Since there isn’t a ghost of a chance that the Times would ever publish a letter in its entirety written by me, I thought I would use my position as associate editor of American Thinker to respond to Bob Herbert’s laughably ignorant call for another airport in the Chicago area to be located south of the city.

To briefly sum up Mr. Herbert’s column, he believes that the jobs that would be created at the proposed airport near Peotone, Illinois would be just the ticket to get the economy moving on the terminally economically ill south side of Chicago. His fantasy airport would include minimal taxpayer financing, little chance for corrupt contract letting, little chance for political interference, and is just the thing to relieve traffic congestion at O’Hare.

My response:

To the Editor:

I want to congratulate Bob Herbert on his new job as Chief Shill and Water Carrier for Representative Jesse Jackson whose proposal to build an airport south of the city near Peotone, IL was highlighted in Mr. Herbert’s column of March 13 (”Flying Blind in Chicago). I sincerely hope Mr. Herbert will have time to keep writing columns for your newspaper as he has given me endless hours of amusement with his deadpan comedic take on many issues and personalities. Rep. Jackson would very much like to be a senator and to have the august Mr. Herbert promoting the project he hopes to use to ride to Washington will no doubt assist him greatly when it comes time to campaign for the slot being vacated by Roland Burris in 2010 - and perhaps sooner if Mr. Burris can’t get his story straight about his contacts with our late lamented governor Rod Blagojevich.

As for Mr. Herbert’s promoting the Peotone airport, I found several of his observations regarding the efficacy of such a project curious, if not shockingly ignorant. I realize that Mr. Herbert, living as he does in the New York City area, no doubt sees us here in far off Chicagoland as some exotic form of animal life. I can assure Mr. Herbert that such is not the case, that we all get up in the morning and put our pants on one leg at a time just as he does in New York — that is, if they’re still wearing pants there. We may be a little behind fashion wise out in the sticks so I wouldn’t want to jump to any conclusions.

But Mr. Herbert made some claims about the proposed Peotone airport that I would like to address, namely:

It has long been known that a third airport is needed in the Chicago metropolitan area…

Mr. Herbert is correct. It has long been known by those in favor of buying up a stupendous amount of the richest, most fertile farmland in the world - 24,000 acres which is more than 3 times the size of O’Hare - for an airport that the FAA claims is not needed. It is also a well known fact that a third airport is needed if Jesse Jackson, Jr. is going to be elected Senator from Illinois. And it is well known among certain well connected Illinois businesses and politicians that we need another airport for continued graft and corruption.

It may shock Mr. Herbert and readers in New York, but Illinois does not feature the cleanest politics in its state and local government. Surprising as it may be, we have had some minor problems from time to time with the honesty and integrity of our politicians. Scientists studying this problem point to many of our pols secreting an adhesive substance on their fingers that money can’t help but stick to - especially when that money belongs to the taxpayer. It is not a terminal illness but debilitating nonetheless as it gets in the way of good, clean government.

I’m sure Mr. Herbert was unaware of these facts when he wrote this:

The airport would be financed and built by two firms with vast airport experience: LCOR, which owns and operates International Terminal 4 at Kennedy Airport in New York, and SNC-Lavalin, which has financed and operates airports in Europe, Canada, South America and elsewhere.

Um…yes. But financing the actual construction of the airport is a small part of the cost involved. Current plans call for massive amounts of road building, infrastructure improvements, not to mention some kind of mass transit plan that would have to be implemented to get people from the city out to Peotone 40 miles away. 

Illinois pols are licking their chops at the prospect of so much loose cash to be spread around.

Then there’s this bit of nonsense:

There are many advantages to this project, in addition to the private funding. The airport would be specifically designed to serve low-cost carriers that cannot afford to build and operate their own terminals. They would arrive and depart at “common-use” gates that are far more economical.

Another feature of the airport design is that it is “market driven,” meaning that it would be relatively small when it opened and could easily be expanded as demand increased.

Those “low cost carriers” are already using other airports in the region. And the idiocy of building a small airport 40 miles from downtown Chicago that could “easily be expanded” begs the question; why build infrastructure and roads for a major airport and then open a facility designed not to relieve O’Hare congestion but simply steal revenue and traffic from other small towns like Rockford, Champaign, or even Gary, Indiana which has just received FAA permission to build another runway?

The FAA is keen on expanding the airports in Milwaukee and Gary, rightly believing that this is the regional answer to O’Hare’s problems. The airlines are against Peotone not because, as Herbert believes they “are not interested in seeing low-cost competition flying in and out of a spanking new airport, especially one with enormous growth potential…” but because they have crunched the numbers and know that future traffic will be down and there is no need to have an airport with “enormous growth potential.” It is an utter fantasy to believe that Peotone would ever grow large enough to justify major carriers moving there.

Finally, Herbert is being too kind to some politicians when he says, “Simply stated, the politicians can’t get their act together.”

Is he serious? Mayor Daley has his act together just fine and will oppose a third airport in Peotone to his last breath. It’s no act, either. Daley and Jackson hate each other with a passion and Hizzoner will not only do everything in his considerable power to deny him the Democratic nomination for Senator but will fight any loss in revenue from O’Hare. Currently, there is an $8 passenger fee that streams into Daley’s hands for everyone flying in and out of O’Hare. There are also extraordinarily lucrative concessions at the airport - food, shops, parking, limos, taxis, buses, and the motherlode that comes in from towing cars from in front of the terminal left by people who didn’t believe the signs and helped their grandma with her bags anyway. These concessions represent not only cash, but marvelous opportunities to reward cronies - cronies like Barack Obama’s friend Tony Rezko who had a minority front for him so he could open restaurants in the terminals.

And Daley, who is expanding O’Hare to the tune of $15 billion and who is rubbing his hands together in anticipation of getting billions in stim money to help him finance it, will make it a cold day in hell before any other wasteful airport project gets in the way of funding his own albatross of an airport project.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. knows all of this - knows that he can claim that Peotone will set new standards for government cleanliness and incorruptible contracting all he wants but in the end, the state will be stuck with a white elephant of an airport, sprawling in the middle of nowhere and the dirty politicians and their cronies will feast as they always feast on whatever taxpayer money is allocated for this boondoggle.  

If Mr. Herbert wants to kiss up to Rep. Jackson, that’s his business. But perhaps he should learn a little of Illinois politics before he spouts off about things of which he knows little or nothing.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

David Axelrod is largely - and rightly - credited with successfully crafting Barack Obama’s campaign message machine and using it to great effect during the campaign.

But before he elected a president,  David Axelrod advised campaigns for a host of politicians including Chicago’s mayor Richard Daley. In fact, he considers himself an expert in “urban politics” - which translated means big city Democratic machine politics.

It is important to note that Republicans have their own “machines” - mostly in the south where “courthouse politics” employs many of the same patronage, kickback, and even “pay to play” schemes you routinely find in Democratic-run big cities. No party has a corner on corruption - which made the Democrat’s “outrage” in 2006 at the “Republican culture of corruption” so laughable.

But Axelrod just elected Mr. Clean as president. And it is important to get a handle on what a man who will be a close advisor to President Obama in the White House thinks of Patrick Fitzgerald’s corruption investigations.

Fitzy has taken down a host of pols in Chicago including aldermen, politically connected businessmen like Tony Rezko, and even 2 of Mayor Daley’s closest aides in city hall.

That last scandal involved serious violations of a court ruling that was supposed to clean up the city’s corrupt patronage system. Chicago mayors (and other big city pols) have used patronage as a means of controlling the Democratic party for decades. But a lawsuit against the practice in Chicago resulted in a ruling that most city jobs had to involve a fair hiring procedure where only the most qualified candidates would get government jobs.

Then in 2005, the Chicago Sun Times broke a fairly routine scandal involving the use of (or, in this case, the non-use) of city trucks - contracts to politically connected (and sometimes mobbed up) trucking firms that paid millions of dollars for little or no work. The city was entertained for weeks with stories of bribes being paid by city employees to steer truck contracts to specific firms, ghost payrolling, lolligagging truckers drawing taxpayer monies for going golfing, and other examples of extraordinary venality on the part of city politicians.

Once Fitzy got involved, the investigation expanded to include the entire patronage system in Chicago. And what prosecutors found was simply astonishing; 30 city pols who routinely violated the patronage law by doctoring documents to show interviews with candidates that never happened, resume tampering, and other fraudulent actions all to get loyal campaign workers city jobs. Fitzy’s investigation eventually reached deep into Daley’s office as two of his closest aides - including his patronage chief Robert Sorich - were convicted in the case.

Here’s how it worked:

In February 2005 a grand jury indicted Sorich for devising a scheme to “provide financial benefits, in the form of city jobs and promotions, in exchange for campaign work.” As part of this scheme, it charged, Sorich and other officials “corrupted the city’s personnel process” by awarding “jobs and promotions” to preselected candidates “through sham and rigged interviews.”

At the Sorich trial Kozicki, then in the buildings department, testified that as managing deputy commissioner he had altered 19-year-old Andrew Ryan’s interview rating to ensure that Ryan scored high enough to get a building inspector’s job for which other applicants were more qualified. Andrew Ryan is the son of Tom Ryan, secretary-treasurer of Carpenters Local 13, a union that was a major financial contributor to Daley’s 2003 reelection campaign.

And Axelrod? Here’s what the new Senior Advisor to the President had to say about it: back in 2006:

As Axelrod has said, a too-zealous prosecutor can look at normal political behavior and suspect impropriety. In a 2006 Vanity Fair interview, the Obama aide complained about Fitzgerald’s scrutiny of Chicago politics.

“He goes after fleas and elephants with the same bazooka,” Axelrod said. “At some point there’s a line … where you begin criminalizing politics in its most innocent form.”

When you practice the art of politics amidst such sleaze and corruption, egregious lawbreaking can, I suppose, seem “innocent.” But what does that reveal about the moral compass of people like Axelrod? When the rest of us are shocked and appalled at the routine and arrogant criminal conduct carried out by powerful people like Daley and Blagojevich, who obviously believe the rules followed by ordinary folk do not apply to them, do we really want moral pygmies like Axelrod anywhere near the seat of national government?

Indeed, Obama himself - now caught in the lie that he had no knowledge that any of his aides were meeting with Blagojevich’s people about his senate seat - has shown a curious lethargy about the entire Blagojevich scandal, especially because he’s known since a week after the election that Blago was shopping his seat to the highest bidder (See Jim Lindgren’s timeline of the scandal that shows how Obama first, made it known he wanted his good friend Valerie Jarrett to get the appointment and within 24 hrs of a phonecon involving Blago and one of his advisors - probably Emanuel - he yanked her name from consideration and gave her a job in the White House.)

The Obama team will vigorously deny they knew anything about Blago’s attempts to sell his senate seat but that just doesn’t pass the smell test. Given how careless Blagojevich was about the spread of such information, it is inconcievable that the president-elect, whose Chicago and Springfield connections are as good as anyone’s, wouldn’t have been aware of what was going on.

But why should they not come forward with the truth? They didn’t break any laws. The reason they won’t and can’t reveal their knowledge in this matter is because to do so would be to reveal a hole in their moral universe that shows that they considered Blago’s auction of the senate seat “innocent” and nothing more than routine political horse trading - routine for the culture of corruption in Chicago and Springfield. Obama was smart enough to see a train wreck coming and pulled his good friend Jarrett from consideration while still allowing Emanuel to have input into the selection process. In short, there were no illegalities but rather an incredible ineptitude in recognizing a moral problem with Blago’s criminality.

I am not sure what this portends for the next 4 years as far as the way the White House will operate. If you have a bunch of people who don’t know or can’t tell what’s moral or immoral as far as political actions are concerned, what kind of scandals will be breaking by this time next year?

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Those of us who have followed Illinois politics for any length of time are tempted to give the Rod Blagojevich arrest and pending indictment a quick shrug, a knowing smile, and a cynical sigh of know-it-all arrogance. “We’ve seen this before in Illinois, nothing new here, just move along” is the condenscending response to questions from out of staters that usually suffice when some Illinois politico is caught with his fingers in the taxpayer’s cookie jar.

But the Blagojevich True Crime Drama is not criminality as usual in Illinois politics. The malfeasance of Governor Rod Blagojevich is so outrageous, so brazen, so breathtaking in its scope and character that even  jaded journalistic hacks whose beat has been the statehouse for years are shocked. In the long history of official Illinois corruption, the Blagojevich schemes to personally enrich himself, enrich his cronies, and use the power of his office to further his nefarious designs are unprecedented.

“I want to make money” the governor was heard admitting on tape. Evidently, the opportunities that presented themselves for Blagojevich to clean up were too tempting to pass up. Here’s a partial list of the charges via the Chicago Tribune:

Prosecutors alleged Blagojevich sought appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services, secretary of the Energy Department or gain an ambassadorship in the new Obama administration, or get a lucrative job with a union in exchange for appointing a union-preferred candidate. An Obama spokesman had no immediate comment.

Blagojevich also was alleged to be using a favors list, made up largely of individuals and firms that have state contracts or received taxpayer benefits, from which to conduct a $2.5 million fundraising drive before year’s end when a new tougher law on campaign donations, prompted by the governor’s voracious fundraising, would take effect.

Even Blagojevich’s recently announced $1.8 billion plan for new interchanges and “green lanes” on the Illinois Tollway was subject to corruption, prosecutors alleged. The criminal complaint alleges Blagojevich expected an unnamed highway concrete contractor to raise a half-million dollars for his campaign fund in exchange for state money for the tollway project. “If they don’t perform, (expletive) ‘em,” Blagojevich said, according to the complaint.

Blagojevich and Harris also allegedly conspired to demand the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members responsible for editorials critical of Blagojevich in exchange for state help with the sale of Wrigley Field, the Chicago Cubs baseball stadium owned by Tribune Co.

In addition, federal prosecutors alleged Blagojevich and Harris, along with others, obtained and sought to gain financial benefits for the governor, members of his family and his campaign fund in exchange for appointments to state boards and commissions, state jobs and state contracts.

The big news, of course, is the governor’s attempt to sell the senate seat of Barack Obama. Incredibly, it appears that he tried to get the best deal by shopping the seat to as many as 7 potential candidates - including, indirectly, Barack Obama.

Blogger Joseph Cannon of Cannonfire details the offer to an unamed high level Obama advisor (evidence suggests it is newly-designated chief of staff Rahm Emanuel). Blagojevich was pushing what Cannon calls “a wacky scheme” where the governor would take over control of a not for profit group - a 501(c)(4) - set up by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates (who would act at the behest of Obama) in exchange for appointing Obama’s choice for the senate seat - his long time friend and advisor Valerie Jarrett.

This is directly from the criminal complaint: (PDF) that details several conversations caught on a federal wiretap:

The advisor asked ROD BLAGOJEVICH if the 501(c)(4) is a real effort or just a vehicle to help ROD BLAGOJEVICH. ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that it is a real effort but also a place for ROD BLAGOJEVICH to go when he is no longer Governor. The advisor said he likes the Change to Win idea better, and notes that it is more likely to happen because it is one step removed from the President-elect.

“Change to Win” is a labor NGO that the governor was interested in heading up. In order to get that job, Blagojevich had to approach the head of the powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Andy Stern. The governor was willing to name a candidate who would be little more than a union toady in order to secure that position. And he was asking “Advisor B” (Emanuel) to make it happen.

according to Advisor B from the President-elect’s perspective, there would be fewer “fingerprints” on the President-elect’s involvement with Change to Win because Change to Win already has an existing stream of revenue and, therefore, “you won’t have stories in four years that they bought you off.”

Was Rahm Emanuel (read Cannon’s reasoning on why the evidence points to the chief of staff) making a counter offer to the governor’s bribe? It’s an interesting question and one that the press may wish to ask the new chief of staff.

In addition to the Obama team, Blagojevich was trying to sell the senate seat to as many as 6 different candidates. One candidate’s representative - “Candidate #5 in the complaint - allegedly offered Blagojevich a substantial bribe for the office. The governor liked that idea and told an aide that if Obama “didn’t give him anything” he would choose Candidate #5.

Who is “Candidate #5?” Speculation is zeroing in on Jesse Jackson, Jr. From the actual complaint via Marc Ambinder:

Blagojevich said that he might be able to cut a deal with Senate Candidate 5 that provided
Blagojevich with something “tangible up front.” Noting that he was going to meet with Senate
Candidate 5 in the next few days, Blagojevich told Fundraiser A to reach out to an intermediary (Individual D), from whom Blagojevich is attempting to obtain campaign contributions and whi Blagojevich believes is close to Senate Candidate 5. Blagojevich told Fundraiser A to tell Individual D that Senate Candidate 5 was a very realistic candidate but Blagojevich was getting a lot of pressure not to appoint Senate Candidate 5, according to the affidavit.

The only candidate for the senate seat to meet with Obama in the time period mentioned was Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr.

It should be noted that there is absolutely no evidence that Jackson had any knowledge of these representations to Obama made on his behalf by a fundraiser nor is there any evidence that an “intermediary” informed him of the “negotiations.

If you read all 72 pages of the indictment, you just can’t help being struck by the money grubbing nature of the governor and his mania for money. He had schemes within schemes to extract cash from supporters, cronies, and companies who wished to do business with the state.

His “pay to play” program was particularly lucrative. This was a scheme where Blagojevich friend and campaign financier Antoin “Tony” Rezko pressured companies doing business with the state to contribute to the Blagojevich re-election campaign in exchange for lucrative state contracts. Rezko was convicted of 18 counts of fraud in connection with the scheme and the governor’s name was prominently mentioned during his trial. Others involved in this scheme include Stuart Levine, a GOP mover and shaker in the state.

At least you can say we here in Illinois are bi-partisan when it comes to corruption.

While the selling of the senate seat and pay to play complaints got the most headlines, perhaps the most incredible of all the charges alleged against Blagojevich is his attempted shakedown of the Chicago Tribune.

The Trib not only owns the Chicago Tribune but also the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Owner Sam Zell (who has just filed for bankruptcy) is trying to sell the team and, more importantly, one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in Chicago; Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs.

But the sale of Wrigley field will involve massive taxes - something on the order of $100 million dollars in capital gains. Zell had a approached the Illinois Finance Authority (IFA) in order to strike a deal where, according to the criminal complaint, the IFA would take title to Wrigley Field thus saving Zell a lot of cash.

Enter Blagojevich who told his chief of staff John Harris (also arrested today) to make it clear to Zell that no help from the IFA would be forthcoming unless some members of the Chicago Tribune editorial board were fired.

In a November 4 phone call with Harris, Blagojevich told his aide “”our recommendation is fire all those [expletive] people, get ‘em the [expletive] out of there and get us some editorial support.”

Harris reported back on November 11 that Zell “got the message and is very sensitive to the issue.” Later, Harris told Blagojevich that there were “certain corporate reorganizations and budget cuts coming and, reading between the lines, he’s (Zell) going after that section.”

No firings have taken place yet and it is doubtful that Zell will make a move now that this deal is in the open. I suppose he saw it as a cost of doing business and $100 million is a lot of cash. But the thought that he would buckle to the whims of this strutting peacock of a politician who wanted journalists who were only doing the job they were being paid to do axed because they were telling the truth about his corruption stinks of rank cowardice.

No doubt over the next few days many aspects of this story will be fleshed out. We will almost certainly be treated to some fancy footwork by the Obama team as they seek to avoid the appearance that anyone connected with the new president came within a country mile of Blagojevich. That may be difficult to do what with the taped conversation between the governor and “Advisor B” and unanswered questions about whether Obama actually discussed the appointment of a new senator with the governor or not.

Obama said in his statement he had no contact with Blagojevich. Unfortunately for the new president, his top aide David Axelrod told Fox News on November 23 that Obama had indeed talked with Blagojevich about the senate seat. The transition has since released a statement saying that Axelrod “misspoke” on November 23.

And I have a bridge over the Chicago River you can have for a song if you believe that one.

The chances are very good that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is far from finished. Meanwhile, the Democratic party in Illinois may be in for a very rough ride as their leader ponders his future - or lack of one - and his associates lawyer up in anticipation of legal trouble.

My latest at PJ Media is about the Blagojevich arrest and details “the most breathtaking corruption in the history of Illinois politics.”

A sample:

In any other state, this would be simply unbelievable, or perhaps considered a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence to have such breathtaking and brazen corruption reveal itself at the highest levels of state government.

The “pay-to-play” charges have been out in the public for more than two years. This was a scheme where Blagojevich friend and campaign financier Antoin “Tony” Rezko pressured companies doing business with the state to contribute to the Blagojevich re-election campaign in exchange for lucrative state contracts. Rezko was convicted of 18 counts of fraud in connection with the scheme and the governor’s name was prominently mentioned during his trial.

This probably will not involve Barack Obama. The next president gave Blago a wide berth and evidently went so far as to pull Valerie Jarrett, his close personal friend, out of the running for his replacement when it became clear that Blagojevich was trying to sell the seat to the highest bidder.

But it is instructive to note that this is the political culture that nurtured and raised Barack Obama. To think that it hasn’t tainted him is just plain idiocy. There are plenty of examples of Obama using his clout to help a friend or crony not to mention steer government business to campaign contributors. Obama lived, breathed, ate, and slept Illinois politics for more than a decade. And that’s something to keep in mind as his Administration rolls along.

The maneuvering began before Barack Obama was even elected president. A genuine political scramble was on as Illinois politicians great and not so great let it be known subtly and not so subtly that they wouldn’t say no if Governor Rod Blagojevich tapped them to fill out the unexpired portion of Obama’s term in the United States Senate.

There are so many issues and personalities involved in the decision-making process that the selection promises to be controversial no matter who is chosen. It would take the wisdom of Solomon to sort out the confusing, conflicting currents of race, faction, and family in order to arrive at a consensus so that the Democratic Party in Illinois doesn’t fly apart at the seams.

And smack dab in the middle of the maelstrom is the current governor, Milorad “Rod” R. Blagojevich, proud Serbian-American. He is also a man on the cusp of becoming the fourth Illinois governor out of the last seven to be indicted for corruption. He was mentioned prominently and not in the best light, during the trial of Obama friend, financier, and patron Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was convicted of fraud in connection with a statehouse “pay to play” scheme. Federal prosecutors have leaked the information that they think they have enough on the governor for an indictment, largely — it is believed — because Rezko is singing to the feds in exchange for a lighter sentence. There is also a move among members of his own party in the Illinois House to impeach him. The governor is not only unpopular in the state, he is spectacularly and universally hated. A recent poll conducted by the Chicago Tribune found that just 13% of residents approved of the job he was doing.

In short, Governor Blagojevich might want to hurry the process of selecting Obama’s replacement along since he may not be sleeping in the governor’s mansion much longer. He claims he wants to settle the matter before Christmas. If so, he will probably be able to make that deadline — barely — before either resigning in disgrace or being kicked out by members of his own party.

If it were only Blagojevich who had input into the decision it would still be difficult, but at least the governor would avoid incoming fire from several factions with a huge interest in who will replace the new president in the Senate. And there is no interest group making more noise and demanding consideration than African Americans.

They’ve got a good case. Once Obama formally resigns from the Senate, that body will be left with no African Americans serving. There are two prominent African Americans in Illinois who may have the inside track as well as a few other blacks not as well known but who might be on Blagojevich’s short list .

One candidate, Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett, who served as Mayor Daley’s staff chief and headed up the powerful Transit Board in Chicago, is a long time friend of both Michelle Obama (who she hired for the Mayor Daley’s staff years ago) and Barack. But she has  removed her name from consideration because she is destined for the national stage, being named Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President. She is also currently busy as co-chair of the Obama transition effort.

The other major African American contender is Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., son of former presidential candidate Reverend Jesse Jackson and a power in Chicago politics. If Blagojevich wanted to open a can of worms, he could do no better than select the younger Jackson to replace Obama. It would tick off Mayor Daley, anger a rival faction of African Americans in the city, and worry many downstate Democrats who feel Jackson would be a millstone around their necks in 2010.

Jackson carries a lot of political baggage. He once disrespected Mayor Daley’s father, the former Mayor Richard M. Daley, very publicly. He has opposed Daley in his efforts to expand O’Hare airport, desiring that the government build a new airport in his district. He has also clashed with Governor Blagojevich on several issues and railed against the corruption of his administration. A congressman since 1995, Jackson ran an abortive campaign for mayor in 2006, smartly dropping out when the Democrats achieved a majority in the House of Representatives. It would have been an uphill fight to pull enough liberal white, African American, and Hispanic votes to beat Daley who is very popular with many minority groups, especially Hispanics.

Jackson wants to replace Obama badly. He was first out of the box, making it known in October that he would be “honored and humbled” to take Obama’s seat. He actually commissioned a Zogby poll showing him in the lead among all candidates who had been mentioned.

He is also very liberal — a fact not lost on downstate Democrats who have figured out how to run in previously Republican territory and believe that having Jackson at the top of the ticket in 2010 might very well set them back and allow the Republicans to retake control of one or both houses in the legislature.

Given all this, it appears that Jackson would only have an outside shot at being chosen. That leaves two potential candidates — one not very well known and another known all too well as one of the more colorful characters in Illinois politics.

At age 73, state Senate leader Emil Jones has had a long career as a Chicago Machine politician. Starting as a sewer inspector, Jones worked his way up the ranks and is now one of the most powerful politicians in the state. His own campaign kitty funds dozens of Democratic senators in their runs for office, making him a force not only on the Senate floor where he rules with an iron fist, but also in the corridors and cloakrooms where his legendary powers of persuasion are put to use in service to what some see as his own agenda.

Jones, who is retiring from the state Senate in 2010, has said he wouldn’t turn the job down. In fact, some observers believe he would make a perfect replacement for Obama. He almost certainly wouldn’t run for re-election, thus clearing the way for a battle royal among all the current crop of Senate hopefuls in a free for all primary in two years. African Americans would be happy. Daley would be happy. Obama might even like to see his former mentor get a nice reward at the end of his career. And Governor Blagojevich could breathe a sigh of relief — temporarily — as he would have avoided a bruising fight.

But Jones, as Roger Simon of Politico points out, has some major drawbacks:

He was one of Obama’s political patrons, is close to the governor and is an African-American, yet I got snorts of derision when I ran his name past some other Illinois sources of mine. That’s because Jones is from the old school — he started out as a sewer inspector, which is not bad training for a life in politics — and is not a modern, ready-for-TV candidate, possessing an orator’s tongue. He is a Chicago pol — the ring tone on his cell phone is the theme from The Godfather — but he would be a “place holder” only and would not run in 2010.

So Jones would appear to be out of contention. The other dark horse candidate from the African American community is Congressman Danny Davis. But Davis has many of the same problems that Jones has. He is 67, a former Chicago alderman, and while he is well spoken and knowledgeable, he may have too much baggage to be a good choice to run in 2010. He once accepted a trip to Sri Lanka paid for by the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group. He is also a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America. If downstaters thought they might have problems with Rep. Jackson in 2010, Davis might be their worst nightmare.

Other candidates include the lieutenant governor, longtime Democratic office holder Pat Quinn. However, Quinn may be busy moving into the governor’s mansion if Blagojevich is booted out or if he resigns. Then there’s Congressman Jan Schakowsky, a popular Democrat from Chicago’s near north side. If Blagojevich wants to choose a woman, she would be one option.

The other female option open to Blagojevich is one of the more compelling figures in Illinois politics. Tammy Duckworth is an Iraq War veteran who lost both her legs in combat and ran a spirited campaign in 2006 against Peter Roskam, who was vying to replace 16-term Congressman Henry Hyde. Although losing that race, the Asian-American won national attention both for her heroism and her anti-war advocacy.

Now serving as Blagojevich’s veterans affairs chief, Duckworth has made known her desire to be selected to be Obama’s replacement. And Obama himself may have sent a signal of who he might be favoring. When the president-elect laid a wreath at a soldier’s memorial in Chicago this past Veterans Day, at his side was Tammy Duckworth. Now it is true that Duckworth is head of veterans’ affairs for the state. But Obama didn’t have to have anyone by his side. The fact that he chose Duckworth may give us some sense of who he might wish to see in his Senate chair next January.

Duckworth also has a stellar list of supporters including Illinois’ other senator, Dick Durbin, who recruited her to run for Congress in 2006. Her campaign that year was managed by Rahm Emanuel, and she had David Axelrod as a media advisor.

A female war veteran, an up and coming star of the Democratic party in Illinois, a young (40), intense campaigner with a compelling personal story, a choice that would please the new president, and someone who could run very well downstate — Tammy Duckworth would seem to solve a lot of Governor Blagojevich’s headaches.

But this is Illinois. And if there is anything about politics in this state that is consistently true it is to expect the unexpected and take nothing for granted.

This article originally appeared at Pajamas Media

The news out of Chicago is not good for Governor Rod Blagojevich. Convicted Chicago political operator Antoin “Tony” Rezko is talking to prosecutors about what he knows as far as corruption in Illinois and Chicago politics.

Believe me, it’s plenty.

Jailed political fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the Chicago real estate developer who helped launch Barack Obama on his political career, is whispering secrets to federal prosecutors about corruption in Illinois and the political fallout could be explosive.

Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose administration faces multiple federal investigations over how it handed out jobs and money with advice from Rezko, is considered the most vulnerable.

Rezko also was friendly with Obama — offering him a job when he finished law school, funding his earliest political campaigns and purchasing a lot next to his house. But based on the known facts, charges so far and testimony at Rezko’s trial, there’s no indication there’ll be an October surprise that could hurt the Democratic presidential nominee — even though Rezko says prosecutors are pressing him for dirt about Obama.

“I think this strikes fear into the Blagojevich administration and the Statehouse Democrats but not into the Obama campaign,” says state Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Westmont, a John McCain delegate to the GOP convention but an old friend of Obama.

Should Obama be worried? Not about Rezko. The real estate deal between the two that allowed Obama to purchase his mansion (Rezko bought an adjacent vacant lot saving Obama hundreds of thousands of dollars) and then have Obama do Rezko a favor by purchasing a small strip of that lot for an above market price was borderline legal, certainly unethical, but probably nothing Chicago prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would want to drag the next president (or sitting president) into court about.

There are other Rezko-Obama dealings such as Obama’s steering state contracts to Rezko’s businesses in exchange for fundraising assistance and campaign contributions. But that kind of thing is done all the time and you’d probably have to arrest just about every member of the House of Representatives and the Senate if a prosecutor would go after lawmakers who greased the palms of cronies and fundraisers with contracts.

So in order to understand why Obama may be sweating, I will have to give you a quick primer on the nature of Chicago politics.

There is a triad in the city that rules in all matters political and most matters economic. The first leg of the triad is the “legitimate” businessman. In order to start a business or expand one, you obviously need a bunch of licenses, permissions, and approvals from several city departments. You also need a little “juice” (used to be called “clout”). Nothing gets done in Chicago without greasing the palms of the right people either by gifts, promises of future considerations, or outright bribes.

This is where the second triad of the Chicago power structure comes into play. Well connected operators like Tony Rezko will, for a piece of the action or a kickback (”pay for play”) grease the wheels of government and get the job done allowing the legitimate businessman to operate.

The third leg of the triad is the politician. Connected to both the legitimate business world and the shady, half underground world of the Tony Rezkos in the city, the politician steers business his way or to his ward thus enriching himself and bringing home the bacon for his constituents.The politicians also staff the numerous bureaucracies at City Hall through complicated patronage schemes. This ensures a rock solid loyalty to the man who rides herd on all of it from above; Mayor Richard Daley.

But then there is a sub-strata that supports the entire rotten edifice. “The outfit” we call it here. It is the remnant of the original Al Capone gang that never left the city - updated and vastly more organized, disciplined, and improved - and has its fingers in so many legitimate pies that it is impossible sometimes to separate the politician from the businessman from the mobster. The outfit has a lot of cash that both the politician and the businessman can tap into. The Rezko’s of the city move easily in and out of the legitimate and illegitimate world, acting as a bridge when necessary in order to keep both the businessman and the politician’s hands clean.

They all mingle, intertwine, do each other favors, muscle out those who don’t play the game, and steal as much taxpayer money as they believe they can get away with.

I am sorry if that was a little longer than a “short primer” but there really is no easy way to paint a picture of the spider’s web of connections that now may entrap Obama.

One strand of that web holds interest for prosecutor Fitzgerald. It is the Giannoulias family and their ownership of The Broadway Bank. Specifically, the bank’s vice president and chief loan officer Alexi Giannoulias who has, to put it mildly, a rather checkered history:

A man who has long been dogged by charges that the bank his family owns helped finance a Chicago crime figure will host a Windy City fund-raiser tonight for Sen. Barack Obama.

Alexi Giannoulias, who became Illinois state treasurer last year after Obama vouched for him, has pledged to raise $100,000 for the senator’s Oval Office bid.

Before he promised to raise funds for Obama, Giannoulias bankrolled Michael “Jaws” Giorango, a Chicagoan twice convicted of bookmaking and promoting prostitution.

Giannoulias is so tainted by reputed mob links that several top Illinois Dems, including the state’s speaker of the House and party chairman, refused to endorse him even after he won the Democratic nomination with Obama’s help.

Giannoulias was the bank’s vice president and chief loan officer for most of the more than $15 million in loans.

He was not charged with breaking any laws. The Obama campaign disputed any suggestion that Obama is tarnished by the association.

“Barack Obama has a long record of fighting for ethics reform from his days as a state senator,” a campaign rep said.

Alexi also approved millions in loans for Rezko’s various real estate projects. Obama used Broadway Bank for both his personal business and for his Senate campaign fund.

At this point, a reasonable observer would say that I am just touting another “guilt by association” meme. Au contraire, mon ami. Read on, McDuff:

(4) The Giannoulias family was involved with Obama as far back as his first state senate campaign in 1996. It has been long rumored here in Chicago that Obama obtained a sweetheart deal on his first town home here in Chicago — which he could not have afforded otherwise — and guess who the financing came from for that house? We’ve been told it was Broadway Bank, the Giannoulias bank. Now, this sets up a scenario where the Giannoulias family helps Obama with his campaign finances and gets him deeper in their pocket with his sweetheart mortgage deal (for the first home he owned that he could not afford) – all in exchange for quid pro quo to be determined later.

(5) One favor political Chicago claims Obama did for the Giannoulias family was in 2006 when, out of the blue, 29 year old Alexi Giannoulias, with no experience, and without ever having voted before, decides to run for State Treasurer of Illinois. Also out of the blue, Barack Obama endorses Alexi Giannoulias for State Treasurer. This was a SHOCK to everyone in Chicago — and Giannoulias would have never become State Treasurer without Obama’s help. In political circles here, it has always been believed that this endorsement was bought years ago with that sweetheart mortgage deal Broadway Bank arranged for Obama to buy his town house.

(6) So, the Tony Rezko sweetheart deal was not the first magic home loan Obama ever received to buy a house he could not afford.

There’s more to this that looks like it will break soon. We were STUNNED when we read Sneed’s column because we never in a million years believed Fitz would actually be able to take down Obama.

The Sneed column referenced contains this cryptic entry:

Sneed hears rumbles political fund-raiser/fixer Tony Rezko, who is now singing sweetly to the feds from his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, has been talking about his “dealings” with a Chicago bank, which has political connections.

Clearly, Obama’s legal Achilles heel is not directly related to Rezko but rather his dealings with the Giannoulis family and Broadway Bank. And if Fitzy can turn young Alexi - now Illinois State Treasurer - Lord knows what will spill out and complicate an Obama presidency.

For in truth, there is no chance this will come out before the election. Fitzgerald has proven himself to be a very careful prosecutor - especially when aiming high - and will no doubt seek to build his case slowly. He may end up not even indicting Obama, seeing the enormous problems in trying to bring Obama to trial. But you can bet that Obama will be interviewed several times by the prosecutor and will himself, be on tenterhooks as to his fate.

Obama was simply caught up in business as usual Chicago politics - where there are times you can’t tell the difference between the businessman, the politician, and the mobster. It is from this political culture our next president will have sprung.

Kind of makes you wish for the good old days of Al Capone. At least you knew who the crooks were.

UPDATE

Welcome Instapundit readers.

For the record, my inclusion of the Chicago political primer was so that the Obama-Rezko-Giannoulis connection could be seen in context. Why would Obama endorse a mob banker for State Treasurer, going against the expressed wishes of the leader of his party in the statehouse? The same reason Rezko approached the Broadway bank for a $13 million loan for his real estate projects. In Chicago, it’s not who you are but what you can do for me. The payoff for Obama was Giannoulis raising a ton of money for him in his presidential campaign. This was set up by Obama’s endorsement of Giannoulis for treasurer which in turn was set up by almost certainly a generous loan arrangement on Obama’s first townhome run through Broadway.

Interestingly, Rezko was also indicted in a check bouncing matter after having written almost a half million dollars in bad checks in Vegas. While there has been speculation in the Chicago press that Broadway Bank kept Rezko’s head above water with low cost loans for much of the last 3 years when his businesses were bankrupt, the fact that those checks were drawn on an account at Broadway Bank probably means that the Giannoulis family cut Rezko loose, seeing him as a liability.

How badly do you think Tony wants to get back at the Giannoulis family?

I received close to a dozen emails this morning linking to this article that breathlessly breaks the news that Obama was a member of “The New Party” - a “fusion” party made up of hard line Maoists, Communists, American socialists, and far left liberal Democrats in Chicago.

Readers of this site may recall that I wrote about this connection back in late May. The blogsite Yid With a Lid did all the legwork as far as I can determine. Eric Ericson and Warner Todd Houston  then fleshed out the connection at RedState and added some great analysis.

I have written frequently about Obama’s connection with the New Party including  here and here as well as several posts at The American Thinker. (See also Tom Lifson’s excellent post today.) The point being, there is absolutely nothing new here - even the archived links to The New Party website have been floating around the web for 6 months.  David Freddoso included information in his book The Case Against Barack Obama and Stanley Kurtz at NRO has mentioned the fact that ACORN members staffed Obama’s campaign in his first run for state senate. ACORN was a prominent member of The New Party coalition.

Does this make Obama a Marxist? A socialist?

I may be going over old ground here for daily readers but this is such an important aspect of Obama’s political personae that it bears repeating. Barack Obama’s political beliefs are secondary to his using anyone and everyone - from corrupt Machine politicians to wild eyed radical Maoists - to further his political career. All of the radical associations in his past (and present) represent nothing more than stepping stones to aid him in his political advancement. As early as 1987 he told Jeremiah Wright that he had his eye on the Governor’s mansion in Illinois (no doubt his sights were set higher). The arc of his career has always been headed toward high political office. Of this, there is no doubt.

Besides using these radicals to get ahead and making common cause with groups like ACORN and The New Party, it is a legitimate question to ask if Obama shared their ideology. The answer is almost certainly no. I believe that there is something about these radicals that attracted Obama. Perhaps it was their utter certainty and belief that they are in the moral right. Or maybe it was that their personalities are so driven and single minded. Given Obama’s own doubts about his place in the world as a young man as well as his apparent aimlessness early on, it stands to reason that people who believed so strongly in something and seemed to know where they were going in life would be able to interest the young, ambitious politician.

Calling Obama a “socialist” simply isn’t logical. He doesn’t share the belief that industries should be nationalized by the government or even taken over by the workers as many American Marxists espouse. He may not be as wedded to the free market as a conservative but he doesn’t want to get rid of it. He wants to regulate it. He wants “capitalism with a human face.” He wants to mitigate some of the effects of the market when people lose. This is boilerplate Democratic party liberalism not radical socialism.

I detest conservatives throwing around the words “socialism” and “Marxism” when it comes to Obama as much as I get angry when idiot liberals toss around the word “fascist” when describing conservatives. I’m sorry but this is ignorant. It bespeaks a lack of knowledge of what socialism and communism represent as well as an ignorance of simple definitions. Obama will not set up a government agency to plan the economy. He will not as president, require businesses to meet targets for production. He will not outlaw profit. He will not put workers in charge of companies (unless it is negotiated between unions and management. It is not unheard of in this country and the practice may become more common in these perilous economic times.).

An Obama presidency will have more regulation, more “oversight,” more interference from government agencies, more paperwork for business, less business creation, fewer jobs, fewer opportunities. It will be friendlier to unions, more protectionist, and will require higher taxes from corporations (who then will simply pass the tax bill on to us, their customers). But government won’t run the economy. And calling Obama a “socialist” simply ignores all of the above and substitutes irrationalism (or ignorance) for the reality of what an Obama presidency actually represents; a lurch to the left that will be detrimental to the economy, bad for business, but basically allow market forces to continue to dominate our economy.

Obama’s friendship with Ayers, Rezko, Wright, Pfleger, Meeks, Khalidi, as well as his working with Richard Daley’s Chicago Machine was the result of his overweening ambition and not due to any ideological affinity or strain of corruption in his makeup. He may have taken a scholarly interest in some of the ideas put forth by Ayers and he might have seen working to approve some of Ayers’ radical ideas as good politics (Ayers was an ally of Daley in the School wars of the 1990’s).

But frankly, Obama is someone who impresses me as having no real ideology save that which can get him elected. His campaign has shown him to pander to whatever audience he is addressing at the moment. His contradictory positions on issues is simply dismissed as his words “being taken out of context” or the candidate himself “misstated” his position. The press gives him a pass and its off to the next audience where he tells them exactly what they want to hear.

This is not a man with a radical ideology. It is a man with no ideology at all, no set beliefs in anything save his own supreme abilities. It is this more than anything else that will cause him to fail if he is elected president. When the political winds are blowing the strongest, he will have no set of beliefs he can cling to in order to ride out the storm. His efforts to “reform” Washington will come a cropper because of this and in the end, his empty rhetoric will be all that is remembered of him.

The McCain campaign is perplexed, bothered, and bewildered of late. Despite Barack Obama’s past associations with radical bombers, nauseating racial bigots, and anti-semitic Palestinians, the media doesn’t seem to want to expose the extent of those relationships nor ask tough questions as to how the views of these extremists might have shaped or impacted his own.

We can - and in many cases we should - chalk this up to a shameless bias on the part of the media toward Barack Obama and the Democrats. But something much simpler is at work, something that makes any attack on Obama by McCain using his radical associations as a backdrop to question his judgement an exercise in futility.

The voters don’t care.

America did not invent the fine old custom of tar and feathering crooked, lying, corrupt charlatans and riding them out of town on a rail (the English have been doing it for 800 years). But the mood of the American voter is so outraged at the financial crisis we are in that if I were a Congressman campaigning at home, I’d steer clear of pillow and asphalt factories for a while.

The fact is, the economy is of such overriding concern, all else in the campaign pales in comparison. The voter simply doesn’t want to hear about Ayers, Wright, Rezko or any other problematic Obama friendship. Nor, I suspect, are they keen to relive the Keating 5 fiasco or read about any other manufactured McCain association by the press.

This piece this morning by Peter Yost of the AP is a stretch - a laughably ridiculous attempt to equate John McCain’s tangential relationship to a group that later assisted in training El Salvadoran death squads with Obama’s close, personal, association with William Ayers. Yost is sticking out his tongue and saying “neener, neener, neener,” hoping that the reader will nod their head and say “By Jiminy! McCain hung around with terrorists too!”

The problem is, Yost destroys his own case in the body of the piece:

The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.

The council’s founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group.

“McCain was a new guy on the block learning the ropes,” Singlaub told The Associated Press in an interview. “I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn’t left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated.

“I don’t recall talking to McCain at all on the work of the group,” Singlaub said.

McCain says he resigned from the group in 1984 and asked to have his name removed from the letterhead in 1986. Singlaub also had this to say about McCain’s “involvement:”

“I don’t ever remember hearing about his resigning, but I really wasn’t worried about that part of our activities, a housekeeping thing,” said Singlaub. “If he didn’t want to be on the board that’s OK. It wasn’t as if he had been active participant and we were going to miss his help. He had no active interest. He certainly supported us.”

Compare McCain’s “involvement” with these nuts to Obama’s working relationship with Ayers, their friendship going back 20 years, and Obama’s clear desire to implement the radical educational agenda of Ayers when he was president of the Annenberg project. There is absolutely no symmetry here - none. And yet Yost, being a good little AP hack, tries to create some out of whole cloth.

But this is a digression from the reality of what is going on in America - the America not visited much by candidates and certainly not commented on by anyone in the mainstream media.

The America of ordinary, hard working people is fearful. And why shouldn’t they be? If they’re like me - barely able to grasp what the hell is going on in the financial markets - they nevertheless know that it is unprecedented and that some very smart people are extremely worried. When 60% of us believe we are headed for a 1930’s style depression, catcalls from candidates about who their friends might be simply doesn’t resonate. People have much bigger worries on their minds.

Admittedly, there are precious few of these “wise men” who are warning of a worldwide depression. A severe downturn, yes. Perhaps even an altering of the international financial system that would not be favorable to the United States. But soup lines and massive deflation are not currently foreseeable - not as long as the Fed is able to pump hundreds of billions of dollars at will into the banking system in order to keep it afloat until some semblance of confidence and order return to the markets.

How long can that go on? From Richard Fernandez’s site, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writing in the Telegraph:

During the past week, we have tipped over the edge, into the middle of the abyss. Systemic collapse is in full train. The Netherlands has just rushed through a second, more sweeping nationalisation of Fortis. Ireland and Greece have had to rescue all their banks. Iceland is facing an Argentine denouement. The US commercial paper market is closed. It shrank $95bn last week, and has lost $208bn in three weeks. The interbank lending market has seized up. There are almost no bids. It is a ghost market. Healthy companies cannot roll over debt. Some will have to sack staff today to stave off default. As the unflappable Warren Buffett puts it, the credit freeze is “sucking blood” out of the economy. “In my adult lifetime, I don’t think I’ve ever seen people as fearful,” he said. We are fast approaching the point of no return. The only way out of this calamitous descent is “shock and awe” on a global scale, and even that may not be enough.

In the first full trading day following the bailout, stocks lost 370 points. Yes, there are alarmists out there (Paul Krugman, please go on a nice, long vacation. I hear Bellvue has some padded rooms with wonderful views.). But when Warren Buffet gets nervous, the American people who are fearful don’t appear quite so stupid and naive, now do they?

The bottom line is that attacks on character are being ignored at the moment by the voter. All they want to hear is what each candidate will do to protect them from this financial storm that is sinking so many huge and seemingly indestructible companies. The thinking goes, “If Lehman Brothers can go under, am I next?” In a free country, people have a very proprietary sense of their own money and how safe it is.

They don’t have to be told things could get a lot worse. They sense it, as a deer might sense a wolf nearby. It can’t smell the wolf but it senses danger nevertheless. Voters may not entirely understand the ins and outs of international finance, but they sense their money, their livelihoods are in peril.Hence, all other issues of the campaign - the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran, education, abortion, gun rights - the whole mish mash of topics that have been fought over and discussed in this campaign now take a seat at the back of the bus as the voter wants his questions answered on the economy.

Hugh Hewitt seems optimistic that if McCain can keep hammering Obama on Ayers while showing the voters how disasterous an Obama presidency would be for the economy, he might still pull it out:

As more details emerge on the Obama-Ayers connection (here’s a short story  from 1997 on Ayers that features both Obamas and which suggests that Michelle Obama organized the program that featured both Ayers and her husband), the Obama talking heads are hysterical with outrage, which is a clear signal to Team McCain to keep digging and swinging on the subject of Obama’s judgement. Just who, after all, does he intend to staff the 3,000 executive branch jobs with?  Who will be at Defense and Justice and Treasury and State?. 

The message also has to be targeted at the reality that the dizzying declines in the markets cannot be arrested and reversed with tax hikes and unemployment benefit extensions.  Even as people shudder at the rapid decline in their savings and retirement accounts, they have to be trusted to know that anti-growth polices of the sort being pushed by Obama will simply drive business, jobs and growth overseas.  A tax hike agenda of the sort pushed by Obama right now is economic suicide, and John McCain has to forcefully say so.

If raising taxes and extending unemployment is what it is going to take to keep voter’s money safe, they would be willing to vote for the devil himself. Obama might not have good ideas on what to do about the crisis. But that isn’t the point. It comes down to who the voters believe. And the sad fact is John McCain, as a member of the party in power in the White House, has about as much credibility on the economy as my pet cat Snowball.  

I wish it were otherwise. The more we find out about Obama’s relationship with Ayers the more I am troubled. Even more troubling has been a systematic campaign by Obama and his handlers to minimize and even lie about this relationship at every turn. Despite yeoman work done by David Freddoso and Stanley Kurtz of The National Review on how Obama helped Ayers try and implement some frighteningly radical educational ideas on the unsuspecting parents and schoolchildren of Chicago, it appears that it will all go for naught. The voter sees the effort by the McCain campaign to attack Obama on his radical associations as “just playing politics.”

And that is something they don’t want to see. They are hopping mad and scared. That’s a combination that Obama is having little trouble exploiting to his own advantage.

No, she’s not smoother than Joe Biden. She was not the better debater (she lost badly on points). She doesn’t have the depth of knowledge, the experience, the ease with “Washington speak” that Biden demonstrated - especially in foreign policy.

But Sarah Palin has something Joe Biden and every other politician in America would give their right eye to possess - the innate ability to look a camera straight in the lens and make a connection with the hearts of ordinary Americans.

Palin proved the one thing she had to prove; she belongs on The Big Stage. She might not be the brightest star in the firmament intellectually. But when she spoke, there was authority and confidence behind the words that belied every nasty thing written and spoken about her over the last few weeks. In fact, her performance made the McCain campaign handlers look like idiots. What the hell have they been doing hiding this woman for all this time? Are they nuts? I’m not the only one who underestimated this woman. The McCain people have as well. And at least I have an excuse - I’m ignorant. They’re supposed to know her, know her strengths and weaknesses.

There was a point with about 20 minutes to go in the debate where something happened that I never thought remotely possible; she took over the stage and dominated it with her personality. I believe they were talking about education and as the words poured out in that Midwestern twang, her eyes twinkled and that 100,000 watt smile lit up the hall, she turned on the charm and sincerity, and the stage suddenly shrank while Biden appeared a mere appendage to the broadcast.

She was totally at ease, referring some of her remarks to the moderator Gwen Ifill (who I thought bent over backwards to be fair - no doubt a consequence of her becoming a target after it was revealed she was writing a book partially about the Obama campaign) and nodding and looking at Biden on occasion. She did it effortlessly and without art or artifice. Biden sensed what was happening but couldn’t do anything. She was in charge, period. It was at that point, that I thought she might not be ready to be president from day one but that someday, she will be on a similar stage as a nominee for president of the Republican party.

The left is screaming tonight, trying to make believe that nothing has changed, that Palin is still a dunce, still out of her league. I would suggest they rerun the last hour and half and watch with a little more of an objective mind. She stood toe to toe with Biden (sometimes - other times she avoided direct combat) and bloodied him but good a couple of times. A boxing analogy would be the heavyweight champion boxing a middleweight. The lighter fighter might be getting pounded here and there but when getting in close, scores repeatedly with good body punches.

And, of course, the crowd is always with the underdog. Despite Biden’s competent performance, Palin will probably be narrowly declared the winner in tomorrow’s polls. Even her bitterest foes must acknowledge her ability to connect with ordinary people. That is a gift that any liberal only dreams of being able to do. For the left, it is not about connecting to average Americans. It is about average Americans acknowledging the liberal’s superior intellect and judgement and letting them run our lives. Unfortunately, in such times as these, that appears to be what the people are about to do.

I must confess that before the debate I was prepared for Mrs. Stumblebum - a female Gerald Ford tripping over her words and embarrassing herself on foreign policy questions. What I got was a composed, collected candidate who may have been deficient in the depth of her answers but nevertheless demonstrated a basic knowledge and familiarity with the issues. The nuances of instability in Pakistan might escape her (something an American president can do little about at this point anyway). But she had absolutely no trouble identifying why Ahmadinejad is an enemy of anyone who loves civilization and why it is of paramount importance that he not get his hands on nuclear weapons.

So I was wrong about her as far as how badly she would do. Not the first time I’ve been wrong on this blog and it won’t be the last. The question of the hour is does this change the race in any way? Will it kick start the McCain campaign and start a much needed comeback?

My sense is that it has stopped the bleeding but that the way back for McCain will not be through anything that Sarah Palin can do. She may have stopped the exodus of independents and women from the McCain camp but as far as winning any of them back I am just not convinced that a Vice Presidential candidate - no matter how well she performs in a debate or how she connects with ordinary voters - is up to that challenge.

For McCain to get back in the race, he must do it himself. Many Republicans are urging McCain to throw the kitchen sink at Obama - Ayers, Wright, Rezko, the Chicago Machine - the whole shebang of radicals, shady characters, and questionable associations. Obama can easily brush that kind of attack aside as an act of desperation by McCain. What he can’t brush aside is his record, or rather his lack thereof. McCain needs to go hard after Obama on the question of experience. It’s his best shot and he can bloody him at the remaining debates if he consistently hits that note. McCain must show that electing Obama is a risk. And in these uncertain times, that’s one thing the United States cannot afford.

Note: Please excuse the slow loading website. My hosting company is working on it. 

I see where a few of my friends on the right are calling for the McCain campaign to “unleash” Palin and just let her be herself. This is delusional bordering on willful self deception. With Palin, what you see is what you get. There is no hidden genius. There is no glib, down to earth Will Rogers-like cornpone philosopher just waiting to be freed from the McCain campaign’s efforts to prep her for the media.

The Sarah Palin we have seen in interviews - minus the deliberate cutting and pasting done by the CBS partisans - is the Palin we got: Unsure of herself, light on facts, and clearly (at the present) over her head on the national political stage.

The good news is that all of this can be overcome with a little experience. It’s no accident that Presidential candidate Barack Obama held press “avails” on average once every 8 days during the first 9 months of his campaign. Even after that he made himself available to the press only twice a week. (Every other candidate had daily avails - sometimes twice a day). One might recall the famous Obama avail held in early March where, for the first time, Chicago reporters covering the Rezko mess got to ask the messiah some questions. His response? “C’mon guys. I’ve answered like 8 questions already.”

Never again were the Trib and Sun Times reporters covering the Obama scandals allowed to ask any questions off the cuff. Only Obama “beat” reporters from those publications who were following the campaign were granted access to the candidate. (Obama sat down with editorial staffs of both papers a few weeks later - after massive preparation, of course - and managed to evade the tough questions about Rezko and his real estate dealings with the convicted felon.)

The stumbling, bumbling manner in which Obama answered those questions at the March avail revealed a candidate not ready for high office - which is the obvious reason Obama was protected and hidden by his campaign from the press during those first months.

Palin did not have the luxury of being protected from the press for months as Obama clearly was. No doubt a year from now - if she is elected - her performance in these kinds of interviews as well as press conferences will be adequate if not spectacular. She is not stupid nor does she lack quick wits. Her problem is unfamiliarity and a lack of depth when it comes to knowledge - ignorance if you will - of national issues and her performance reveals that fact painfully.

Of course, the left has jumped all over her with their tried and true personal attack, calling Palin ignorant” and “stupid.” If I had a dollar every time a liberal called a Republican candidate “stupid” I would be wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Eisenhower (dumb, incoherent), Goldwater (crazy and stupid), Ford (dumb jock and a stumblebum), Reagan (dumb actor), Quayle (can’t spell potato), Jack Kemp (dumb jock), George Bush (dumb playboy). The harsh truth is, the personal attack works when you have the press and other media (think Saturday Night Live riffing off liberal talking points for Ford, Reagan, Quayle, Kemp, and Bush 43), buttressing and playing to that exact same argument. It is a potent combination and only the basic good sense of the American voter has saved the GOP from being shut out entirely over the last 50 years.

Lost in all of this (and the Obama campaign is breathing a sigh of relief for that) is the continuing adventures of the gaffe master himself Joe Biden. The large number of ignorant, incorrect, stupid, incredibly wrong statements by Biden over the last fortnight have been obscured by Palin’s problems. So expect the debate between the two - one ignorant of national issues the other unable to not say the first thing that comes into his head even if it is spectacularly wrong - to be a gaffe fest that will have both campaigns scrambling in the days following to correct the record or trying to undo the damage done by these two.

Biden’s gaffes reveal a shallow, unkempt mind - disorganized, arrogant, and stubbornly resistant to facts. If Palin is “stupid,” what does that make Biden? And, if liberals were honest with themselves (an admittedly forlorn hope), how much more “qualified” is Biden for the presidency than Palin given the extraordinary lack of depth of his character and intellect?

All this begs the question; is Palin qualified to be President if necessary? Right now, if she were forced to take over the top of the ticket I would have to say no. A year from now? I believe she will be as ready as anyone. A year at the center of power would give her all the experience and knowledge anyone would need to become president.

No one believes McCain chose her because she was qualified to become president “from day one.” Few are. She was a political choice as all Vice Presidential selections are. But this idea that there is a hidden Sarah Palin just waiting to be “unleashed” is kooky. She isn’t going to suddenly start speaking in complete sentences or stop repeating herself, or give anything save a thumbnail’s sketch of understanding when it comes to the issues. Perhaps she will be more relaxed during the debate and do a slightly better job of projecting herself. But that’s the best Palin supporters can hope for - for now.

Expectations for Palin are once again lower than dirt for the debate which means if she shows up, stays awake, gives us some charming one liners, and doesn’t make too many egregious mistakes, she wins hands down. I think Biden will not be able to help himself and will, when he is unaware the camera is on him, smile that condescending smile he is known for and set off the women of America on a tirade against him. He is far too arrogant and has too much belief in his own superiority not to treat Palin as he would some dumb hick from Wasilla. That’ll play great with most women in America, trust me Joe.

With Palin, it’s what you see is what you get. Imagining her as something she isn’t is only deluding yourself.