From the moment he spoke about the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Balgojevich yesterday, Barack Obama did everything he could to distance himself from the scandal enveloping the Governor, but that hasn’t stopped questions from being raised.
It started yesterday with a post by ABC News reporter Jake Tapper regarding the long-time connections between the President-Elect and the now disgraced Governor:
[I]t should be pointed out, Mr. Obama has a relationship with Mr. Blagojevich, having not only endorsed Blagojevich in 2002 and 2006, but having served as a top adviser to the Illinois governor in his first 2002 run for the state house.
In the Democratic gubernatorial primary that year, then-state sen. Obama endorsed former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris. But after Blagojevich won, Obama came around enthusiastically. At the same time, meanwhile, Axelrod had such serious concerns about whether Blagojevich was ready for governing he refused to work for his one-time client.
According to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., Mr. Obama’s incoming White House chief of staff, Emanuel, then-state senator Obama, a third Blagojevich aide, and Blagojevich’s campaign co-chair, David Wilhelm, were the top strategists of Blagojevich’s 2002 gubernatorial victory.
Emanuel told the New Yorker earlier this year that he and Obama “participated in a small group that met weekly when Rod was running for governor. We basically laid out the general election, Barack and I and these two.”
Wilhelm said that Emanuel had overstated Obama’s role. “There was an advisory council that was inclusive of Rahm and Barack but not limited to them,” Wilhelm said, and he disputed the notion that Obama was “an architect or one of the principal strategists.”
(An Obama Transition Team aide emails to note that Emanuel later changed his recollection of this story to Rich Miller’s “CAPITOL FAX,” saying, “David [Wilhelm] and I have worked together on campaigns for decades. Like always, he’s right and I’m wrong.”)
Either way, others now around Obama were less enthusiastic about Blagojevich at the time, namely David Axelrod, Obama’s senior campaign adviser who will soon be a senior adviser at the White House.
Axelrod had worked for Blagojevich in his past races for the House, but he declined to work on his gubernatorial run.
“He had been my client and I had a very good relationship with him, but I didn’t sign on to the governor’s race,” Axelrod told the New Yorker. “Obviously he won, but I had concerns about it…I was concerned about whether he was ready for that. Not so much for the race but for governing. I was concerned about some of the folks — I was concerned about how the race was being approached.”
On the Chicago TV show “Public Affairs with Jeff Berkowitz” on June 27, 2002, state Sen. Obama said, “Right now, my main focus is to make sure that we elect Rod Blagojevich as Governor, we…”
“You working hard for Rod?” interrupted Berkowitz.
“You betcha,” said Obama.
“Hot Rod?” asked the host.
“That’s exactly right,” Obama said.
In 2004, then-Gov. Blagojevich enthusiastically endorsed Obama for the Senate seat after he won the nomination, and Obama endorsed Blagojevich for his 2006 re-election race in early 2005.
In the Summer of 2006, then-U.S. Sen. Obama backed Blagojevich even though there were serious questions at the time about Blago’s hiring practices.
Now, one can characterize Obama’s continued support of Blagojevich after questions about his ethical conduct began to surface as the actions of a loyal Democrat supporting his Party’s candidate, but, as Dave Schuler notes, it comes down to a question of what Obama knew and when he knew it:
There are only a limited number of likely possibilities. That Rod Blagojevich didn’t begin his corrupt activities until after 2006 stretches credulity. Perhaps Barack Obama genuinely did not know what Rod Blagojevich was about. That would demonstrate a stunning naïveté or willful ignorance, neither admission reflecting particularly well on the President-Elect. Childlike innocence is a wonderful thing but not in the President of the United States.
It may be that an ambitious young Barack Obama was willing to overlook his fellow partisan’s corruption under the principle “he’s a sonuvabitch but he’s our sonuvabitch”, not a particularly attractive viewpoint, especially for a post-partisan candidate running on a reform ticket.
Or it may be that he didn’t care—just business as usual in Illinois politics. So much for the reform candidate.
For the moment, the President-Elect and his advisers appear to be following a “no comment” policy on the scandal, but as Schuler goes on to note, that may not be the best strategy given the difficult position this story puts Obama in:
If, indeed, he did know about it, I don’t believe that maintaining a highminded silence is President-Elect Barack Obama’s best strategy for dealing with it. I think he has a rare, brief opportunity to harness this incident to a good purpose. Americans believe in second chances, in second births. President-Elect Obama should acknowledge that he was aware of what was going on but had no real evidence and, consequently, couldn’t step forward and he should condemn this kind of corruption in no uncertain terms. No mincing words. No decorous silence.
If he fails to do this, at the best he’ll have missed an opportunity. At the worst it will dog him through his presidency.
There’s no allegation that Obama did anything wrong, but what he knew and when it knew it could become an important issue. Covering up the answer to that question, or refusing to answer it, is not the way to deal with it as nearly every political scandal in American history from Watergate onward has demonstrated plainly.
The sooner Obama lays all the cards on the table, the better. Obama needs to get out in front of the story here, and not just rely upon the traditional politicians response.
