Hey, Patrick Fitzgerald: When you finish cleaning up Crook – er, Cook – County, how about flying over to Albany and flipping over a few rocks?
The Post will gladly pay the airfare.
Brooklyn-born Fitzgerald is the US attorney who yesterday charged Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich with, essentially, selling his administration. You could buy practically anything not bolted down, it seems – including the Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama.
Now that’s a prosecutor custom-made for New York, where dubious political dealings would surely keep him busy. (New York’s last governor, recall, resigned amid a prostitution scandal.)
Then again, Illinois has now seen its second governor in a row indicted, one from each party. As FBI Agent Robert Grant put it: “Illinois might not be the most corrupt state in the union, but it’s a helluva competitor.”
Fitzgerald depicts corruption that defies belief – most notably, Blagojevich’s alleged attempt to extort personal favors from Obama’s folks in exchange for their choice of a replacement for the president-elect’s Senate seat. (In Illinois, the governor gets to pick a successor.)
Blagojevich also was charged with:
* Trying to force the Tribune Co. – parent company of both the Chicago Tribune and baseball’s Cubs – to fire the newspaper’s editorial writers by threatening to withhold millions in state aid in a deal to sell Wrigley Field.
* Soliciting a $50,000 campaign contribution in exchange for $8 million in state funds for a hospital.
And that’s just for starters.
Is there any wonder why the public is so cynical about government officials?
After all, it’s not just Illinois and New York where sleaze infects politics.
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) lost re-election bids this year following federal corruption charges. Ex-Reps. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.), Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Jim Traficant (D-Ohio) have all recently served time.
New Jersey is practically synonymous with pay-for-play; ethics charges swirl around New York Rep. Charlie Rangel.
All of which – understandably – has all but destroyed the public’s faith in government service, a central pillar of the nation’s political system.
Indeed, the Blagojevich scandal taints even Obama himself – if for no other reason than that both hail from the same Illinois political culture.
Fitzgerald, to be sure, made no accusations against the incoming president. And Obama yesterday said he knew nothing about any deal for the Senate seat. “I had no contact with the governor or his office, and so I was not aware of what was happening,” he said.
Moreover, Blagojevich is heard on tape expressing frustration that the Obama camp had refused to engage in any pay-for-play games.
But Fitzgerald may have more news down the pike. He says he’ll be “tracking various schemes” to see how far the corruption went.
And then there’s Blagojevich fund-raiser and “fixer” Tony Rezko, who struck a questionable real-estate deal with Obama that even the president-elect has called a “boneheaded mistake.”
So stay tuned – if you can stomach it.
Meanwhile, Americans are only left to wonder about the audicity of their elected leaders and public servants.
It’s a sorry state of affairs, indeed.