Governor no media darling, just a menace

Something very strange - and disturbing - has happened with Rod Blagojevich. Even as legal wheels turn in Springfield to remove him from the governorship, he has become a media star, affectionately treated by people who ought to know better.

After FBI agents arrested Blagojevich two months ago, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald released excerpts from court-approved wiretaps showing the governor obscenely calculating how he could cash in on the opportunity to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat. The initial public and press reaction was, "What a sleaze."

Blagojevich has now launched a full-scale public relations campaign, parading his impudence under the guise of proclaiming his innocence on the morning talk-show circuit. It's as if there were no bill of particulars filed against him, a list almost unanimously approved by Illinois House of Representatives after enduring six years of his misgovernment.

Claiming the state Senate trial on those charges is "a witch hunt," Blagojevich has ducked responsibility for his foul words and deeds, cloaking himself in phony martyrdom.

When interviewed on four TV and cable networks, the first - and maybe only - question should have been: "Why are you here in our studio instead of where you belong: testifying under oath in the Senate trial in Springfield?" Instead, Blagojevich was allowed to charge, falsely, that the rules prevent him from calling defense witnesses or making his own case.

To my chagrin, the PR offensive seems to be working, not only with TV talkers, but with journalists who ought to know better. In a single edition of The Washington Post, two of my most admired colleagues, Eugene Robinson and Dana Milbank, treated Blagojevich as if he were a kind of lovable rascal, a scamp to be enjoyed.

Milbank wrote that whatever his shortcomings, "the man's entertainment skills are unimpeachable." Robinson went further overboard. Blagojevich, he wrote, is "about to be impeached on grounds of loopiness, obnoxiousness and a bad haircut." He added, "it is unclear to me what else Blagojevich has done that a duly constituted jury would find illegal."

Saying he doubted the Fitzgerald tapes "are enough to put him in jail," Robinson added that Blagojevich's "talents would be wasted there," because "the man was born to be a talk-show host," so quick with a quip and so gifted a mimic that he would earn big ratings.

Excuse me if I'm not laughing. The people who treat Blagojevich as a figure of fun apparently have no idea what damage he has done to Illinois. His depredations did not begin with the Fitzgerald tapes. Almost two years ago at a bipartisan dinner at the Lincoln Library, I was told by prominent Republicans and Democrats, including a widely admired former governor, that the Blagojevich administration was "the worst ever."

At the time, Fitzgerald was already working his way through Blagojevich's chain of command, bringing in one official after another, convicting them, and then offering some leniency in the sentencing in return for their testimony against higher-ups. It was assumed that eventually Fitzgerald would show that Blagojevich was at the center. The urgency of stopping the governor from carrying out his reported plan to auction the Senate seat to the highest bidder forced Fitzgerald to move when he did.

Meantime, the citizens of my home state have paid a terrible price for Blagojevich's dereliction of duty. While neighboring Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin all have enjoyed the benefits in the last six years of innovative, effective and upright governors, Illinois has seen its finances, its school systems and its competitive position wasted by a governor known for his absenteeism and greed.

That's a joke to some people, but not to a state I love.

© 2009, Washington Post Writers Group