Political memories continue to crop up in our present-day public reality

OBAMA: Deciding one's guilt, or innocence

Election Day losses, or term limits, don’t necessarily mean the end of our political people in the public eye. Some of them just keep cropping up, no matter how much some of us want to forget them.

Take the cases of Barack Obama and Pat Quinn. It wasn’t all that long ago that these were the sitting president and Illinois governor, respectively. It would be expected for them to have their every utterances recorded for posterity.

QUINN: Wants to be the governor's lawyer?

THEY’RE NOW BOTH in political retirement – Obama because he served his two-term maximum allowed for any individual to be president, and Quinn because even with the advantages of incumbency, he couldn’t even beat Bruce Rauner for governor come the last state government election cycle.

But they’re both the subject of idle chit-chat amongst people who wish to think they’re saying something intelligent about our political structure.

For Obama, who’s living along with former first lady Michelle out in the District of Columbia, he’s going to have a return to our local scene. For the Obamas still own their home in the Kenwood neighborhood and maintain local voter registration – along with driver’s licenses.

Could Obama do jury duty in shadow of Picasso?

Which means that Obama’s name is in the pool of people who can be called upon to serve on a jury. The exact circumstances of which have occurred.

OFFICIALS ARE GOING out of their way not to let it be publicly known when Obama will return to Cook County to do his day of jury duty, although the former president is trying to appear as regular-guyish as possible in saying he won’t try to get out of such duty.

He’ll show up, watch that decades-old film of one-time WBBM-TV news anchor Lester Holt explaining the way the court system works, and will be kept in seclusion from the criminals who pervade the halls of the county courthouses, to see if he gets picked to be on a jury.

Which most people would think is a long-shot. I suspect any attorney trying to put together a jury to benefit their client (or a prosecutor seeking to nail his hide to the wall) is going to view Obama as a distraction. Something that could draw massive amounts of attention to an otherwise-trivial case.

Or in suburban Markham, a few blocks from Hazel Crest-based Obama school?

Better to just bounce him, give him his $17.20 check for one day’s service to the county, and send him along home. For what it’s worth, that amount of money is meant to cover the cost of mass transit to a courthouse, along with lunch. Nothing more!

BUT WHEN IT happens, Obama’s presence will cause a political circus – even though county officials say they’ll get him into and out of the courthouse in a way meant to draw as little attention to himself as possible.

Which is just the opposite of former Gov. Quinn – who in coming months is going to want to draw as much attention to himself as possible. He says he’s going to be amongst the many Dems wishing to run for Illinois attorney general.

Not that it’s surprising Quinn would try to seek a state office after losing his governor’s post in 2014. Quinn previously served as Illinois treasurer from 1991-95, and I lost track of the number of political posts he ran for unsuccessfully until he finally became lieutenant governor following the 2002 election cycle.

“The Mighty Quinn” isn’t really satisfied unless he’s running for office and using his campaigns as forums for making political statements about what he thinks is for the good of our society.

AS FAR AS why attorney general, it’s because the post is open; what with Lisa Madigan saying she won’t seek re-election in next year’s cycle. With some half-dozen or so Dems expressing interest in the post, perhaps Quinn thinks he could win a primary with some 25 percent voter support.

Could Harold give Quinn a fight for AG?

Although I’m skeptical he could even get that much. But it is a wide-open primary, meaning anything screwy could happen.

I have to admit it would be odd if Quinn were to wind up being the Democratic nominee running against possible GOP challenger Erika Harold. Could the man who gave us the cutback amendment and reduced by one-third the size of the Illinois House of Representatives compete against a one-time Miss America?

I’m sure Harold’s campaign is going to portray herself as an ultimate political outsider out to instigate change – yet one could argue she’d be taking on the ultimate political pain in the derriere who doesn’t care much what the political insiders think of him.

  -30-

EXTRA: Trump will dump on Lester Holt; oddsmakers say that's a sure bet

No, I’m not rushing out in search of a bookmaker who will take my bet with regards to the upcoming debate of the presidential dreamers.

But I couldn’t help but get my chuckle when I saw the odds that were set at SportsBettingDime.com on various aspects of the political event. Which apparently is evidence that some people are pathetic enough to place bets on anything.

EVEN THE COLOR of Trump’s tie (9/5 it’s red) or Hillary’s pantsuit (3/1 it’s blue)!

For the record, the odds are 2/1 that Trump will find something to complain about either during or after the debate with regards to the conduct of NBC News Lester Holt. Yes, the one-time Channel 2 news anchor is going to be moderating the Monday night spectacle.

A solid-enough performance could wind up giving Holt a national rep, and perhaps eliminate all the jokes that get told about people who do jury duty in Cook County and wind up having to watch that explanatory video about the process that Holt narrated some 30 years ago. Of course, one lone gaffe could result in Holt taking the heat from those people determined to believe that the world is conspiring against their beloved Donald Trump and his dreams of being able to tell Congress "You're Fired!' in all his blowhard glory.

By the way, the odds are 1 in 4 that Holt finds something to fact-check about Trump, compared to 4/1 he’ll find something to nit-pick about Clinton.

AND YES, THE odds are 9/1 that a Trump supporter will do something stupid that disrupts the event.

Anyway, check out the odds for yourself, particularly the 1/1 chance (a real sure thing) that someone feels compelled to bring up Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers and his race-motivated protest against the National Anthem as part of sports events, at some time during the debate.

Certainly better than the odds the Chicago Bears can do anything successful when they travel to play the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday – other than ogle the famed cheerleaders while losing yet another game.

  -30-

Does it matter who “wins” upcoming debates? We’ll think what we want

The first debate between the two major presidential candidates won’t take place until Monday. Yet I already can hear the rantings and ragings taking place in my mind over the event’s results.

A classic boxing match

The kind of people inclined to take seriously the presidential bid of Donald Trump are going to vehemently insist he won! They'll make the argument that he wiped the floor with that ugly hag’s face and gave her the smackdown that society should have given her years ago.

IT WON’T MATTER what actually happens. They’re going to want to perceive a victory, no matter what reality says. Heck, Trump could probably make a major gaffe, and his backers will claim it’s really a significant blow to the Clinton campaign.

Likewise, other people are going to see Trump and hear what he says that day when Trump and Hillary Clinton face off, and they’re going to look for every stupid bit of babble that comes from Donald’s mouth.

They’re going to leap all over every tidbit they can find to make the man out to be a complete moron!

Hillary already is the winner, in their minds. The fact is that nothing will change this perception.

ALL OF WHICH is my way of saying that I’m not exactly looking forward to the presidential debates – the first of which takes place next week at Hofstra University in upstate New York.

Worthy of the hype?

If anything, I’m actually more intrigued by the potential for the one vice-presidential debate set for Oct. 4 at Longwood University in Virginia. I don’t expect a repeat of the 1988 V-P sparring match when Democrat Lloyd Bentsen tagged Republican Dan Quayle with the line (“You’re no ‘Jack Kennedy’”) that many people most remember about him.

That, and the bit about using the obsolete spelling (“potatoe”) for the starchy vegetable.

But back to the debates. The Vice Presidential brawl could wind up being the national introduction for both Tim Kaine (a Virginia senator) and Mike Pence (an Indiana governor).

IT COULD GIVE us the lasting impression we carry of both men as they try to create the impression that we could trust them to be president, should it wind up that the person we actually voted for dies or is otherwise incapacitated while in office.

That could be particularly important for Pence, since there are many people who are grudgingly saying they’ll vote for Trump because they’re trusting he’ll surround himself with people who are actually qualified to do the posts for which he’s picking them.

While many Clinton backers are supporting her merely because they’re too appalled by the thought of someone as gaudy as Trump being put in a position of authority.

While for Trump, I’m sure his interest in being president isn’t so much that he wants the office as much as he figures he’s cutting out the middle-man, so to speak.

HE’S A BUSINESS executive who likely has had to deal with countless government officials throughout the years, and probably thinks they just get in the way of allowing him to operate as he’d truly like to.

This may well be the attitude he tries to convey during his three debate appearances. Even though Trump himself has publicly complained about the fact that debates will have moderators. He’d rather have a free-for-all with Clinton, because a moderator (it will be one-time Chicago newsman Lester Holt for the first debate) might actually call him out publicly on nonsense he spews.

Would it matter if Trump did worse than Quayle?

Although I suspect that his followers won’t care. They’ll be prepared to buy the nonsense as fact, or else will be so confused that it won’t matter.

And everybody is most likely to be willing to go along with the spin being spewed following the debates by the political pontificators; all of whom will try to convince you that your preferred candidate is “da winnah, and still champeen!”

  -30-

Does it mean much that one-time Channel 2 news anchor Holt now the big guy at NBC's prime newscast?

I kind of got a kick out of the way I learned the latest in the Brian Williams/NBC News saga that he is no longer the face of the evening newscast and has been permanently replaced by interim news anchor Lester Holt.

HOLT: From BBM to natl. newscast head

I woke up Thursday morning and started the day with a few minutes of Robin Meade at CNN’s Headline News channel, where the one-time anchor of WMAQ-TV’s morning news segments told us all of how Williams was “demoted” to MSNBC and how Holt, the former WBBM-TV news anchor, now has the top broadcast position at his television network.

IT SOMETIMES SEEMS like one can’t get away from Chicago no matter how much they may try.

But back to Holt, who hasn’t worked in Chicago television for 15 years. But he did leave a memorable presence on the CBS station back when he worked in Chicago – helping to keep the channel’s news presence alive in those years AFTER Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson completed their domination of the Chicago news scene.

He even left his image on our city proper.

I found it amusing when I had to do a day of jury duty back in February that the Cook County Sheriff’s police continue to use a decades-old video featuring Holt, as he explained to us exactly what a jury is and what would be expected of us if – by chance – we were picked to be on a jury and asked to render a verdict on some poor schlub who theoretically is among our peers in society.

THAT VIDEO LOOKED like it had seen better days; having been played over and over and over again throughout the years since Holt had left Chicago – even though the basic message hasn’t changed one bit.

WILLIAMS: Was he really demoted?

But now, Holt has moved up to the top of the broadcast news scene – being in charge of what is supposedly the top priority newscast that NBC puts on each night.

He has the same job title that David Brinkley, John Chancellor (himself a former Chicago Sun-Times reporter-type person) and Tom Brokaw once held.

Yet I don’t know that anyone views Holt’s job as being anywhere as prominent as the role those men once held.

THE FACT IS that fewer people tune in to a scheduled newscast to learn news – preferring the notion of being able to tune to a news channel for 20 minutes or so at a time to get a jolt of information about what is happening in society then tuning in to whatever entertainment program it is they’d really rather watch. Just think of all the odd-hour newscasts our local television stations have created for those who can’t wait until 6 p.m.

MEADE: Is she now more prominent than Holt?

It may be that people seriously interested in news are still turning to the newspapers with the declining circulations – which could show that fewer people are seriously interested in “the news.”

So what should we think of this latest move – brought about by the fact that corporate officials felt the need to demote Williams without actually firing him. That would have brought too much shame to the network.

I’m not going to get too worked up over what Williams is alleged to have done – the whole account of whether he exaggerated his experiences while reporting in Iraqi war zones. It is proof that the memory is flawed.

I ALWAYS GET concerned anytime I have to write copy about some past event based off my own memory of it, rather than being able to look through the files of notes and old clippings I have accumulated during the past three decades. Invariably, some of the details are off. (Insert premature senility gag here).

So Williams is no longer on the network proper, but he’s now a reporter-type for MSNBC, the cable channel – which in some circles may actually be regarded as a promotion of sorts. A more prominent spot that gets watched by some, rather than an evening newscast whose timing isn’t convenient for people who want a fact or two right now!

Holt from the old days lives on in Cook County jury rooms

Holt winds up getting the allegedly prominent post when it no longer means as much as it used to.

And in Chicago and suburban Cook County, at least, some people are bound to stumble across the NBC Nightly News in coming weeks and say to themselves, “That’s the guy from the jury duty video. What a mustache he used to have!”

  -30-