Column: Obama's mystical (national media) disconnect from sleazy Chicago politics

Will Barack Obama's presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago?

It is all about context. The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate's politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is presented to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. It is all so very mystical.

Perhaps viewing Obama as a Chicago political creature would conflict with the established national media narrative of Obama as a reformer. Actually, there's no "perhaps" about it.

"I think I have done a good job in rising politically in this environment without being entangled in some of the traditional problems of Chicago politics," Obama told reporters and editors at a Chicago Tribune editorial board meeting several weeks ago.

Yes, an excellent job. Except for his dalliance with his indicted real estate fairy, Tony Rezko, a relationship Obama considers a mistake, the senator has not played the fly to Mayor Richard Daley's spider. Almost, but not quite.

"I know there are those like John Kass who would like me to decry Chicago politics more frequently, and I'll leave that to his editorial commentary," Obama said.

Not the politics, just the corruption, I said then, wishing....

...silently that he had decried it all, that he'd stood up years ago and pointed to the list of sleazy deals, pointed an angry finger at the Duffs, the white, Outfit-connected drinking buddies of Daley who received $100 million in affirmative action contracts through City Hall.

That's an easy political commercial for the Republicans: Mobbed-up white guys party at the old Como Inn with Daley, and they get $100 million in city affirmative action contracts and Daley doesn't know how it happened and Obama endorses the mayor in the name of reform.

Obama had nothing to do with the Duff deal. But he kept mum. He has endorsed Daley, endorsed Daley's hapless stooge Todd Stroger for president of the Cook County Board. These are not the acts of a reformer, but of a guy who, as we say in Chicago, won't make no waves and won't back no losers.

Obama the reformer is backed by Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Daley boys. He is spoken for by Daley's own spokesman, David Axelrod (Ed. Note: Axelrod is also a former Tribune political reporter). He was launched into his U.S. Senate by machine power broker and state Senate President Emil Jones (D-ComEd).

Sen. Obama did give his word of honor that if elected president, he would retain corruption-busting U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, no easy vow, given that Daley is threatened by Fitzgerald, and that the corruption case against Rezko is about to be handed to the jury.

As a candidate, Obama will do what he has to do to win. My argument is not with him -- but with the national political media pack that refuses to look closely at what Chicago is. They're fixated on what it was, and they think it's clean now.

And they've spent years crafting, then cleaving to, their eager and trembling Obama narrative, a tale of great yearning, almost mythic and ardently adolescent, a tale in which Obama is portrayed as a reformer, a dynamic change agent about to do away with the old thuggish politics.

It's as if Axelrod channeled it, wearing a peaked Merlin hat. Obama is a South Sider and does not hail from Camelot or Mt. Olympus or the lush forests of mythical Narnia.

I've joked that reporters feel compelled to hug him, in their copy, as if he were the cuddly faun, the Mr. Tumnus of American politics. But I was only kidding. The real Mr. Tumnus never had Billy Daley or Ted Kennedy carving up Cabinet appointments.

So why the disconnect? Why is Obama allowed to campaign as a reformer, virtually unchallenged by the media, though he's a product of Chicago politics and has never condemned the wholesale political corruption in his hometown the way he condemns those darn Washington lobbyists?

For an answer as to when pundits will ever put Illinois corruption in context, I called on Tom Bevan, executive director of the popular political website RealClearPolitics.com (which directs readers to my column on occasion) and a Chicagoan.

"To a large degree, the media has accepted much of the Obama narrative thus far," Bevan told me. "He's risen so quickly, but his history hasn't been bogged down with an association of Chicago politics and I can't tell you why exactly, except perhaps that some may have bought into the established narrative and can't separate themselves from it."

Bevan added: "And I don't know if the country understands just how corrupt the system is in Illinois. People don't see it. They're flying over us, cruising at 30,000 feet."

Our Chicago politics sure must seem sweet from that high altitude as journalists fly by. From up there, our politics must smell pretty, like vanilla beans in a jar, or lavender potpourri: you know, something truly authentic and real.

-- John Kass

John Kass is a local Chicago columnist whose work occasionally appears on the Swamp, of the Tribune's Washington bureau.

Photo Credits: AP

Comments

[Kikiva]

The Republicans won't be as kind as the media has been to Obama. They'll bring out his not so squeaky clean image since the press won't do their job.

"His kind of town Chicago.."

[Wilhelmina]

McCain would love to bring that up Obama’s connections to Rezko, Auchi, Ali Ata, John Rodgers who heads Ariel Capital, Jay Wilton, Aiham Alsammarae, Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell, Jr.
I thought the teacher’s unions were against Obama because of his support for vouchers and merit pay but I see Obama made sure his friends received the benefits of handling teachers retirement funds, too.

ABC News reports on the implications of Tony Rezko's trial for Barack Obama:
I think one line Obama may wish he never said when defending his toughness is,
"I come from Chicago politics. We're accustomed to rough and tumble," he said.
Chicago politics is well-known for being dirty. Perhaps he should have talked about his experience staying above the fray of it rather than implying he knew how to get into the fight.

[Tom J]

The REAL myth is that somehow Obama is to blame for anything and everything that's happened in Chicago, all of Illinois, perhaps the entire country (the world?) since he was born.

'Chicago politics' (to anyone but John Kass) is about the aldermen who run the city. Obama was never an alderman, so I really don't see this huge connection Kass is talking about. As for Patrick Fitzgerald, Kass was the ONLY person in Chicago surprised that Obama supports Patrick Fitzgerald. But then Kass sees nefarious conspiracies all over the place. Tell him the sky is blue and the grass is green, and he'll find some way to blame it on Daley as A Bad Thing.

[ck]

Thank you, Mr. Kass, for this lucid, much-needed editorial. One can only hope that it may somehow help end the media silence about the Obama/Chicago-machine connection. Why, however, your editorial today and the L.A. Times Apr. 7 ‘special report’ about Obama’s obviously close, 17-year financial/political connection with Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko were both buried in the Top of the Ticket blogs apparently may also remain a mystery, just like the national media’s ‘mystical’ disconnect about this subject.

After all, the same Syrian-born Muslim Tony Rezko, whose federal trial for fraud and extortion wrapped up last week when the prosecution rested and the defense called no witnesses (coincidentally a day before the crucial IN & NC primaries), is the same Rezko who, just two short years ago, helped Obama and family purchase a million-dollar home and lot right next door to his in an affluent south Chicago neighborhood. One of the more interesting aspects of the Rezko trial over the past few weeks was the revelation that a multi-billionaire Iraqi Muslim illegal arms dealer, whose customers apparently included Saddam Hussein, evidently tried to post a third of Rezko’s $8.5 million federal bail.

If this type of story involved any of the other candidates in the Presidential primary contest, both today’s editorial and the Apr. 7 special report would’ve been splashed in headlines all over front page national news venues and posited in the most accusatory and sinister terms known to journalism. In Obama's case, what little the media has reported of this story has been in subdued, wrist-slapping terms, and the Chicago newspapers' coverage has been downright laughable.

For example, the Apr. 7 Times report euphemistically called the Obama/Chicago-machine story a "fascinating tale" of "financial and family connections in Illinois and Chicago politics that helped take a virtually unknown black Chicago attorney [Obama], nurtured him politically and financially and turned him into [a] polished candidate." If memory serves re past political scandals, that kind of tale is usually called a lot more than “fascinating,” for instance, INCRIMINATING. Lots of other words also spring to mind, like "mob puppet” and “influence peddling."

After all, Obama’s pal Rezko isn’t just any average political supporter. He's been characterized during his federal trial as an incredibly powerful player in Chicago-machine 'pay-to-play' politics. He apparently has close ties to Iraqi Muslim multi-billionaire illegal arms dealers with former customers like Saddam Hussein. Moreover, Rezko apparently intentionally sought out Obama at Harvard specifically for the purpose of grooming him for the Presidency, largely bankrolled his meteoric political rise and even recently helped him buy a home right next door to his. Does this not pique the media’s interest even slightly?

Seems to me that Obama, whom the Times report stated just happens to have the same Rezko-connected political donor list as Illinois Gov. Blagojevich, should at the very least, like Blagojevich, also be under intense federal scrutiny. For, in his short time as an Illinois state senator, it seems rather likely that Obama did the same sorts of things that Rezko’s buddy Stuart Levine, the prosecution’s star witness, admitted doing while a member of the Illinois public school teachers' pension board, including engaging in “conspiracy, extortion, bribery, fraud and other bad acts.” Would the Times or Obama really expect anyone to believe that all the then-unknown Obama really had to do was simply “ask” the state pension board to “listen” in order for the board to miraculously, suddenly award a half BILLION dollars in business to one of those donor firms, a firm just coincidentally run by a guy who donated many thousands to Obama’s Ill. campaign?

Maybe a lot of the turncoat Dems who’ve recently come out backing Obama aren’t, as it first seemed, jumping on the 'Obamamaniac' bandwagon stupidly trying to avoid looking un-hip. Now it appears maybe they’re either being bought one by one by the campaign or the DNC with money funneled from Obama’s deep-pocket Chicago-machine connections, or perhaps trying to avoid having the same or worse tactics (digging up alleged dirty marital secrets) used against them as those the Rezko Chicago machine perhaps used against Blair Hull to get Obama elected in Ill. in the first place.

The first wake-up call for Obama’s pied-piper-mesmerized, media-indoctrinated, ill-informed supporters should’ve been the revelation of Obama’s 20-year support of his spiritual mentor Rev. Wright and his hate-filled, extreme leftwing black power ideology masquerading as ‘Christian Religion,’ and Wright’s hero worship of U.S. Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, homophobic, anti-American. Obama's close, long-term connection with Rezko and pals should’ve been the second. One can only hope that the Democratic Party doesn’t require a third wake-up call to recognize Obama’s unfitness as a Presidential candidate before August.
P.S. to TomJ@7:31 a.m.: Get used to having Obama blamed for every 'bad' thing that's happened since his birth. His own campaign used that same tactic against Sen. Clinton from the start of this primary contest, but they blamed her for every 'bad' thing since the beginning of time.

[Steve Rhodes]

No, CK, it isn't likely that Obama did the things you accuse him of without any proof (the same with the silly statement that they have blamed Clinton for every bad thing that happened - they've been rather restrained given her history, something the Republicans wouldn't do - though it is a moot point since she is not going to be running in the fall).

What you and Kass ignore is that it was Harold Washington, a reform mayor, who drew Obama to Chicago in the first place.