Rod Blagojevich scandal raises some seasonal cheer

But can President-elect Obama escape the slimy tentacles of Chicago corruption that the governor’s arrest has revealed?

FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 11, 2008

America is going back to basics. When the stock market plummeted on Black Monday, September 29, the only share to rise was Campbell's Soup and now, amid the funereal gloom of a rotten Christmas season the nation's spirits are being rallied by the five-star political corruption scandal in Chicago centered on Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Now at last the city can crawl out from under the odorless uplift of Obamian 'hope' and swagger back into the fragrant, smoke-filled rooms of municipal graft, with Blagojevich's voice booming on the FBI phone taps as he hawked Obama's vacant senate seat for cash and ripely cursed those failing to "pay to play".

It's scarcely 48 hours since the FBI seized Blagojevich in his jogging clothes and already the scandal's storyline is metastasising at pell-mell speed, weaving its way through such characters as Blagojevich’s rambunctious wife Patti - the Lady Macbeth of this saga - and his estranged father-in-law Dick Mell to the President-elect.

Blagojevich does Obama the enormous favor of denouncing him on the tapes

Top storyline is surely the impact of Blagojevich's indictment on Obama. At the very moment the President-elect proclaims an era of uplift and constitutional propriety, the slimy tentacles of old-style Chicago corruption are snaking towards his ankles.

The chortles of outgoing President George Bush, himself harassed by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in the Scooter Libby affair, must be rich and prolonged.

Blagojevich does Obama the enormous favor of denouncing him on the government's tapes. "Fuck him," bellowed the governor during a call with top aides and his wife, covertly recorded by the FBI on November 10. "For nothing? Fuck him."

Both Obama and Emanuel campaigned vigorously for Blagojevich in his two gubernatorial campaigns

The governor was peeved that Obama's representatives weren't offering him any material incentives to nominate Obama's political associate and Chicago powerhouse, Valerie Jarrett, for the Senate seat. Obama can thank his stars for the expletive but potential embarrassments still loom.

At Blagojevich's elbow amid his corrupt intrigues was the real estate operator Tony Rezko, who helped Obama get his fine house in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighbourhood. Fitzgerald will undoubtedly use Rezko against Blagojevich and Obama's name is sure to surface, as