That’s a lot to worry about.

Having noted earlier that if Obama is the Democratic nominee, she’ll support him, Steinem concluded:

“This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: ‘I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.’”