Of Rod Blagojevich the NY Times wrote today:
Six years ago, he had been elected on a message of reform, but on Thursday — a few hours after his plane, with a silhouette of Lincoln near its nose, landed — the State Senate unanimously voted him out of office. (italics mine)
I think, unfortunately, that while most politicians don’t end up where Blagojevich has, too often the “reformers” and “public servants” end their tenures in office as self-serving fobs and self-righteous pedants. Mr. Smith doesn’t often stay in Washington these days.
More unfortunate, for me anyway, is the fact that I believe Mr. Blagojevich’s failure is not some isolated incident of cash/influence for power. I believe that it’s common practice. A practice for which Mr. Blagojevich has been singled out and sanctioned, but for which the sanction process has been little more than a magician’s slight of hand to distract us from the actual, ugly truth.