So, is Obama a crook? 

Source: ReutersBarack Obama

If corruption stinks, the foul waft from the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich may reach much further than Chicago or even Illinois.

Carried on national zephyrs, it may reach Obama's supporters in both the media and the wider world, and cause their nostrils to twitch unpleasantly. It may even make them to think twice about what kind of person their icon is.

Observers of Chicago politics (if you like, the night soil men of that rancorous city) don't believe that Obama is a scumbag.

Just before the election, I spoke with Jay Stewart of Better Government Chicago . We found him in a tiny office, piled with files detailing the city's vile history of influence-peddling, one that extends all the way back to the days of the Daley Snr machine, when the current mayor's father ran the city.

In 1939, Senator Botchy Connors remarked of Daley pere, "You couldn't give the guy a nickel, that's how honest he was."

Richard Daley, by the way, was a Democrat. Let's clear the air on that. Democrats can be as corrupt as Republicans.

At Better Government Chicago, Jay Stewart professed boredom at low level graft, but became drolly animated by really extravagant ways to use public office to extort money. "Way to go!" he would say excitably, describing some nefarious scheme, and the schemer, "I take my hat off to you, sir!"

But he wasn't doffing his hat to Obama.

The worst you could say about Obama, Stewart told me, was that he hadn't been aggressive enough in attacking the city and state's institutional crookedness. He'd been a go-along, get-along guy. In short, reform didn't prove politically expedient for him, so he didn't rock the boat.

But even if Obama isn't on the take himself, this information is worrisome as it casts light into the shadows of Obama's character.

If he wasn't an agent of change in what is generally acknowledged to be the filthiest and most venal political environment in the US, how can he possibly hope to alter Washington? If he was a go-along guy, how can he make the political appointments that will disappoint members of his own party?

Already his economic team has come in for criticism. The New York Times' Frank Rich , an enthusiastic Obama supporter during the campaign has recently written that Obama's money squad (mostly picked from Clinton's guys) resembles John F. Kennedy's team, the technocrats, the purveyors of institutional wisdom who got the country into Vietnam, and kept it there.

But they look like the members of the press who have been reporting on the transition, they went to many of the same schools as them, so Obama has been praised for his sagacity.

Sagacity is one thing, guts is another. Obama's government may stumble on the actuality of those nagging insinuations that John McCain and Hillary Clinton used to make on the campaign trail. "He can talk," they asked, "But can he rule?"

Have you heard what the new guaranteed money-making investment is in the US now?

It's owning a hotel room, or a backyard, or a pup tent in Washington DC, with a vacancy on January 19 and 20, 2009. That's when the first black president of the USA will be inaugurated. Average hotel rooms are going for as much as $US1,000 a night. (Relax, TVNZ has booked early, we used our contacts).

Barack Obama hasn't even been enthroned amongst rose petals in the nation's capital yet, but some, myself included, wonder if the stink from Chicago may spoil the party, even before it fires up.

Have you got an opinion on the issues that Tim discusses? Share them on the message board below.

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jackdoitcrawford ; 2009-09-11 @ 23:24 NZDT  

Please don't label all people you disagree with, and put them in the same camp. Ayn Rand was pro abortion, achievement, reason, freedom, capitalism and happiness. She was definitely neither a conservative nor a libertarian. She also didn't want to live under a dictatorship. I see nothing wrong with this at all.

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Kiwi in USA ; 2009-09-11 @ 17:58 NZDT  

I would have to disagree with Tim saying Bill ORielly is a right wing loon as if it were. He is defintly a independet and he always tells his viewers that. I know that there is plenty of loons like rush but come on, Obama is really turning America in the wrong direction. He has spent more money than all the presidents have combined. America is in trillions of dollars worth of debt.

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