Legislators failing to restore faith

The early evidence suggests that state lawmakers may have already forgotten, if they ever knew, what their primary responsibility is during the current special session.

It is not just to act on the impeachment of an ineffectual and possibly corrupt governor, nor even to decide when and how to name a new U.S. senator from Illinois. It is to restore Illinoisans' faith and confidence in their state government.

And, what has happened so far in this one-day-old process? State Republicans have launched an expensive advertising campaign promoting the self-serving notion of a special election. House Democrats crafted an impeachment law in which they gathered everyone from their party onto the list of co-sponsors - and deliberately omitted any Republicans, although Republicans, who joined the 113-0 vote to impanel an impeachment committee, would have gladly signed on. The Democrats then created a panel that is weighted 12-9 in their favor, and on its first day of business the increasingly piqued Republicans helped drag the process out with questionable calls for caucuses to discuss strategy. At the same time, Senate Democrats, leery of an election in which they could lose a seat to the opposition party, have so held up the process of discussing such an election that the idea appears to be essentially dead on arrival.

Sigh.

Ladies and gentleman of the Capitol, this is decidedly not what the people of Illinois have in mind.

Don't get us wrong. We don't want an expensive, divisive, prolonged election campaign for a one-year Senate term, either. But at the same time, we're offended that the way Democrats are going about reaching that end is to essentially shut off debate so that they don't risk losing a seat and so that no one has to answer politically for what he or she might say.

Similarly, we're offended that Republicans are pushing the issue in an advertising campaign even before any real debate on it has begun.

We're saddened - although, also sadly, not surprised - that House Democrats inserted politics into this process from its very outset. It's pathetic, patently apparent and ridiculous.

True leaders at this time would be going out of their way to insert fairness and openness into the process. Committees would be equally represented by all parties and every avenue would be made available to permit a full and open debate. People would be expected - and eager - to go on the record with their feelings and they wouldn't permit any impediment to letting others register their feelings, either through debate or, especially, their vote as elected representatives of the constituents they serve.

President-elect Obama noted in one of his first public statements about the Blagojevich crisis that political gamesmanship was precisely what Americans put him in office to change. Clearly, he can hear the expressions of public anxiety that are screaming out from broadcast airwaves, Internet blogs and printed pages.

Why, oh why, cannot our elected state representatives do the same?