Isaac moved convention rhetoric indoors. Is that really a political loss?

We have a new campaign “issue” – one just as trivial as 99 percent of the issues that usually come up during election cycles.

OBAMA: Won't be all wet

Some 50,000-plus people are going to be denied the chance to say “I was there!” when President Barack Obama gives his acceptance speech Thursday meant to officially kick off his active campaigning for a second term in the Oval Office.

THAT IS BECAUSE the heavy rainfall expected to hit Charlotte, N.C., (what is left of the storm that was once Hurricane Isaac and actually caused the first day of the Republican National Convention to be cancelled outright) caused the Obama for America people to decide that the president will give his speech indoors.

Meaning he won’t be speaking to a capacity crowd at the Bank of America stadium (and the 73,778 seats before which the NFL’s Carolina Panthers play). Instead, he’ll be speaking to a capacity crowd at the Time Warner Cable Arena – which is where the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats play.

All 20,200 seats – that is. There are ways of cramming some more people into the arena. Seats can be set up on the floor where the basketball court usually exists.

But what it basically comes down to is about 50,000 fewer seats, which means that fewer people will be able to say they were in the building when Obama spoke.

NOT THAT I think it’s all that big of a deal.

Personally, had Obama persisted in giving his speech in the football bowl, probably 7/8ths of the people there would have seats either so far from the stage or at such crummy angles that they wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway.

They’d be relying on multiple video screens that likely would have been erected. Which means they’d be watching the event on television. They might as well stay home and watch their pick of the many broadcast stations that are carrying convention coverage.

If anything, they’d probably learn more from those broadcasts than  they would by sitting in the stadium and watching the Obama-approved version of the event (all telegenic, but with little substance – just like all convention events, regardless of political party).

NOT THAT THE views will be any better at the Time Warner Cable Arena!

If anything, the experience of attending a presidential nominating convention is in partaking of the events surrounding the roster of speakers. The speeches themselves are little more than cheap talk.

So cheap at times that Mitt Romney last week got overshadowed by a Clint Eastwood appearance that still has people wondering, “What was he thinking?”

But back to Obama, who on Thursday will still give the same speech that the Republican operatives already are writing their venomous responses to – even before they’ve heard a word from the president. As far as I’m concerned, they were “all wet” even before the heavy rainfall.

THEIR TRASH TALK really doesn’t depend on what Obama says. Just his existence is what offends them to the point that they’re trying to get the rest of the nation worked up into the same sense of hatred they feel whenever the president is mentioned.

It’s just too bad (for them, at least) that the real mood of the nation is one of apathy. Obama’s biggest benefit that gives him a chance of winning re-election despite the economic mess that is our society these days is that most of us don’t hate the man.

Although it wouldn’t surprise me if we hear trash talk from the ideologues claiming that Obama is depriving some 50,000 people the chance to attend an event they were sort of promised a chance to see.

What with the way that the Obama camp has offered up chances to be at the Democratic convention to “ordinary” people who make the requisite financial contribution.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: I recall the 1996 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, held at the United Center, where officials made a big deal of restricting access to the Chicago Bulls locker room and Michael Jordan's locker. Since Jordan is now part-owner of the Charlotte NBA franchise, will similar restrictions be put on the owner's box from where he occasionally watches games?

Will Cellini trial get the short shrift?

Federal officials began the process Monday of picking a jury for the trial of Springfield business executive William Cellini, yet I wonder how many people have any sense of whom he is.

CELLINI: Boss behind the bosses?



Because thus far, his trial is turning out to be the circumstance that is causing other trials to be delayed.

FIRST, THAT OF former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. And now, Tony Rezko. U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve on Monday delayed the sentencing of the man who was supposed to be capable of taking down the political careers of  Blagojevich, Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama.

So we’ll have to wait until November to find out what eventually will happen to Rezko – who in the end didn’t have much of an effect on Rahm and Barack. And Milorod seems to have gone down to legal defeat without any input from Antoin.

All of these political people are the “big names” who are overshadowing Cellini. I’m sure there are many people who are observing this whole situation and thinking that Cellini is some sort of afterthought.

Which is a mistake!

WHENEVER PEOPLE ASK me who Bill Cellini is, or why is he significant, I always use the overly-simplistic explanation of telling them that Cellini is the guy who has the ability to tell the elected officials what it is they will do with their political positions.

Because on paper, he doesn’t come across as much. He used to hold positions in state government (the first director ever of the Illinois Department of Transportation) back in the days with Richard Ogilvie was Illinois governor.

OGILVIE: Gave Celllini his only post



In recent years, he has been the treasurer of the Sangamon County Republican Party. Which means he’s not in charge of the GOP in Springfield and its surrounding rural towns.

But he’s the guy who controls the money and has the institutional memory. As a result, he’s the guy that the party chairmen usually turn to when they need “advice” about what to do.

AND BECAUSE HE’S a prominent Republican in the Illinois capital city, the state legislators and other officials turn to him. Even the Democrats. Because Cellini isn’t somebody who feels the need to play ideological politics – which is why the biggest Cellini critics these days (the ones most eager to see him carted off to prison) are the ideologues.

The ones who scream “RINO” and complain that Cellini isn’t a real Republican because he’s willing to work with Democrats in state government when they manage to get themselves elected to political positions. Because they don’t want to accept the idea that people of the two major political parties (along with those of other ideological persuasions) really do have to work together if we’re to accomplish anything as a society.

This is the guy who wound up helping Rod Blagojevich to raise the money he needed in order to beat Jim Ryan in 2002 and annihilate Judy Baar Topinka in 2006. That Cellini-raised money was the reason she could never truly rebut all the nonsense rhetoric Blagojevich spewed during that campaign.

As for Jim, perhaps the reason Cellini was willing to back Blagojevich was because the Ryan campaign of ’02 was based too strongly on the concept of “It’s my turn,” rather than offering any vision for Illinois.

IT ALSO RELATES to the actions that federal prosecutors say amount to criminal behavior. For the trial that likely will take up the bulk of the month of October says that Cellini’s behavior in getting contributions from a would-be Hollywood producer amount to extortion. The old shake-down.

BLAGOJEVICH: Cellini-raised cash

Of course, there are those who are skeptical of these charges, saying that they are closely related to actions for which other people were already acquitted. Hence, there are some who think Cellini could be the lone individual in this latest federal investigation of state government corruption who could be found “not guilty.”

And I’m sure if that happens, there will be those people who will argue that it was Cellini’s cunning and cleverness that somehow managed to allow him to elude a criminal conviction.

Or maybe it just means that his behavior was business, and not criminal. And that the only thing he might be “guilty” of is associating with sordid individuals.

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Ya gotta love Judy

TOPINKA: No longer a political has-been

Every time I start to think that political partisanship is becoming too intense and that our society is doomed as a result, Judy Baar Topinka somehow opens her mouth and convinces me that maybe there is hope for us.

Her latest moment came Monday at mid-day when she joined the other Illinois constitutional officers in being sworn in to terms running through January 2015. It is now Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka. She’s back on our political scene.

IN FACT, IT may well have been Topinka who made the most memorable scene at the inauguration ceremony, conducted on the basketball court of the Prairie Capital Convention Center in Springfield.

First, she had her son, Joe, a major in the Army, administer the oath of office to her (no judges for this Judy). She got the chuckle when, at about 35 seconds into the oath, Judy cut him off by saying, “that’s getting awfully long.”

But I wouldn’t be commenting on Topinka if all she did was make a joke. She also used her address to make a serious point about political partisanship at a time when Democrats have a firm grasp on Illinois state government.

And no, Judy didn’t take a pot shot at Democrats. She included her GOP colleagues as well, claiming that the spirit of bipartisanship is one that has to be shared by government officials of both major political parties if anything meaningful is going to change.

TOPINKA – WHO HAS said during her time as Comptroller-elect that she would use her position that actually pays government bills to interfere with Democratic plans to borrow money if she did not think they were responsible – said everybody is to blame for the mess that is the state’s financial condition these days.

“Both parties have for a very, very long time helped dig this ditch,” she told the crowd gathered for inaugural festivities. “We’re all responsible. Since we all dug, it’s time that we got together to find the courage, the will and the civility to pull ourselves out of that ditch and make Illinois great again.”

You just know that the conservative ideologues of Illinois who plan to portray everything that happens at the Statehouse during the next two years as some sort of conspiracy by Chicago to undermine the “decent” people who live outside of the city were gnashing their teeth.

From the Republican News Watch



They don’t want to hear the honesty behind a statement that the GOP officials haven’t done a thing to alleviate the problem. These are the people who probably think the United Republican Fund is being super when they talk about targeting any Republican official who votes on Tuesday for a plan to raise the state income tax to help alleviate the state’s financial mess.

AS TOPINKA PUT it, “we need to put aside any petty bickering and partisan fights.” She also said, “it’s too easy to blame one (political) party, but it wouldn’t be true.”

After all, those people who backed William Brady’s gubernatorial campaign even though he never seriously addressed the need for more revenue to pay the state’s expenses (it’s pure fantasy to think that only budget cuts can balance the state’s budget) were doing little more than ignoring the issue – preferring to play partisan games of their own that would have harmed the state irrevocably.

Of course, the reason our state’s situation became so bad to begin with was we had a Democratic legislature determined to teach then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich who was really in charge, and a governor who was more than willing to behave in a spiteful manner.

Blame for our mess really does go around to everybody – no matter how much certain officials want to claim it’s, “the other guy’s fault.”

WHICH MEANS TOPINKA’S most controversial statement during her inaugural address (which lasted just over nine minutes) may well be that our state government has “good and honorable people” at its head.

I’d like to think she’s right. In fact, I suspect the only people who are going to have serious disagreement with anything Topinka said on Monday are the ones who rant about “RINOS” and whose sole complaint is that she didn’t share in the partisan rant that they would have desired from the woman who now is the highest-ranking Republican official in Illinois state government.

Personally, I don’t dispute Topinka’s credentials as a member of the Republican Party. This is a woman who once seriously believed that Phil Gramm should be president of the United States. I just wish we could get more officials who were willing to put aside the partisan labels from time to time. Which makes me encouraged by her rhetoric that she’s “not going away until” the state fixes its finances, joking at one point that she may someday be taking an oath of office from her infant grand-daughter, Alexandra.

“That should scare you, okay?” Topinka told the gathering. Actually, it doesn’t, not anywhere near as much as that campaign van that she referred to when she was sworn into office in 1995 – resulting in the “fart joke” that still gets remembered in some political quarters.

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It is truly appropriate that Election Day for this year occurs on Tuesday’s date

Tuesday is Groundhog Day, and as I stick my head out of my humble abode, I see, hear and sense the presence of politicians desperately grubbing about for each and every vote they can get.

Since I see their shadow, I quickly scurry back into my residence out of a sense of desperation. Perhaps they’ll go away and leave me alone.

BUT MY REALITY (along with all of yours) is the same as Punxatawney Phil and all his groundhog brethren. They “see” shadows and we get sentenced to six more weeks of winter weather. We Illinoisans see shadows, and we’re doomed to suffer through nine more months of campaign rhetoric.

For every single person who is enough of a nitwit to say that the earlier primary Election Day date in Illinois is a good thing because it reduces the length of the primary season, I have to point out the truth that it really means that we’re doomed to an even longer general election season in 2010.

For beginning tomorrow and running through Nov. 2, we’re going to have all the candidates who manage to win Tuesday’s primaries coming out and going straight on the attack. Republicans who have been eagerly beating up on each other are now going to start their screeching of the name “Blagojevich!” out of the belief that they will scare us into voting for anying with an “R” following his name, rather than the dreaded “D.”

And as for Democrats?

WE’RE GOING TO see whether they decide to fight back and take it to the hard-core GOP partisans (it can be done, since too many of these GOPers are of the type whose ideal government is one rigged in favor of their ideological agenda on so many social issues), or are they going to snivel about and let themselves get smacked about for the next nine months – with the people being the ultimate losers.

The bottom line is that 2010 is going to be ugly. If 2008 was about inspiration and talk of change, this year is going to be about the people who were disgusted by ’08 doing whatever they can to turn back any electoral gains that were made that year.

That means we’re going to need to see a political party quit acting as though they are meant to be beaten upon, and start standing up for the ideals that the electorate indicated they wanted in recent years.

Seriously, I wonder in Illinois if the more hard-core Republican partisans are going to prevail to such an extent that they will wind up picking candidates on Tuesday who will be out of touch with the bulk of people who live in this state – particularly the two-thirds of the state’s population that considers itself to be first-and-foremost the Chicago metropolitan area.

BUT THEN AGAIN, if Democrats go about the next few months whimpering, then perhaps this will be a year in which the one-third minority manages to achieve something at the ballot box.

Not that I think it will be all bad if our state’s government ceases to be dominated by one party. For the past few years have truly been an aberation.

Typically, in those years when one political party in Illinois manages to capture an Election Day mood and win a preponderance of government offices, the electorate manages to correct itself in the next election.

The Republican “domination” of state government that resulted from 1994’s elections ended in 1996. The Democratic boost of 1964 came to an equally-quick end. The fact that Democratic control from 2002 remains in effect today is more due to the ineptitude of the Illinois Republican Party.

SO FOR ME, the big question that will start to be answered with the results of Tuesday’s primaries is whether the GOP is still bumbling about? Or are they starting a process of rebuilding, one which could result in our state government having a mixture of partisan political people in the constitutional offices?

I will agree that government rarely works well when it is in the hands of one political party. There needs to be certain forces counterbalancing each other and preventing either side from being able to enact its worst tendencies amongst the people – although in all honest truth, the inability of Rod Blagojevich and Michael Madigan to work together during the past decade probably served as that counterbalancing force.

So while I am looking forward to observing the government entities that ultimately are created by the elections to be held in November, the period between now and then is going to be loaded up with so much campaign rhetoric that this year is going to be agonizing to observe.

I already have Nov. 3 marked prominently on my calendar, and not just because it is “Culture Day” in Japan.

THE NEXT FEW months are literally going to be like that film “Groundhog Day,” where weatherman Phil Connors (a.k.a., Bill Murray) had to keep reliving the events of Groundhog Day until he finally got everything right.

Even though the primary will be over after Tuesday, it’s going to feel like we’re living the campaign season over and over and over again. That is my true nightmare.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: I have already done the polling place routine, so I won't be among the many voters needing to take time out of my day on Tuesday to cast my ballot (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2010/01/casting-my-ballot.html) for the primary elections.

Emanuel for mayor? I doubt it

Nobody expects Rahm Emanuel to remain as chief of staff to President Barack Obama for all four (much less eight) years of the administration. So it isn’t out of the realm of possibility to speculate on what will become of the man.

That is what has led to conspiracy theories about how he is trying to rig the political future so he can return someday to Congress (he used to talk about how he’d like to be House speaker someday – which would be a first from Chicago).

THERE ALSO HAVE been those who think the north suburban native who turned himself into a North Sider to serve in Congress would envision himself as governor of Illinois someday.

But now, those Emanuel conspiracy theories appear to have reached into yet another branch of government. Sally Quinn, the one-time society writer for the Washington Post who continues to write occasional columns for the newspaper, published a piece of commentary Tuesday that hints Rahm thinks of himself as a future mayor of Chicago.

It would seem that the people with little better to do than guess what political fantasies Emanuel might have for himself are putting him all over the place. Could it be a series of trial balloons, whereby he runs for whichever office people are the least repulsed by.

If that’s the case, he won’t be running for anything at City Hall – particularly if Richard M. Daley decides to seek another term (at this point, I believe he will) in the 2011 municipal elections. Nobody will have the nerve to challenge Daley, no matter how much his naysayers want to think that thinks like parking meters or the Olympics debacle will "take him down."

BECAUSE I REMEMBER the revulsion level that Emanuel created in his congressional district when he first ran for the House of Representatives’ post from the Northwest Side. That, combined with the certain level of mistrust of any Washington official that people in other parts of the city will feel make me think that Rahm would be beatable if he were delusional to actually run for mayor in 2011.

The fact is that our local people who run for offices in Washington are considered to have run “up and out,” meaning they may be moving on to something that technically outranks City Hall but is part of another system altogether.

Meaning the local powers-that-be are more than willing to indulge Emanuel’s ego, so long as he applies it elsewhere. Let the District of Columbia deal with him, they think.

If he tries to come back to Chicago and exert such an attitude, there will be any number of politicos willing to dredge up the dirt.

IT WAS THE reason why I always thought it ridiculous that people used to say that Obama himself would someday run for Illinois governor if he had lost to Hillary R. Clinton in the 2008 primary. He too was another “up and outer” who left the Chicago delegation of the Statehouse Scene in order to be a part of Capitol Hill.

Am I saying that Washington and the federal government is another world? Yes. Am I also saying that the people who go there often are cutting themselves off from the local affairs? Yes.

Some might cite Roman Pucinski as a case of a member of Congress who became a local official. He gave up his House seat (a portion of his district was later represented by Emanuel) to be a City Council member.

But the fact that he is one of the few and that that took place decades ago shows just how unlikely it is that someone so engrained in the ways of the White House and Congress (let’s not forget Emanuel’s years of service under former President Bill Clinton that were so tight that Rahm was one of the last Democrats from Illinois to publicly side with Obama during the ’08 primary) could make the switch back to the fifth floor of City Hall.

THE VERY FACT that Quinn threw her Emanuel “nugget” into the middle of a lengthy diatribe about another issue (Desiree Rogers should be fired for letting those dingbats sneak into the state dinner for India) shows that it is not a fully-developed idea.

While I’m not trying to bad-mouth Quinn (who has been an observer of the federal government scene for several decades), I don’t expect her to be a master of the ways of City Hall. So I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that she doesn’t fully appreciate how ridiculous an idea it is that Emanuel could ever return to Chicago on the local level.

You might as well say that Obama himself is going to come back to Chicago after he’s done being president to run for mayor. About the only local post I could envision Obama holding someday would be University of Chicago chancellor.

That is, if he doesn’t start thinking of Chicago as a place from which he came, rather than the place for which he is intended to return. USA Today earlier this week reported on many local business officials who wish Obama would take a closer interest in the city to help bolster their economic interests.

THAT IS WHY I always had the easiest time envisioning Emanuel thinking of himself as a future House speaker. I realize the man has (even by government official standards) a bloated ego. He’s going to want something for his own right someday.

And dreaming of the day in which he could be the guy that a president has to turn to in order to get things approved by Congress likely would satisfy him. Unless he dreams of the day that a Republican is president and he can be the House speaker who thwarts that official’s ideological desires.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Sally Quinn is dribbling political daydreams in her attempt to get Desiree Rogers to (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/04/AR2010010402722.html?sub=AR) take the blame for lax White House security procedures.

The White House on Tuesday officially said that Rahm Emanuel (http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2010/01/washington_post_columnist_says.html) isn’t going anywhere.

Would Barack Obama’s physical presence in Chicago really give that much of a jolt (http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/01/05/Chicago-businesses-hoping-for-Obama-fix/UPI-21771262706601/) to the city’s economy?