Rod Blagojevich scandal raises some seasonal cheer

America is going back to basics. When the stock market plummeted on Black Monday, September 29, the only share to rise was Campbell's Soup and now, amid the funereal gloom of a rotten Christmas season the nation's spirits are being rallied by the five-star political corruption scandal in Chicago centered on Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Now at last the city can crawl out from under the odorless uplift of Obamian 'hope' and swagger back into the fragrant, smoke-filled rooms of municipal graft, with Blagojevich's voice booming on the FBI phone taps as he hawked Obama's vacant senate seat for cash and ripely cursed those failing to "pay to play".

It's scarcely 48 hours since the FBI seized Blagojevich in his jogging clothes and already the scandal's storyline is metastasising at pell-mell speed, weaving its way through such characters as Blagojevich’s rambunctious wife Patti - the Lady Macbeth of this saga -  and his estranged father-in-law Dick Mell to the President-elect.

Blagojevich does Obama the enormous favor of denouncing him on the tapes

Top storyline is surely the impact of Blagojevich's indictment on Obama. At the very moment the President-elect proclaims an era of uplift and constitutional propriety, the slimy tentacles of old-style Chicago corruption are snaking towards his ankles.

The chortles of outgoing President George Bush,  himself harassed by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in the Scooter Libby affair, must be rich and prolonged.

Blagojevich does Obama the enormous favor of denouncing him on the government's tapes. "Fuck him," bellowed the governor during a call with top aides and his wife, covertly recorded by the FBI on November 10. "For nothing? Fuck him."

The governor was peeved that Obama's representatives weren't offering him any material incentives to nominate Obama's political associate and Chicago powerhouse, Valerie Jarrett, for the Senate seat. Obama can thank his stars for the expletive but potential embarrassments still loom.

At Blagojevich's elbow amid his corrupt intrigues was the real estate operator Tony Rezko, who helped Obama get his fine house in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighbourhood. Fitzgerald will undoubtedly use Rezko against Blagojevich and Obama's name is sure to surface, as will that of his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a major Democratic player in Chicago politics for many years.

Both Obama and Emanuel campaigned vigorously for Blagojevich in his two gubernatorial campaigns. Also in the loop of rumour is Obama's political godfather, Illinois state senate president Emil Jones, possibly one of the those - designated only by numbers in the federal indictment - angling to be nominated as Obama's Senate replacement.

Aready there is fierce infighting between two leading Democrats in the US Congress. US Senate majority leader Harry Reid wants either Blagojevich - now back at work while awaiting trial - or the the Illinois legislature to appoint a Democrat to succeed Obama and avoid any erosion of the Democrats' substantial Senate majority in Congress.

This is exactly the sort of scandal Americans understand and appreciate

But Illinois's senior senator, Dick Durbin, says correctly that only a special election of the new senator will dispel the stench of scandal. In such an election a Republican could well win.
 
Meanwhile Jesse Jackson Jr has rushed before the microphones and cameras to proclaim that he is not under federal investigation. Jackson has been named as possibly being candidate number five.

The person marked by this chaste numeral allegedly promised Blagojevich a total of $1m in return for nomination. (Jarrett, who has since taken herself out of the running, was supposedly candidate number two.)

Coming into focus is the familiar landscape of American political corruption - a rich habitat where the businessman and the state official collaborate in the allocation of no-bid contracts, bestowing of profitable concessions, permits, waivers, zoning variances, monopolies and other political mechanisms propelling the well-greased axles of state and local government.

Of course the good government crowd is aghast. "I was speechless and sickened," wailed Cindi Canary, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. "In all of the millions of indictments I've read over the last years, I can't remember anything as vile as this."

Another reformer moaned about "the damage to the state... It's going to take a long time to dig out."

Nonsense. This is exactly the sort of scandal Americans understand and appreciate. Good government is the province of states politically dominated by prim Nordics, like the Dakotas, or Washington in the Pacific northwest.

In the riper ethnic cauldrons of Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and of course New Jersey, corruption reigns in all its intricate and creative forms. In these states no politician is beyond the reach of an indictment, and this political certainty is the truest form of Americanism and the soundest check and balance against the arrogance of power. ·