How Blagojevich ended up on a political desert island

The bottom line is that while health care for all topped his agenda, it topped virtually no one else's.

Although you can never be certain while the General Assembly is still in session, Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich is slipping dangerously close to irrelevancy.

This week, the four legislative leaders appeared to be on the verge of negotiating a budget deal to end the state-record overtime session without the governor's involvement.

Blagojevich threatened a veto, but that threat ultimately almost surely will prove hollow: after all, a 3/5th majority is needed to pass any OT budget. And 3/5th also happens to be the margin required to override the governor's veto. So any veto would be quickly overridden, leaving the governor to call endless special sessions lawmakers will ignore. Blagojevich would be yelling into the empty abyss, like some overacting B-movie villain whose plans went awry.

Assuming the fragile talks end in a deal, credit will go to House Speaker Michael J. Madigan. He's exerted leadership and shuttle diplomacy with Senate President Emil Jones, who's been battered all session for his alliance with Blagojevich, electricity rate games and nepotism. Taking the reins of leadership is something Blagojevich has seemed to shy away from, even though he was re-elected to be the state's chief executive officer last November. By most accounts, the governor attended budget negotiating sessions, but simply reiterated his talking points about the need for more health care, drawing criticism from lawmakers that he's a pre-programmed robot who's not good at negotiating or leadership.

When Blagojevich finally budged, saying he'd sign a gambling expansion or cigarette tax increase (both flip-flops), Madigan kept yanking away the proverbial football, using Republican reticence to block a gaming deal.

How did the governor end up stranded on his political desert island? Blagojevich's federal corruption probe limits his ability to appear in public, where reporters will grill him and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's office can jot down notes. That reclusiveness takes away Blagojevich's much-hyped bully pulpit to build support for his programs. The governor's taunting, slap-in-the-face, public negotiating style hurt him because he didn't have the legislative leverage to back it up. His much-derided $600 make-up job didn't help his image either.

The bottom line, though, is that while health care for all topped his agenda, it topped virtually no one else's. To horse trade his health care plan for more money for schools would have been doable this year, but Blagojevich's pledge against raising the sales or income tax prevented that.

The irony is that Blagojevich might well have avoided all of this if he'd just broken that promise. Absent the threat of a veto, Senate Democrats could have pushed through such a hike without any Republican support. And a few moderate House Republicans could have been picked off in that chamber. To break that promise would have opened up Blagojevich to a torrent of criticism. While he may not have kept his pledge to clean up state government, as the federal probes suggest, Blagojevich has, so far, kept his promise not to raise the income or sales tax. Voters give him credit for that.

As I mentioned at the start, the General Assembly hasn't gaveled to a close yet, so Blagojevich still may find a way to jump-start a super-scaled-back version of his health care plan. That would allow him to reclaim relevance with the public, even if lawmakers know what really happened.

This is year one of his second term. There's three more to go and none of them are looking any easier for anyone at this point.