aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, February 29, 2008

Obama’s Chicago politics

My prediction that Clinton will get no knock-out Tuesday assumes no bombshell before. Let’s hope that’s a safe assumption.

I’ve given Obama credit for being a tough Chicago pol. That has its downside:

With the corruption trial of one of Sen. Barack Obama’s longtime friends and supporters set to begin Monday in Chicago, Ill., reform watchdogs say it will reveal the “cesspool” of Illinois politics in which Obama came of age and has said little about in his campaign for president.

“We have a sick political culture,” said Jay Stewart, the executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, “and that’s the environment that Barack Obama came from.”

Stewart says he does not understand why Obama has lectured others about corruption in Washington and Kenya but “been noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state, including at this point, mostly Democratic politicians.” [...]

While Obama is not considered a target of the Rezko investigation, Stewart says it will shed light on a man who was pivotal to Obama’s political career.

“This wasn’t just some guy who wrote a check once for Barack Obama, it’s someone who was an early supporter and had a personal relationship with Sen. Obama for quite some time,” Stewart said.

Indeed, even after he was elected to the United States Senate, Obama involved Rezko in a land deal that enabled the senator to buy his current home on Chicago’s South Side.

Obama has since called his decision to involve Rezko “a bone-headed mistake.”

A Tuesday TimesOnLine piece “raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi, one of Britain’s wealthiest men, helped Mr Obama buy his mock Georgian mansion in Chicago.”

Fodder for Republicans in the general.

But for the moment I’m wondering what it will do to the election dynamic next week. The media loves a horse race. Saturday Night Live, the press narrative about the debate, and the truth of David Plotz’s comment—“he’s basically a journalist is why we’re so gaga over him”—has them bending over backward to make it a horse race this week.