Between Barack and a hard place: Blago picks a senator
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Between Barack and a hard place: Blago picks a senator
Let it be.
People are understandably outraged that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- not far removed from his arrest on corruption charges amid allegations he wanted to sell his appointment to the U.S. Senate seat that Barack Obama is vacating -- went ahead and named someone anyway, after both national Democratic Party and state officials from Obama on down warned him not to. Blago's pick is 71-year-old Illinois career pol Ronald Burris, a one-time rival of the incumbent governor who is the state's former attorney general.
Political leaders in both Washington and Springfield have vowed to do everything in their power to block Blago and this block Burris.
But legally, they can't. They're better off letting Burris be a senator for two years.
After a landmark 1969 Supreme Court ruling, it's pretty clear that -- despite Harry Reid's bluster -- the Senate can only block Burris if he's not a qualified U.S. citizen (he is) or if he was improperly elected or appointed (he wasn't.) As for talk that the Illinois secretary of state would not certify his appointment, that, too, is a power he does not have. Yes, the idea that Blagojevich is appointing a senator after he was arrested for trying to sell the same seat is an affront to political decency.
But if the Senate tries not to seat him, our nation's leaders will be squandering valuable time and money on a legal fight they cannot win. And the battle over Burris wouldn't just overshadow the new administration's efforts to get the economy moving again. The world community, after seeing a sliver of its faith in America restored in recent days, will be appalled to watch a bunch of mostly white guys trying to keep the only African-American (now that Obama has resigned) from joining their club.
Or they can let it be.
And then the Democrats can do three things:
1) Count on Sen. Burris as a solid vote for economic recovery and other legislation that's needed to move the nation forward-- but count on him for little or nothing else. Make Burris the 1-800-Safe-Auto of U.S. senators, offering the him the legislative equivalent of the minimum coverage allowed under the law.
2) Begin searching for a 2010 Senate candidate who is not named Roland Burris and rally behind him or her as early as possible. There's obviously no special mandate that the new candidate be an African-American (Burris' appointment would mean that Illinois has sent 3 blacks to the Senate since the 1990s, while the other 49 states combined have sent a grand total of....zero), only that it be the most qualified person.
3) Begin working immediately on the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, which would strip the power of filling Senate vacancies from governors and give that job to the voters, where it belongs. We now hold special elections for every vacant House seat, after all. Yes, statewide elections are costly -- but the current system's cost to democracy is greater. And the election of U.S. senators has been a constantly evolving process in this country, anyway.
Until the beginning of this century, most senators were not chosen directly by the voters but indirectly by state legislators, creating the easily manipulated boss-ruled legislative body that condoned the 19th Century big-money abuses of the Gilded Age (sound familiar?). It required the 17th Amendment in 1913 to ensure that senators were directly elected by the people of each state.
In recent weeks, we've seen several examples of the folly -- in a nation that rightly cherishes its checks and balances -- of handing unchecked power to one person. We've seen the sad spectacle of President Bush pardoning a major GOP donor and then trying frantically to unpardon him, and now we've seen a criminally charged governor making a Senate appointment.
You have to wonder why a nation that was founded in rebellion against monarchy would have granted such broad authority in the first place. But you have to wonder more why we have not used our Constitutional tools to limit them or take them away.
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Will, you are absolutely right. I have it on the authority of former Illinois Governor Thompson (a Republican who was notoriously NOT corrupt) that there is no legal way to stop this appointment from being official. It is best for the Democrats to relax and enjoy it.- Comment removed.
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Thanks for the more than borderline racist comment, Jimbo -- real classy of you.— will- Comment removed.
- Well, Obama tried harder to get rid of Bobby Rush than you ever did. He ran against him for Congress (and lost). Did you not know that, Swifty?— will
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- I think the Rezko case was covered pretty exhaustively, including his trial -- at which Obama only came up tangentially. My sense is that any truly damning link between Obama and Rezko would have been seriously exploited by some people in the media (have you read Lynn Sweet of the Sun-Times, she's hardly in the tank for Obama) and the federal prosecutor out there, who I hear is pretty aggressive (Patrick Fitzgerald...have you heard of him? ;-) Seriously, if any prosecutor in America would have liked to take down a presidential candidate, don't you think it would have been Fitzgerald?— will
- One day left. One more chance for Attyood Republican toadies to go one day in 2008 without whining about the big bad left-wing media bias that fooled the American public into giving the Republican party to a beating in this year's elections. 82% of the American public have a favorable opinion of Obama's transition. Thank God we have that 18% that are smarter than everyone else, and can see through the obvious bias of "the media." And in further news, despite the Attytood Republican toadies incessant whining about Obama's corruption, they've still got nuttin. Absolutely nuttin.— Talking point sleuth
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- Heck, that Blago sure has a large set of stones...— yobill626
- It was Blago's way of giving the finger to the naysayers. And then to have someone use the L-word to dissuade any attempts to stop him...just beautiful.— AngryWhiteMale
TPS, it's funny how the whiners weren't whining about how the press didn't vigorously investigate Bush's colorful past. Remember how late in the day we learned that he had a DUI?
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