Blagojevich sentence has message for all politicians

Will we at last be able to put the Blagojevich corruption scandal behind us with his sentencing today? We can hope.

But, alas, experience teaches us the limits of hope.

We had hopes back in 2006. when, even in the waning months of the first term to which Rod Blagojevich was elected governor on a platform of ending “business as usual” in Springfield, former Gov. George Ryan was sent to prison for six and a half years for a conviction on corruption charges. We thought that maybe, if nothing else, the prosecution of Ryan and the severity of his sentence would deter his successor and others in Springfield from the type of pay-to-play politics for which Illinois has become infamous.

It was not to be. Apparently, prison sentences sometimes are about as effective as hope when it comes to changing a culture. Even before Ryan got his first glimpse of the inside of a prison cell, rumors were swirling about Blagojevich and the people around him. By the fall election of 2006, the Blagojevich questions were so prevalent that they became part of the message, however ineffectual, of his Republican opponent, Judy Baar Topinka. Within barely more than two years of his re-election victory, top Blagojevich aides had been tried and convicted and he himself was under arrest.

Obviously, Ryan’s six and a half years had not made enough of an impression. Let’s hope that however many years U.S. District Judge James Zagel hands down to Blagojevich will do a better job of emphasizing the personal cost to be paid for such violations of the public’s trust.

There’s that word again. Hope.

But perhaps the term has something slightly more potent within it today than in 2006. Infused with names like Levine and Kelly and Monk and Rezko and Cellini, it surely now carries something Blagojevich might not have counted on — certainty. The Blagojevich sentence is the latest and most prominent demonstration that, as federal prosecutors promised just last week, government officials who abuse their power and enrich themselves through deceit and collusion will eventually be caught and punished.

The prospect of prison for a father of two young daughters in the prime of his life is hardly something to applaud, of course, no more than was the term that separated the elderly Ryan from his dying wife. And the public snickering about Blagojevich, encouraged though it was by the ex-governor’s own often-clownish attempt to transition from politician to entertainer, has a particularly unseemly quality.

This is serious business, and something more than justice is at stake. We are not so naive as to believe that with Blagojevich in prison, Illinois’ political culture will magically turn itself around, but the message here cannot be denied, and, if nothing else, at least expands the boundaries of hope.