What should we think of Haiti?

I realize it is the way of political people to try to make themselves appear to be on top of every possible issue.

Yet I got my chuckle the other night when in my e-mail turned up an announcement from Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, informing me and everybody else he felt the need to notify about the county’s relief efforts intended for the people of Haiti.

THAT CARIBBEAN ISLAND nation suffered a severe earthquake earlier this week that you have to be a virtual shut-in to have avoided hearing anything about. Of course, some people are complaining about the degree to which they are hearing things, wishing they could shut themselves off from the suffering taking place there.

But seeing the big bold red typeface telling me Stroger to kick off Cook County Haitian relief effort made me wonder how desperate is Todd for votes if he’s trying to put himself at the head of the pack – since he was the first Chicago-area politico (to my knowledge) to take a public stand on Haiti.

Then again, I’m surprised it took our local political people until Wednesday night before they started issuing statements trying to make themselves appear to be aligned with the needs of Haiti – a nation that many of them usually try to ignore. Life won't be anywhere near this idylic in Port-au-Prince for a long time. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

Now I shouldn’t complain.

IT IS NICE that Cook County government is cooperating with activists and other people in Chicago’s population of Haitian ethnic descent to put together some sort of relief effort to help people who are trying to dig through the rubble for survivors – while also helping those people above-ground to rebuild their lives.

They probably had very little to begin with, and now have managed to lose even that. It is a shame that eventually, another news story will come along to sweep Haiti out of the public eye because it likely will take years for the island nation to rebuild itself.

But locally at this point, I would guess that Stroger is looking for every possible vote source he can find in hopes of putting together the magical “30 percent” level of support that would theoretically enable him to win a four-way primary for county president.

So trying to be on top of the Haitian situation could help in terms of gaining votes from those Haitian people now living here (about 40,000 estimated out of the 2.9-something million population of Chicago as a whole).

IF IT READS like I’m being crass or cynical, perhaps it is just the mood of the candidates these days that is rubbing off on me. Anybody who believes that political people always behave altruistically is being naïve. And I’m not trying to imply that it is just Stroger who can have political motives.

Even President Barack Obama is on top of the Haiti situation now – saying Thursday that their situation ought to be a “top priority” for federal government agencies. Our nation is pledging at least $100 million in aid, with more likely to follow up in the near future.

Former President Bill Clinton, who would like to someday displace Jimmy Carter in the informal title of “Greatest Ex-President ever,” got his name in the news by saying people should make cash donations to relief agencies if they truly want to help. Which is why I took notice of a CNN Headline News report that gave a “voice” to people who were angry about so much attention being paid to Haiti.

It seems like the economic struggles of our nation for the past year have so many people feeling like they have too many problems of their own in order to afford to make any kind of donation.

COULD IT BE that these appeals for aid from political people will wind up causing some resentment that will cost them votes on future Election Days? I can appreciate that some people don’t like to be made to feel guilty about their inability to give.

Or will they just take it out on the so-called “liberal news media” for exaggerating the significance of the situation in Haiti – although I’d argue it is difficult to “exaggerate” the destruction caused by a 7.0 Richter Scale earthquake that may have killed at least 100,000 people.

Unless someone is truly callous enough to think that a crisis in Haiti isn’t worth our attention because it’s only Haiti. I’d like to give our society more credit and that the complaining isn’t due to that kind of reasoning.

But then again, maybe that’s just me being naïve.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: You can find just about every ethnicity in Chicago, although the Haitian community isn’t (http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF2002/Valbrun/Valbrun.html) exactly a dominant part of the (http://cbs2chicago.com/local/haiti.earthquake.chicago.2.1422309.html) Second City’s culture.

People can make a $10 donation to the Red Cross through their cellphones (http://www.state.gov/p/wha/ci/ha/earthquake/index.htm), although more significant donations can be made (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/impact/) through various groups.

Casting my ballot

ORLAND PARK, Ill. – Call it the advantage of having an hour of time free in mid-day, but I made the trek Wednesday out to one of the early voting centers maintained by the Cook County clerk’s office in order to cast my ballot for the Feb. 2 primary elections.

I figure now if I get preoccupied with having to follow political-type activity on ElectionDay, I don’t have to worry about taking time out to wait in line to cast my own ballot.

AS ANYONE WHO has read my commentary in the past has figured out, I tend to lean Democrat. Sure enough, I wound up asking for a Democratic Party ballot for next month’s election.

Although I will confess to pausing for a few seconds when I was filling out the form to request a ballot to checking the box for the GOP, just because there is a part of me that would have liked to have given some support to the gubernatorial campaign of Kirk Dillard.

The Dillard I dealt with as a chief of staff to former Gov. Jim Edgar and as a state senator from DuPage County was one who took the issues seriously and was a person who tried to figure out what was good for all people – rather than imposing some ideological viewpoint on them. That likely is the reason the more conservative of Republicans have their hangups about him. Election Day voting booth technology has come a long way since 1944. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

But in the end, there were so many more campaigns on the Democratic side of the equation that I felt the need to take that ballot. The idea of a symbolic Dillard vote against the conservatives seemed like an irresponsible reason to pick up a GOP ballot.

SO HOW DID I cast my votes? And why do I think anybody cares?

As far as the latter question is concerned, I don’t think anyone is going to be influenced to vote for someone just because I did. This is more about giving people who read these commentaries a sense of where my own ideological bearings are. From there, it is up to you to figure out how seriously to take any of this.

For the former question, I wound up siding with Toni Preckwinkle for president of the Cook County Board.

I don’t despise the notion of Todd Stroger in that post the way many people do. In fact, I find some of the reasons that people are so hung up on Stroger to be despicable.

BUT PRECKWINKLE HAS a record in the City Council as a responsible official, and there is a part of her that could carry on in that mode of people trying to work together that was behind the 2008 campaign of her Hyde Park neighbor, Barack Obama.

Not that Preckwinkle is an Obama clone. But she might be the one candidate who can help Cook County get beyond the racial battle that this campaign could turn into should either Stroger or Dorothy Brown succeed.

As far as Terry O’Brien is concerned, I’ll give him credit for understanding sewage. It’s a shame he didn’t stay with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District to continue his work.

I’m not as optimistic about my choice for U.S. Senate. I went with one-time Chicago Urban League boss Cheryle Jackson largely because I have my doubts about all the other candidates. She gets my vote by default.

ALEXI GIANNOULIAS HAS barely served one term as Illinois treasurer and is already looking to move up to one of the four top political posts of Illinois (the two senators, Chicago’s mayor and Illinois’ governor). Maybe if he had spent some more time serving in that post and gaining experience, I’d feel more comfortable.

As for David Hoffman, the one-time inspector general of Chicago strikes me as the kind of guy who can root out complaints. But I’m not convinced he can handle a political position itself. It’s too bad we can’t somehow make him a “watchdog” of sorts over whoever does win the U.S. Senate election in November.

For governor, I cast my ballot with incumbent Pat Quinn to give him the nomination to run for his own term in office – rather than just going into the state history books as Rod Blagojevich’s backup.

There are those people who will claim that Quinn has appeared to be in over his head during the past year, while others (including myself) argue that opponent (and Illinois Comptroller) Dan Hynes would be equally in over his head if he won election to the position.

I’M JUST OF the viewpoint that Illinois government’s circumstances are dire and unique – anybody would have appeared to be struggling with the state’s financial mess. If it seems like I’m writing that we ought to have some stability and give Quinn a real chance to work the state upward.

Besides, unless it turns out that Quinn is running against Kirk Dillard come November, his sensibilities are preferable to everybody else who appears on that Republican ballot.

Illinois’ one-time political pest may very well be our state’s best hope.

Insofar as the rest of my ballot is concerned, I supported state Rep. Mike Boland, D-East Moline, for lieutenant governor largely out of a sense that geographic balance (he was the only guy from outside the Chicago area to get my vote) is important.

THE REMAINDER OF my votes were cast with the usual confusion or half-information that many voters have, although I will admit to givng my vote to Nicholas Karas for a judicial subcircuit post in Cook County for one borderline trivial reason – he was there.

Karas was handing out his campaign leaflet outside the early polling place, so his name was very fresh in my mind.

And yes, he was standing more than 100 feet back from the entrance to the early voting center. I checked.

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Will campaign racial/ethnic appeals work?

Todd Stroger wants to be sure we comprehend that he’s the official “black” candidate running for Cook County Board president, while Rudy Lozano Jr. is making sure we all understand that he’s the Latino running for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives.

I’m not sure how it’s all going to play out for the latter, but I’m skeptical that going for the racial vote will be enough to ensure that Stroger gets the nomination to run for another term as county president come the November general election.

NOW I’M WILLING to give Stroger the benefit of the doubt that he would never have approved the flier circulating in select South Side neighborhoods that portrays a local government consisting of white Irish guys – IF Stroger is not re-elected.

It also uses bluntly racial slurs to depict the other African-American candidates running against Stroger in the Feb. 2 primary. It’s a scare tactic meant to try to stir up the black vote in Chicago to turn out in percentages that haven’t been seen since the days of Harold Washington.

But Stroger doesn’t need to resort to such blunt tactics when his own official campaign stunts also play off the idea that black people should want Todd back in office to look out for their interests.

Several government officials on Tuesday made it public that they support Strogoer for re-election, including the county board members who kept voting in his favor with regards to repealing a portion of the county’s share of sales tax revenues.

ANOTHER OF THOSE government officials who is willing to back Todd publicly is Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., the man who most recently is remembered for a borderline incoherent diatribe in support of Roland Burris for the U.S. Senate.

Some pundits (the ones who most enjoy getting up on their pedestals and giving us their Rush Limbaugh impersonations for being balls of hot gas) are saying that Rush is engaging in race-baiting politics, and will continue that trend in speaking out publicly for Stroger.

I’ll agree that Rush is part of an effort to get those old-school black activist-type voters to make the effort to turn out on Election Day to cast ballots. But I’m not sure I see that as some sort of evil conspiracy.

Or should we think it equally reprehensible that, earlier this week, Rush’s congressional colleague, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., performed her own endorsement stunt by backing Stroger opponent Toni Preckwinkle.

SHE LABELLED PRECKWINKLE, an alderman from the Hyde Park neighborhood, as the only “progressive” candidate in the campaign, and there is a good chance that many of the more liberal voters who normally are needed to elect a black candidate over the vociferous right wing that wants to believe picking better qualified people always means going with the white guy will side with her.

One could argue that the Preckwinkle endorsement will carry with it certain racial connotations. So I’m not offended by Rush. Not nearly as much as by the activity of Wallace “Gator” Bradley, the South Side political activist who allegedly was behind the fliers that labelled some black government officials as “house n----rs” for the white political establishment.

Insofar as Stroger’s chances of winning only with the black vote, I can’t help but look back at Chicago mayoral elections of the past couple of decades where Richard M. Daley ran against African-American candidates who tried to win with only the black vote (instead of the black, liberal white and Latino coalition that put Washington in office in 1983 and 1987).

Rush should remember He was Daley’s Election Day victim in 1999, and had no better luck with such a strategy than did people like Tim Evans or Danny Davis.

THEN, WE GET to the case of Lozano, who wants to enter electoral politics in the way that most people in Chicago do so – they gain experience and training by winning a position in the Illinois Legislature.

Specifically, Lozano wants the Illinois House seat for his home community, which is a majority Latino (mostly Mexican-American) neighborhood and is surrounded by neighborhoods with significant Latino populations.

The “problem” is that the district has been represented in Springfield by Dan Burke, who not only has the advantages of incumbency but also of family – his brother is the long-serving, influential alderman Ed Burke. Part of Burke’s influence in city government comes from the fact that he has a “family connection” at the Statehouse in Springpatch.

So even though the neighborhood is no longer the Polish/German/Irish mixture that it once was, the Burkes are going to go all out to keep the seat.

LOZANO AND HIS supporters on Tuesday held their own press conference to complain about Burke’s campaign fliers – which they say try to make it appear as though Latino community leaders who support Lozano actually back Burke.

Lozano-ites go so far as to call these fliers “racist,” although not having actually seen one but had them described to me, they sound like the usual campaign confusion. Trash, best tossed into the can to eliminate litter – rather than becoming the basis of a campaign “issue.”

But it did give Lozano a chance to remind voters once again that their neighborhood has changed, and that perhaps it is time for people to re-think who they are sending to Springfield to represent them.

Now I’m not saying flat out that Burke needs to go. He has made some efforts to keep in touch with the growing Latino constituency (which encompasses about two-thirds of the Southwest Side legislative district'sa registered voters). Ultimately, Lozano needs to convince voters he can better serve the people.

IF HE CAN do that, then he deserves to win. If he can’t, then Burke should get to extend his public service into a third decade (he has been in the Illinois House since 1991).

But this campaign ultimately reflects on the shifting population of Chicago and the surrounding area, and Burke would hardly be the first official to depart because of demographics. Take Vito Marzullo, the alderman who served in the City Council for three decades until retiring because the changing demographics turned his community from Italian to Latino.

There are times when a politician’s changing neighborhood has been evidence that it was time to go.

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EXTRA: Were Chicago and Illinois the point of Ground Zero for baseball fraud?

I can remember sitting in the stands of New Comiskey Park in September 1998 watching the Chicago White Sox play Seattle when officials felt compelled to give scoreboard “updates” about the home runs being hit by Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire.

It was a mixture of cheers and boos that came from the crowd, some of whom resented the way that Chicago Cubs fans tried to spin Sosa’s performance as some sort of imperical evidence that the White Sox were irrelevant to the city.

AFTER ALL, IT was the Cubs (they would claim) that were giving baseball its “big” story and helping to “save baseball” from the public relations mess it incurred from the strike of 1994-95 (the one that now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor ultimately ended in her New York courtroom).

So you have to excuse me if a part of my reaction to learning that McGwire is now admitting to what was long suspected (his strength came from chemical substances that are considered inappropriate to the mentality of true sportsmanship and athleticism) is to chuckle at the thought that the Cubs were ever deluded enough to think they were that important.

After all, McGwire now admits it and baseball officials in 2003 had a drug test that Sosa himself passed. The one time that he needed to fail, he didn’t.

I find it ironic that many of the self-appointed guardians of baseball of today who want the harshest, most punitive punishment for Sosa and McGwire sound a lot like White Sox fans circa '98.

WHAT ALSO STICKS in my mind is that in the Summer of ’98, I was living and working in Springfield, Ill., which meant I was more or less on the dividing line between Cubs fandom and St. Louis Cardinals fandom. (For some reason, downstate Illinois residents are mostly too ignorant to appreciate the superiority of the American League).

Every single moment that season got the locals all worked up because it was taken personal. There was none of this “I wish they could both break the record” sentiment. Everybody wanted their team’s guy to win, and the other to be humiliated.

But now that we have to recognize that it all was a fraud, what should we think of that season – and of baseball.

I have been one of those people who does not get as worked up over steroids because I figure the ballplayers who are taking them are doing more potential harm to their bodies and their health than any humiliation they might suffer from my heaping indignation upon them.

IN SHORT, THEY will get theirs some day. And I’m sure Sports Illustrated wishes it could take back this magazine cover.

It also reinforces in my mind the thought that the most interesting part of 1998 was the New York Yankees managing to set an American League record with 114 wins that season.

Even though the Seattle Mariners broke that record three years later (just like Barry Bonds came along to top McGwire/Sosa), their accomplishment doesn’t seem as big a deal as what came from the Bronx.

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Reid sounds like Biden, while Blagojevich comes off as a bitter and jealous pol

I can remember back a couple of years ago when political pundits seriously debated whether Barack Obama was “black enough” to attract the votes of African-American people.

Despite some initial reservation, Obama seems to have overcome the view that he’s not a real black man, when it comes to “black” people. But it would seem that white people still have the hang-up that Obama is somehow not legitimate enough – does he need to have grown up in a South Side public housing project in order to qualify?

IN RECENT DAYS, both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and now-impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich have had to issue public apologies for comments they made with regards to the public perception of biracial Obama’s racial background.

Not that either man said anything recently.

Reid got caught for comments he made more than a year ago during the presidential campaign. A new book by a pair of Washington Post reporters told us what Reid thought. Meanwhile, Esquire magazine told us they are going to publish a story about Blagojevich in their next issue, one in which he says he thinks Obama’s liberal credentials are somehow phony.

By comparison, he implies that he was the true liberal who looked out for the people.

FOR THE RECORD, Reid said Obama was, “a light-skinned” African-American man “with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.” Reid made the comment in the context of explaining to a reporter-type why many white people were willing to support Obama.

What struck me as interesting about the comment is how similar in idea it was to the remarks made by then-Sen. (and now Vice President) Joe Biden of Delaware, who early in the campaign season put his foot in his own mouth by saying, “you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. That’s storybook, man.”

Considering that Reid supposedly made his comment months after Biden got himself in the political doghouse, one would think he would know better than to say something so trivial.

Because that is what such thoughts ultimately are. Wanting to believe that “real” black people are “too ghetto” to be taken seriously politically is a petty way of viewing life.

BUT THEN AGAIN, maybe he saw that Biden ultimately got that V-P slot, putting him in line to be the 45th president should some “accident” befall Obama, and figured that all would be forgiven for saying something stupid.

If anything, I consider the Blagojevich comments to be more offensive – although I sent an e-mail on Monday responding to someone who asked what I thought by saying it probably didn’t even make the Top 10 list of dumb things expressed by Milorod during his life in public service.

Because while Reid, and Biden last year, were trying to offer lame, trivial praise to Obama, Blagojevich was showing that he still is bitter that Barack surpassed him as the golden child from Illinois when it comes to good government-type politics.

“I’m blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment,” Blagojevich told Esquire. “My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived.

“I SAW IT all growing up,” Blagojevich said.

Of course, Blagojevich and his followers expressing the belief that they are somehow more in touch with “the people” is not a new theme.

I still remember the day when Blagojevich got elected governor, and we got to hear now-former First Lady Patti Blagojevich try to explain her husband’s appeal by saying they were the kind of people who celebrated by “drinking a beer” rather than sipping some wine.

So I guess in their minds, Patti’s drinking a beer while her husband is a black man. It just comes off as too much self-pity for people who want to believe that they somehow ought to be where Obama is now – although I can remember even back in 2002 thinking it ridiculous whenever anyone speculated that Blagojevich was a serious contender to someday be U.S. president.

ALL OF WHICH gives Republican political operatives material with which to play as they work their way through the 2010 campaign season. I’d like to think the American people have enough sense to dismiss that rhetoric for the act of poltiical misdirection (from GOP gaffes) that it truly is.

Which probably means the first negative campaign ads feeding off this material will start airing this afternoon.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Barack Obama might not be a political populist, but he still has (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/magazine/03FOB-WWLN-t.html?ref=magazine) significant liberal credentials. One should think Adlai Stevenson, not Huey Long.

I could have done without knowing that the former Illinois first family’s new dog is named “Skittles.” (http://www.esquire.com/features/people-who-matter-2010/rod-blagojevich-interview-0210?click=pp).

Republican politicos have said things about racial issues far worse than anything that might have slipped (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/11/reid-says-used-better-choice-words-describing-obama/) from Harry Reid’s mouth, which is why people with sense are dismissing the GOP Chairman Michael Steele’s tactics of recent days as politically partisan nonsense.

Who does Daley back?

Excuse me for not being the least bit surprised when I learned that Mayor Richard M. Daley said this weekend that he has no intention of publicly endorsing anybody who is seeking electoral office in the Feb. 2 primary elections.

It’s not that Hizzoner Jr. doesn’t care about the outcome of next month’s Democratic primary.

BUT DALEY ISN’T about to put his intelligence quotient on the line by putting himself in a position where on Feb. 3 we can look back and see which of his endorsed candidates won and which lost. He gets enough grief from critics for sounding “dumb” when he speaks. He’s not about to do anything that might confirm that impression.

Now some people are trying to claim that Daley’s refusal (officially, Daley said he’s “too busy” being mayor to try to get involved in boosting others to Election Day victory. That makes him the complete opposite of his father.

The late Richard J. Daley always used his role as party chairman to reinforce his municipal authority as mayor. It’s probably evidence of how much times have changed in the past four decades that Daley the younger thinks he bolsters his mayoral authority by staying out of other people’s campaigns.

There are those who are trying to claim that the person most hurt by Daley’s refusal to publicly endorse is Todd Stroger.

AFTER ALL, IF Daley were to get involved in the Cook County Board president primary and start pressuring people to cast their votes for the incumbent (which is what would nominally be expected, a lot of the people who otherwise would complain about sales taxes would shut their mouths and vote for Stroger – even if one of their hands was being used to pinch their nostrils shut.

But that is not happening here. And like I wrote at the beginning of this commentary, that doesn’t surprise me in the least.

I still remember 1998 and the Democratic primary for governor when people aligned with candidate John Schmidt were eager to peddle the notion that Daley wanted his one-time chief of staff to live in the Executive Mansion.

He may have. I don’t think Daley was hostile to the idea. Yet he never game him the public endorsement, and one of his brothers, John, threw some public support to Schmidt opponent Glenn Poshard (who ultimately lost in the general election that year to George Ryan), although another Daley brother, William, did try to push the Schmidt campaign over the top on Election Day that year.

MOST YEARS, IT doesn’t even get that obvious.

For anyone who looks back at the local election cycles that have occurred since Daley the younger became mayor in 1989 would realize that the man rarely, if ever, goes so far as to publicly endorse someone.

The sight of “M.” behind a podium holding a formal press conference to announce that he thinks we the electorate should cast our ballots for ___________________ who is running for _________________ just doesn’t occur.

You would have a greater chance of seeing the Chicago Cubs in the World Series than getting a blunt endorsement from Daley.

IN FACT, HAVING Daley make comments like he did this weekend about formal endorsements being archaic has become as predictable a “news” story as the one produced by sports departments every summer when the Chicago White Sox travel to the Lakeview neighborhood and manager Ozzie Guillen makes comments implying that Wrigley Field is a rat-infested, urine-smelling dump.

So Daley may be correct when he says, “In this day and age, …it’s a completely different environment in politics. I’ll be very frank. Endorsements don’t mean as much as they used to in the past.”

He’s not going to tell us straight out who we should vote for.

Yet that does not mean there won’t be actions behind the scenes. If anything, we’re going to have to be on the lookout for the little activities that crop up around the campaigns to see which candidates are not being hurt by the mayor’s actions.

THERE WILL BE those individual candidates who suddenly get a few extra campaign workers loaned to them for a day or two to handle some project that helps get a political person’s name out in the public mindset.

For in an election such as the one coming up where there is a certain lack of positive interest (2010 is going to be a year people vote against someone or something, unlike ’08 where many people were voting in favor of an ideal they thought was personified by Barack Obama).

There also is the fear that the inclement weather of the past week will extend into early February (although why anyone is shocked that it is cold and snowy in Chicago during the winter is a surprise to me) and could hold down the vote.

The biggest help anyone could give one of this year’s candidates is a little extra help from people who are willing to do the legwork to convince potential voters that their specific candidate is one of the few who isn’t a buffoon.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Is Rich Daley’s refusal to publicly back Todd Stroger (http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/1941144,daley-denies-stroger-rift-no-endorsement-121509.article) a political kiss-off, or did Stroger have so many problems that Daley’s thoughts on the matter wouldn’t matter.

The mayor is keeping quiet about Election Day (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/us/03cncstroger.html) while his brother, William, is trying to maintain (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/25/AR2009122501283.html?hpid=opinionsbox1) some sort of moderate viewpoint among Democratic candidates. Neither of these actions should be seen as surprising.

Tax rhetoric not only blatantly partisan, but also reminiscent of the political past

Andrew McKenna, the newly-minted gubernatorial favorite of the Chicago Tribune, went on the attack against primary opponent Jim Ryan this week with a statement that sounded all too familiar.

McKenna had his campaign issue a statement that was a re-issue of the Americans for Tax Reform group, which has a problem with the fact that candidate Jim Ryan refuses to sign their “Taxpayer Reform Pledge.”

THE GROUP PORTRAYS its pledge as a simple demand – politicians promise not to support tax increases if they get elected to federal office.

Yet only a complete simpleton believes the issue of taxes and government funding is that simple. Ryan, who served eight years as state attorney general and previously ran for Illinois governor, knows better. That’s why he’s not about to commit himself to the group’s politically partisan stunt.

He went so far as to tell the Daily Herald newspaper of Arlington Heights that the group’s pledge is “phony.” So they’re trashing Ryan, and McKenna is more than willing to pass along that attack – hoping that it gets the ideologues of the GOP worked up enough to consider voting for him in numbers significant enough to overcome the Ryan lead in early polls that was as much past name recognition as anything else.

To further reinforce this message, McKenna’s campaign is taking out radio advertisements that trash both Ryan and Kirk Dillard (who on Friday bercame the GOP gubernatorial favorite of the Chicago Sun-Times).

ILLINOIS: OVERSPENT, NEARLY broke. Yet Jim Ryan and Kirk Dillard won’t rule out tax hikes, the radio spot goes.

What is my problem with this? I have noticed that many Republican candidates are going out of their way to sign the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, in hopes that this stunt gains their campaigns some attention.

Because that ultimately is all this is. Some cheap rhetoric that is totally unrealistic, but meant to provide a punch line for voters when looking for someone to back on Election Day.

Why do I call it a punch line? Because the joke will be on those voters who seriously think that someone can automatically think “no” whenever the issue of taxes or revenue comes up for government.

THE REALITY OF the situation is that the Americans for Tax Reform is a misnomer. The group headed by long-time anti-tax activist Grover Norquist is a conservative organization that has its problems with many government programs, and figures the best way to eliminate those functions for which it has ideological objections is to reduce the amount of money the federal government has to the point where it can no longer afford to do anything.

Norquist is the man who once literally said he wants to reduce the federal government down to a size, “where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Unfortunately, government has obligations that must be met for the protection (if not the betterment) of society. Which means that people who automatically want to say “no” without giving the issue or circumstances any thought are absurd, if not downright irresponsible.

Personally, I think anybody who signs this pledge and gives it any legitimacy ought to be someone we specifically cross off our lists of candidates we would consider voting for.

IF I WERE inclined to pick up a Republican ballot come Feb. 2, Dillard is a candidate I would consider backing. Although I have to admit, I may have gained a little bit of respect for Ryan after learning of McKenna’s attempt at an attack.

I also have to admit the whole issue reminds me of 1994 in one aspect.

That was the year that Republicans were able to play off rural objections to the Clintons and their attempt at health care reform to win an exhorbitant number of Congressional elections – thereby giving them Congressional control that pretty much thwarted any serious governing that the Clinton Administration was capable of doing.

That was the year of the “Contract with America,” which consisted of a series of goals that a GOP-dominated government would use its partisan muscle to impose on the nation. As a political agenda, it went far beyond the Taxpayer Reform Pledge.

BUT MANY POLITICAL people running that year on the GOP side of the equation were eager to use the contract’s rhetoric to campaign with.

Yet I remember one official who didn’t.

Ray LaHood, who at the time was chief of staff to House Minority Leader Robert Michel, R-Ill., was running to replace his boss in representing the Peoria area in Congress. As someone who had been a state legislator before going on a congressional staff, he was more aware of the daily realities of managing a government that lives up to its responsibilities to the people.

I can remember he specifically refused to sign the “Contract with America” even though he admitted there were parts of its rhetoric he agreed with and that could have been useful to his campaigning.

ADMITTEDLY, THERE WERE some people who never forgave him. There was always a subsect of the Republican Party in Illinois that didn’t trust LaHood. For all I know, the fact that he now serves under a Democratic president as Secretary of Transportation probably reinforces their mistrust.

All I know, however, is that LaHood won that election, and wound up getting re-elected to serve 14 years in all in Congress. In the end, it didn’t seem to hurt him.

Could it be that this latest round of cheap rhetoric about Ryan and Dillard is just the same, coming from someone who’s counting on an ideological minority of our state’s population to exceed its influence and somehow magically elect him to office?

I’d have an easier time believing that the Tribune endorsement is going to sway a significant number of voters to McKenna’s side – and I fully realize how impotent individual newspaper endorsements have become in terms of turning out the vote on Election Day.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: You figure whether the Americans for Tax Reform rhetoric is worth anything more (http://www.atr.org/taxpayer-protection-pledge-a2882) than empty rhetoric.

It appears that the Chicago Tribune’s editorial page endorsement policies have reverted back to tradition (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/chi-100108gop-endorse-link,0,3243757.story), which makes me wonder if the Sun-Times endorsement was more about being different (http://www.suntimes.com/news/elections/endorsements/1980076,CST-EDT-edit08.article) than anything else.