Chicago’s boo-birds will join rest of nation when it comes to razzing Rodriguez

Mark the dates "July 30 through Aug. 2" on your calendar.

That four-day span over a weekend in the summer of 2009 will be memorable in Chicago for one reason – that’s when the New York Yankees make their lone trip to the Second City this season to play the White Sox.

IT WON’T MATTER just how bad the White Sox or the Yankees are playing (although personally, I think both will contend for something in their respective divisions). That weekend will be significant because it will be the time span when Chicagoans with nothing better to do with their lives than razz Alex Rodriguez will deem it worthy of their time to go to the ballpark.

Who can come up with the most “clever” (a.k.a., insipid) chant? Who will have the crudest sign implying that Rodriguez (arguably one of the best ballplayers ever, even though he’s far from being one of the best Yankees ever) is a drug abuser.

I can already see the spectacle, as certain people will feel like it is their mission in life to single out Rodriguez for even more abuse than they would have because he’s one of the top ballplayers – and because he’s a Yankee.

Now before anyone starts thinking that I’m about to go in defense of a steroid-using ballplayer (as Rodriguez now admits he was), I’m not. But I’m also not going to get all worked up over his activity, because I believe that there are physical consequences he will suffer from the use of certain drugs meant to build up strength.

IN SHORT, I think Rodriguez and all the other athletes who misuse such substances will pay a hefty price later in life (in the case of Ken Caminiti, he paid with his life at age 41). I think people who believe they need to add to the abuse of a ballplayer are just people with nothing going on in their own lives, so they have to mind someone else’s business.

Now as it has been reported in recent days, Rodriguez experimented with certain substances in an attempt to build up muscle mass so as to make him a stronger athlete who might be capable of doing better things on the ball field.

The test to which he came up “positive” was taken in 2003 when Major League Baseball was first trying to get a handle on just how much the use of certain steroids was impacting the game.

In theory, ballplayers were tested anonymously that year, and no one was supposed to know who was who when it came to who tested positive and who tested negative.

SOME MIGHT ARGUE that the real tragedy here is that Rodriguez’ anonymous cooperation with this test was unveiled. But I think of it more as the equivalent of someone who faces serious criminal charges, only to have them knocked down to a misdemeanor (if anything at all) because of prosecutorial misconduct.

Rodriguez can’t officially be punished for “passing” this particular test, even though ballplayers tested since then face a rigorous schedule of suspensions that can ultimately take away their careers (there’s no lifetime ban, but if you start losing entire seasons, it takes away from the interest ball clubs will have in all but the best athletes).

And as far as those people who want to start screaming about “asterisks” and erasing statistics and records set by ballplayers who used steroids, you can’t do that. Trying to erase history and rewrite it in a favorable way is un-American. It happened. Now baseball and its fans have to live with it.

Now I’m not naïve enough to think that steroids are limited to certain ballplayers, or even certain teams.

IT DOESN’T EVEN surprise me to know that professional athletes whose livelihood depends on being in top physical condition would mess with such substances that can – if misused – leave them weakened and susceptible to illness.

With all the supplements and other drugs that bodybuilders and other athletes take out of the belief that they’re doing their bodies some good, why wouldn’t it make sense that some are bound to think these steroids fall into the same class – or ought to, if not for some people who are just too uptight.

While I realize he now tries to back away from his past rhetoric, that was the basic attitude that one-time outfielder Jose Canseco expressed a few years ago when he helped write the book “Juiced.”

Canseco, known for being able to hit substantial numbers of home runs, claimed he thought all ballplayers ought to use steroids, along with weight training, so as to improve strength and the quality of the game.

THAT IS, IF you think the game ought to be nothing more than an exaggerated version of batting practice.

Now when I say that Rodriguez is going to get hit with abuse when he comes to Chicago, keep in mind that I don’t think he’s going to get hit here more than in any other American League city.

This is going to be a year in purgatory for Rodriguez. His every move is going to be watched, and people are going to be looking to jump on every little flub he makes all season.

In fact, he may get hit with more abuse from his “hometown” fans in New York than anywhere else. After all, there are many Yankees fans who view Rodriguez’ personal achievements on the field as less important than the fact that the Yankees haven’t won an American League championship since the year BEFORE he joined the team.

WHAT I WONDER is how intense will the disgust level become? Will Rodriguez become the new Barry Bonds (whose home run achievements are despised by many baseball fans and whom many were hoping Rodriguez would someday knock out of the record books)?

Will Rodriguez intensify the notion among many baseball fans (one that I have always thought to be ridiculous) that the Yankees are a team that deserves to be despised?

I can remember as a kid sitting in the stands at the old Comiskey Park, listening to a crowd get all bent out of shape at the thought of trying to throw Reggie Jackson’s concentration off (it never seemed to work).

Is this what we’re destined to see in future years with Rodriguez?

IT MAKES ME wonder if the day will ever come that Rodriguez will regret leaving such baseball “backwaters” as Seattle and Arlington, Texas to play in a place like New York City. I believe there are some fans who would be more willing to forgive him (in due course) if he still played for the Mariners or the Rangers.

Because “big money” + “Yankees” = (in the minds of many fans) Baseball’s “Public Enemy Number One.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The Texas Rangers baseball club of the early 2000s are developing (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/al/rangers/2009-02-09-rangers-players-juiced_N.htm) a reputation as a team with many ballplayers who experimented with steroid use.

Some commentators can get a tad irrational (http://www.freep.com/article/20090210/COL10/90210013/Alex+Rodriguez+should+go+to+jail) when it comes to steroid use by an athlete.

For some people, the most interesting thing Barack Obama had to say Monday night was to call (http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2009/02/09/2009-02-09_president_obama_tags_out_arod.html) the Rodriguez steroid saga “depressing news.”

Obama banking on stimulus “playing in Peoria” and rest of the United States

In general, I’m supportive of the concept of a stimulus package as proposed by President Barack Obama, because I realize the economy is in such a shambles these days that it will take drastic action to jolt the country back to a sound financial state.

I use the word “drastic” because it strikes me as the most appropriate way to describe spending nearly $827 billion in federal funds on various projects (in addition to the money that would have been provided in the federal budget) in hopes that they will create more jobs for people, thereby reducing unemployment and bolstering the economy.

WHEN PUT THAT way, Obama’s “stimulus” sounds a lot like the “Illinois First” program of public works projects that is a part of the legacy of former Gov. George Ryan.

That was the plan by which municipalities across the state got extra money for road repairs, public construction and other local government projects. Back then, Ryan justified the expense as being a worthwhile use of what was then a surplus of state government funds.

That is far from the current situation at the federal level. Nobody is operating under the belief that a surplus exists in the federal government’s accounts.

But it strikes me as interesting that the reaction from local government officials is remarkably the same.

THOSE LOCAL OFFICIALS are looking at the stimulus package as a chance to get the money for projects they were dreaming about, but were not otherwise counting on being able to do at this time.

One of the things I do to bring in some money is news reporting for a daily newspaper in the Chicago suburbs. For what it is worth, I have stumbled across towns that are wishing, hoping, praying that Congress manages to approve a stimulus package.

Because when it comes to expanding the taxiway for a runway at a local airport or paying for improved access and sewage connections to an industrial park, these are projects that have the potential to provide for some good back in their home communities.

And these are minor examples of how the stimulus is viewed outside of the District of Columbia.

MAYOR RICHARD M. Daley on Monday said he wants Congress to get off its collective duff (No, I’m not talking about Homer Simpson’s favorite brand of beer) and approve the stimulus.

He said that up to 15 miles of public transit lines, 200 schools, 150 miles of streets and 75 miles of sewer lines could be improved, with money coming from the package.

Illinois government officials estimate that of the total package, about $28 million could wind up coming to our beloved home state, with the proceeds being split up among the hundreds of municipalities across Illinois.

Now I understand that Republican politicians are playing hardball politics on this issue. I never expected the GOP’s members of Congress to become patsies for Obama, particularly on an issue such as this, where the idea of spending money on projects overseen by government goes against the basic philosophy that got many of those people into electoral politics in the first place.

BUT THE POINT is that being in the Chicago area, I can see how the idea plays in these troubled economic times. People want to give this concept a chance.

If it were to truly fail to jump-start the economy, we’re prepared to pillory Obama later. But too many of us are willing to give the idea a chance now.

That shows me either the GOP’s legislators in Congress (who unanimously rejected the idea when it was in the House of Representatives and are prepared to overwhelmingly vote against it in the Senate) are out of touch with the way the rest of the country thinks.

Or perhaps they just don’t care. They’re more interested in touting conservative economic principles than trying to find a practical solution to the economic troubles that confront us now.

WHAT SCARES ME is that former President Herbert Hoover generally gets blamed for the Great Depression of the early 1930s, in part because he did not want the federal government to take an active role in trying to jolt the economy.

It was the following president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose “alphabet soup” set of programs to create work (NRA, WPA, etc.) who generally gets credited with ending the Depression (even though it was really the entry of the United States into the Second World War that ended it).

It’s like these Republican officials have learned little to nothing from U.S. history. They run the risk of holding true to some ideological line (perhaps they listen too closely to Rush Limbaugh and his dittohead halfwits), while the other side comes up with a solution.

So when I see that Obama was in Elkhart, Ind., to persuade the locals to support his stimulus proposal, or that he plans to make similar appearances in Fort Myers, Fla., or Peoria, Ill. (where he will tour the Caterpillar plant where farm machinery is made, just after appearing at the 200th Birthday anniversary festivities in Springfield for Abraham Lincoln), I think that it is cute for the president to appear before the masses.

BUT A PART of me thinks it would be better for the Republican caucuses of the House and Senate to visit these places.

Perhaps if they heard firsthand how desperate the populace feels about the economy, they’d be more willing to try to find a solution – rather than sticking to ideological concepts that 50 or so years from now threaten to make them look foolish.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Chicago city officials already are spending what could be their (http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/1420782,daley-reacts-stimulus-package-020909.article) share of stimulus package funds, even before Congress approves it.

Lansing and Sauk Village in southeastern Cook County are hardly unique when it comes (http://nwi.com/articles/2009/02/09/news/illinois/doc2f86fa007942405d8625755700816ae7.txt) to looking at the stimulus package as a way of improving the quality of life within (http://www.nwi.com/articles/2009/01/30/news/illiana/doca69fdd5a7070c7468625754e0002c340.txt) their boundaries. And yes, these links do have a self-promotional element to them.

Barack Obama will include a Peoria (not the one in Arizona) appearance (http://www.week.com/news/local/39317512.html) as part of his national tour (http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2009/02/if_it_plays_in.php) to convince people that his stimulus proposal is good public policy.

Duckworth breaks ties to Blagojevich, while Quinn remains true to character

There are some people who believe that if Rod Blagojevich had made a legitimate choice to replace Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate, Tammy Duckworth would have been the one who was moving to be a part of the D.C. Scene.

He didn’t (although Roland Burris wasn't the worst pick he could have made). So she didn’t. But as it turns out, Duckworth will get her chance to be a part of the federal government in the Age of Obama. And she’s better off professionally, as a result.

DUCKWORTH IS THE veteran who lost use of her legs in combat during the Iraq War (a helicopter she was piloting was shot down), and came back with such an inspiring story of refusing to give up on life that politics appeared in her future. She gave Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., a run for the money in the 2006 elections, and later got the director’s post for the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs as a consolation prize.

She got that appointment from Blagojevich, which made him her political sponsor. That means she owed any political allegiance to him. If he had gone ahead and decided to make her a member of the U.S. Senate from Illinois, that would have strengthened her tie to Milorod.

Duckworth would have been Blagojevich’s girl for good, and her career in public service positions likely would have gone down the political toilet along with that of the former governor.

Instead, she is now a pick of Obama to be an assistant secretary for the federation Department of Veterans Affairs.

SO THERE IS a chance that her one-time ties to Blagojevich will wither away, and she will become a part of the Obama saga (for better or for worse).

Of course, it wasn’t purely Obama who decided to steal the Illinois head of veterans affairs for a top post within the federal VA. She had the backing of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and senior adviser David Axelrod.

So the political cynics will cite Duckworth as yet another part of the “Chicago Mafia” that supposedly is taking over the U.S. government (Duckworth herself lives with her husband in suburban Hoffman Estates).

From my perspective, I can’t help but think that this move from the state to the federal Veterans Affairs Department will reinforce the image of Duckworth as an expert in the field of the military and how this country addresses the needs of those one-time soldiers, sailors and Marines once they return home.

IT MIGHT VERY well mean that she will never run successfully for elective office.

She won’t ever serve in the Senate, or the House of Representatives. She won’t be a future governor, or hold any statewide position in Illinois.

But I also get the sense that Duckworth herself is most interested in being a part of the solution for veterans and their needs. It is one she has a first-hand experience with, and it gives her a chance to make a worthwhile contribution to our society.

In fact, it might very well have turned out for the best that Duckworth did not win the Congressional election of ’06. It’s not that Roskam, an attorney and one-time state legislator from Wheaton, has been all that stellar a member of Congress for the past two years.

BUT IT HAS left Duckworth free to pursue other career paths – ones that most likely fall within her true talents and interests.

So it will be interesting to see how the nation responds to Duckworth, who remains a member of the Illinois National Guard (she holds the rank of major, along with her husband, Brian Bowlsbey).

Duckworth got her federal appointment last week, leaving the Illinois agency leaderless.

Until Sunday, that is.

GOV. PAT QUINN showed that despite the fact he is now the titular head of the Illinois “establishment,” he still has streaks of his personality developed during his decades of being the chief gadfly of the Illinois political scene.

He named Duckworth’s replacement on Sunday – the day he used to use to announce his activist causes on the theory that it was the only day newsgathering organizations in Illinois would be desperate enough for news content to cover him.

Hence, we now have 28-year-old Dan Grant as head of the state agency that works with the federal agency to which Duckworth is moving up to in order to provide aid to the roughly 1.2 million military veterans who live in Illinois.

Grant graduated from the military academy at West Point and served in the army as a captain during the Iraq War, but that ultimately is not what got him the position.

HE IS A Chicago resident (but Michigan native) who worked for Quinn and showed his loyalty to the then-lieutenant governor, which means he put himself in line to be promoted to a top post when his political sponsor took over as governor.

As it turns out, Grant established his connection to Quinn during what turned out to be his biggest achievement during his six years as Illinois’ lieutenant governor – promoting military interests.

Quinn is the guy who made a point of showing up at funerals of military people from Illinois to show the state’s appreciation of their sacrifice in Iraq or Afghanistan. On occasion, he also visited VA hospitals to try to cheer up the wounded troops, and it was on one of those visits that Grant and Quinn met in 2007.

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Ryan “rule” could mean that Blagojevich won’t be broke in elder years

If the ruling of an Illinois appellate court provides any precedent, we’re going to hear a lot of grousing from the public in future years from people whose sense of vindictiveness is such that they want Rod Blagojevich penniless and destitute (preferably with a wife and kids who no longer speak to him).

The appeals court based in Chicago made a ruling Friday with regards to Blagojevich’s immediate predecessor as Illinois governor.

GEORGE RYAN GOT what his attorney, former Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson, called a victory when the court said that Ryan will get to keep a piece of the sizable government pension he would have received for more than three full decades of government service.

Specifically, Ryan will get credit for the roughly 20 years he served as a state legislator from Kankakee (rising to the rank of Illinois House speaker) and as lieutenant governor. None of the “crimes” for which he was found guilty by a jury in U.S. District Court in Chicago related to those years.

His pension credit earned during his eight years as Illinois secretary of state and four years as governor will be lost, because that is the time during which Ryan allegedly let his driver testing staff shake down unqualified drivers for bribes, did nothing to stop them, then tried to interfere with a federal investigation into those bribe solicitations.

Admittedly, that is still a huge hit for Ryan.

HIS PENSION FOR all of his time doing “the people’s business” in Illinois government would have barely exceeded $100,000 per year, every year for the rest of his and spouse Lura Lynn’s lives.

Because he only gets credit for those earlier posts, and because the most recent of that work occurred nearly 20 years ago, his pension goes down to about $65,000 per year.

Not that Ryan will receive any of it. Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate number 16627-424 will remain at the work camp that is part of the maximum-security prison at Terre Haute, Ind.

The money will go to the one-time Illinois first lady, who reportedly has been struggling financially to cover her expenses since her husband went away and state officials desiring political payback went after his pension.

SUCH A PENSION will not make her wealthy, but at least she’ll have some income coming in. That is bound to upset some people, whose disgust level for Ryan is so high that they will not be pleased unless Ryan is both incarcerated and destitute.

I would guess some of those same people have an identical attitude toward Blagojevich.

In the case of Blagojevich, the activity for which he could be indicted by a federal grand jury relates entirely to his time as governor of Illinois.

That would mean his two two-year terms as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from the Ravenswood and Lincoln Square neighborhoods and his three two-year terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (from much of the Northwest Side and surrounding suburbs) are not included.

ANY PENSION BENEFITS he is entitled to for that government service should still have to be paid out, even though I don’t know how much of a pension Blagojevich is entitled to.

I do know that he is now eligible to start collecting it, since he is no longer on the government payroll. Once (and if) he is convicted in a federal court, state officials would be able to cut off the portion of his pension that is connected to his six years as governor.

But Blagojevich likely was counting on a significant stint as governor to bolster the amount of credit he would receive toward earning a sizable pension. I can’t believe that his 10 years in state and federal government will give him all that much.

Certainly, it won’t be enough of a financial jolt that he can afford to live at the level he appeared to be dreaming about for his retiring years.

HECK, ISN’T THAT what his involvement in the so-called selling of a U.S. Senate seat was about?

Prosecutors want us to believe that Blagojevich was offering up the prominent government post to whoever was willing to contribute the most money to help create a nonprofit organization that would someday employ Blagojevich and wife Patti at salaries that could let them live comfortably while working whenever they chose.

Personally, I’m waiting for the day when some member of the General Assembly tries to slip a bill through the Legislature that would ban anyone convicted (or maybe even charged) of a criminal act from being able to receive anything in the way of a government pension.

Perhaps they’ll try to claim it’s a bi-partisan measure by calling it the “Ryan/Blagojevich” bill.

IT WOULD BE a drastic over-reaction on the part of the Illinois Legislature, but it would also not be unheard of for the people who are part of the Statehouse Scene to lose their common sense when their politically partisan motions take over.

And when political people realize that at age 48, Blagojevich still has a couple decades (barring an accident) of life to collect pension checks, the people of Illinois will have a long time to simmer in their anger over the thought of Milorod collecting a regular check from the government.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: George Ryan’s wife (who herself is 74) is now able to collect a portion (http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/02/06/ap6020518.html) of the pension that the former Illinois governor would have been eligible for had he not been sent to a federal prison.

For the time being, the unemployed Rod Blagojevich is entitled to a little bit of income for the full pension benefits (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-blagojevich-pension-29jan29,0,7350721.story) he qualified for during 16 years in state and federal government.

A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Conservatives still haven’t got over Ayers

Either the Illinois Senate has a member who does not understand the concept of innocent until proven guilty, or else he’s devoting his life to undermining the academic concept of tenure for long-time professors.

The only other possible explanation for the bill being introduced in the Illinois Senate is that there are still some Republicans who haven’t got over the fact that they were unable to make much of a campaign issue last year out of Bill Ayers, the one-time anti-war activist during the Vietnam era who has since become a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

THAT SEEMS TO be the case with Larry Bomke. He’s the state senator from Springfield proper (nobody would pay much attention to him if he came from anywhere else). And he has come up with a bill to be considered this spring that would prevent anyone who ever attacked a government in this country from being on a public university payroll.

Now I understand that among the ranks of people who back in the 1960s opposed U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, Ayers ranks as a tad extreme. His involvement with the Weathermen went so far as to mess with explosives and other acts that created vandalism as a symbolic way of attacking the establishment of this country as it existed some four decades ago.

If that sounds a bit hokey, that is because it is. Even most of the liberal activists of the era thought the “Weathermen” were a little nuts.

But the fact is that Ayers managed to come out of that era without any felony convictions on his record (largely because the FBI of that era – the tail-end of the J.Edgar Hoover years – was so overzealous that all their evidence against Ayers was illegally obtained).

SO BY THE letter of the law (which is what the conservatives usually try to argue is all important), Ayers is not guilty of anything. Do we really want a situation where illegally-obtained evidence is what is used to try to fire someone from his job?

For the fact is that in the past couple of decades, Ayers has become a respected educator who has tried coming up with methods to better teach troubled youth to read and write. One poll taken last year showed that commentator Rush Limbaugh had a lower approval rating among the U.S. electorate than Ayers.

This bill is pure bull. It reeks of partisanship from people who just can’t accept the fact that a majority of the country didn’t care last year about the fact that Ayers and President Barack Obama know each other. It makes me wonder if Obama left Springfield (the two served together for Obama’s nearly eight years in the Legislature) owing Bomke some money, and this bill is some sort of payback.

What else was notable about the news of the world, as perceived from the shores of Lake Michigan?

WHO WILL BE LEFT TO TURN THE LIGHTS OUT?: There’s a job opening in Chicago – one that includes a CEO title and the appearance of influence and prestige. But I’m curious to learn if anyone is going to be enthused about taking the job.

It involves being president and Chief Executive Officer of the parent company that operates the Chicago Sun-Times and various daily and weekly newspapers throughout the suburbs.

Cyrus Friedheim and his allies on the board were removed following a power dispute; a New York hedge fund was displeased with the company’s finances these days and pushed for a change.

But with the public perception that it is just a matter of time before newspapers start dying off altogether (without any appreciation for the significance of the product they produce on a daily basis), I can’t think of many people who would want the job. Friedheim will likely be remembered as a guy who gave it a shot during his just over two years, but was overcome by outside economic circumstances. The next CEO could literally be the one who presides over the death of the Sun-Times, if not the company as a whole.

HOLY NAME SUFFERS ITS SECOND FIRE: Holy Name Cathedral on the Near North Side always gets more than its share of attention because the church provides the home base, so to speak, for Cardinal Francis George – and all his predecessors who have led the Catholic Archdiocese for Chicago.

Yet the fire earlier this week that managed to destroy a significant chunk of the renovations that had been done to the building in the past year is not the first.

Holy Name Parish dates back to Chicago’s earliest years, and the original church located about one block from the current site was among the structures that perished in the Chicago Fire of 1871 (the Water Tower that miraculously survived the fire is located about three blocks to the east).

I have no doubt that the church will again be repaired, and the parish in one of Chicago’s wealthiest neighborhoods will resume its life as the church where the Cardinal performs mass – while also being the site where mobster Dion O’Bannion got shot to death near the cathedral steps.

CHICAGO PELOTEROS NOT INCLUDED DOWN MEXICO WAY: Just across the border from the town of Calimex, Calif. (pop. 13,757), some of the best baseball to be played this year is taking place.

So naturally, there aren’t any major leaguers with Chicago ties among the ranks. The closest we get is former White Sox outfielder Timo Perez, who played this winter for the Dominican champion Licey Tigers before moving on to play for the Detroit version of the Tigers this summer.

What’s at stake is the Caribbean Series, the annual week long tournament between the champions of the professional baseball leagues in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela – being held this year in Mexicali, Mexico. The winner gets bragging rights as champions of Latin American baseball.

What makes it intriguing is the fact that some U.S. major leaguers like to play in the Latin American leagues either to make some extra money or improve their skills. So it creates the potential that the guys playing in Chicago this summer are at work now in the weeks before spring training.

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Vallas to the GOP is likely to fail

I’m starting to feel a little less awkward about having voted back in 2002 for Rod Blagojevich to be governor over Paul Vallas.

The Democratic primary that year was actually a three-way fight, but former Illinois attorney general Roland Burris was irrelevant outside of select neighborhoods on the South and West sides.

VALLAS WAS THE political star who had managed to implement significant changes to the culture that ran the Chicago Public Schools, and he tried to go for governor – only to lose to Blagojevich, who took the bulk of Democratic votes cast outside of Chicago.

Now I know some people who were among those North Side types who would have preferred Vallas for governor will try claiming now they knew all along something was wrong with Milorod.

But they’d be lying.

In fact, Vallas’ alleged actions of recent days have me convinced that the career educator likely would have been the wrong choice for governor back then. And they also have me convinced he likely never will become president of the Cook County Board. He’s one of those experts in a specific area who mistakenly thinks that makes him qualified to talk about lots of things.

PROMINENT CHICAGO JOURNALIST Carol Marin used her ties to the Chicago Sun-Times this week to report that Vallas has decided to go for the top post in county government, hoping he can take advantage of discontent with incumbent President Todd Stroger and run against him.

That means the Democrat Vallas is willing to go over to “the dark side” and become a Republican (hey, I was born in the South Chicago neighborhood. If I were from West Chicago in suburban DuPage County, I’d think the Dems were evil incarnate).

I can’t help but think that the moderate to liberal Vallas is going to find that many of the GOP faithful aren’t going to be willing to accept him – no matter how desperately they’d like to dump on Stroger come 2010.

To certain elements of the Republican Party, Vallas will always be some guy who sees something worthwhile in the large public school systems in places like Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans. Those are usually the systems that GOP people demonize so as to tout the benefits of parochial schools in the city or the public school systems of higher-income suburbs that can usually afford to do nicer things because they don’t have as many students to worry about.

MEANWHILE, BY EVEN thinking of switching parties, Vallas is going to burn whatever bridges he still had to the Chicago political establishment. He’s going to find that a lot of his former allies will turn on him, and the accompanying GOP gain just won’t make up for it.

I say that even though Illinois House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, is on record as saying he thinks Vallas would fit in well with the Illinois Republican Party. What else is he going to say?

On a certain level, Republican operatives are enjoying the spectacle of seeing a now nationally prominent Democrat show disenchantment with the party.

Besides, to people who have been paying attention, Vallas’ desire to go elsewhere has been apparent for some time. He turned down a chance to speak at the Democratic National Convention held last year in Denver. He could have been on stage with the Barack Obama show, and taken his share of credit for helping to bolster the public schools in Obama’s hometown.

INSTEAD, HE REFUSED to participate, because he knew the Democrats there would remember it, and it would undermine his attempt to use the one-time Party of Lincoln to bolster his political career.

Besides, the whole history of political party-switchers usually only benefits those people whose social beliefs are so conservative that they can’t take being part of a moderate-to-liberal party such as the Democrats. (Think Jesse Helms or Strom Thurmond, who had such lengthy careers after switching parties that it almost sounds like a lame gag to imply they were ever Democrats).

If anything, Edward R. Vrdolyak is more typical of what happens to people who switch parties.

The one-time Cook County Democratic Chairman and alderman of the far Southeast Side’s 10th Ward gave up his ties to the party of JFK and FDR when it became apparent in the mid-1980s that Mayor Harold Washington had won the political fights between the two that are now remembered as “Council Wars.”

BUT VRDOLYAK never won elective office as a Republican, even though he tried a couple of times. And the Republicans on a national level were never really comfortable with having Vrdolyak in their ranks.

Privately, they may have been sympathetic to some of the acts he did in opposition to Washington, Chicago’s first African-American mayor. But they didn’t really want to be tainted by him. And there was the fact that he was then, and remains today, an urban creature.

His home neighborhood of the East Side is a place where people think of the old days when the nearby steel mills (a bit of disclosure, my grandfathers worked in those steel mills) were running at full capacity and they had decent-paying jobs.

Likewise, Aurelia Pucinski tried running for office as a Republican, only to become a Democrat again when she realized her Northwest Side Polish ethnic roots were too much for many Republicans to take. Vallas will find that he is equally out of place in those GOP circles - he's a guy who’s not about to denigrate the urban school experience the way many Republicans like to do.

IN THE END, Vallas may turn out to be an intelligent guy with much knowledge about management and education, but no common sense when it comes to politics. He seems to have forgotten one of the primary rules of remembering who your friends really are.

As the late Texas pundit Molly Ivins once titled one of her books of commentary, “You got to dance with them what brung you.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Paul Vallas is one of those guys who is an expert in one specific area (http://blogs.suntimes.com/marin/2009/02/exclusive_paul_vallas_will_run.html) who thinks that qualifies him to do everything equally well.

Could Vallas’ presence help the Republican Party attract more of Illinois’ non-white (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/race/2009/02/can-the-gop-attract-more-people-of-color-with-a-black-rnc-chairman.html) population come the next countywide Election Day?

Vallas has some unfinished business to tend to with his current employer, the New Orleans public school system system, before he can start scheduling the moving van to (http://www.bayoubuzz.com/News/Louisiana/Government/Louisiana_Recovery_School_Vallas_Talks_Departure_Plans__8329.asp) bring his belongings back to Chicago.

Blagojevich wants to shame others

And you were naïve enough to think that he was just going to wither away and disappear, never to be heard from again.

Hah!!!

THE PERSONA OF Rod Blagojevich has become like the pimple that develops on the armpit of Illinois government. It’s there. It’s annoying. It won’t be ignored, no matter how much one tries. But this is a pimple that likes to point out that his government colleagues in the Legislature can be compared to corns or foot fungus.

Face it, Rod is now worthy of David Letterman, who confronted our state’s former governor on his late night talk show by saying that he personally became more convinced of Blagojevich’s guilt every time he saw him do another ding-dong national interview such as his appearance on “The View.”

Actually, I think most people just come away with the impression that “he’s nuts!” (or, as Letterman put it, “for the life of me, I have no idea why this guy is here.”)

But then again, maybe that’s Blagojevich’s intent. He’s too crazy to be found guilty of anything when he eventually goes on trial in U.S. District Court.

DOES THAT MAKE Blagojevich the equivalent of Corp. Klinger, the character from the old television sitcom M*A*S*H, who wore dresses to try to convince the army brass that he was too insane to serve in the army?

Perhaps being on Letterman is Blagojevich’s answer to wearing a dress, which is good, because I don’t think Rod would look at all flattering in an evening gown – no matter how stylish a cut it is or how high priced a designer created it.

Seriously, I see Blagojevich’s future actions as intended to create the impression that it is the rest of the world that has somehow gone out of whack by giving him the boot from office.

As he tried to tell Letterman seriously, he thinks this is a dream where somebody will wake up and say to themselves, “this is just one big misunderstanding” (although the thought of Blagojevich curled up in the fetal position creeps me out).

NOW I KNOW there are people who seriously believe that the only reason former Illinois Gov. George Ryan bothered to get so heavily involved with death penalty reform was to try to create a class of people who would think highly of him – as though there was nothing legitimate to the problem of Illinois’ capital crimes statute as it existed in the 1990s.

But if one really wants to see a political person whose behavior is motivated by self-interest, it is Blagojevich. By comparison, Ryan really does deserve that Nobel Peace Prize that the good people at U of I Law School keep nominating him for.

When it comes to Blagojevich’s stint as governor, I will never forget what turned out to be his last official action in the hours before the Illinois Senate formally voted to remove him from office.

That act was to show up at the Executive Mansion in Springfield, thank the staff that does the grunt work of maintaining the 154-year-old gubernatorial residence. He even signed paperwork that gave those staffers a raise.

WHAT MAKES IT such a joke is that Blagojevich made such a point of avoiding the mansion during his time as governor, refusing to live there full-time and often not even staying there during his brief trips to Springfield. Why would his final act be a sudden concern for the mansion?

Perhaps he thinks that a staff he had little interaction with (and who consist of many downstate Illinois residents who always perceived Blagojevich’s residential situation as a snub against their rural part of the state) will suddenly love him because he got them a little more money at a time when many people are facing the prospect of losing their jobs through layoffs or their employers going out of business altogether.

So we’re likely to get many more fluff appearances by Blagojevich on national television. After all, his time as a genuine celebrity won’t last forever. He has to take advantage of his bloc of time when these national broadcast media geeks are willing to pay attention to the man with the bad hairdo (or, as Letterman put it, “I hope that thing on his head doesn’t bite me.”)

But when it comes to Blagojevich, there is one “controversy” that will arise in coming months whose outcome I am interested in seeing.

IT IS WHETHER Blagojevich will be enshrined in the Capitol’s “Hall of Governors,” which is a long hallway in which formal portraits of every Illinois governor are hung.

What typically happens is that a governor sits for the portrait in the weeks just after leaving office. Then, sometime about a year after leaving, he returns to the Statehouse in Springpatch for a ceremony where portrait is unveiled to grand ceremony.

But in the case of Blagojevich, it is not clear if he’s going to bother going along with this routine, although I could see him finally doing it just because he will realize how much his painting’s presence in the “hall” will offend the legislative geeks who just got worked up into a frenzy impeaching and removing him from office.

It is true that we have legislators who are adoping a “Soviet Union mentality” by saying they don’t want his portrait there. In fact, state Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, literally talks of wiping out his memory.

SORRY, BUT IT doesn’t work that way.

The passage of time is what ultimately erases the memory of government officials from public life. Face it, if Rod gets a portrait, it will sit there for decades until the day comes when people look at it and wonder “Who’s that?,” and “What’s that on his head?”

Think I’m kidding?

Consider this. What do you know about Sam Shapiro, without having to first look it up? Such future anonymity is what Blagojevich is trying to combat with all his goofy stunts. The fact that he will someday be nothing is possibly the biggest punishment he can receive.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: My guess is that Rod Blagojevich is on about minute 9 of his 15 (http://www.nwi.com/articles/2009/02/03/updates/breaking_news/doc4988f6441795e931539582.txt) minutes of celebrity fame. And he’s determined to enjoy every single (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28970601/) second.

Pat Quinn wants people to think (http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/03/Quinn_Blagojevich_yesterdays_tomatoes/UPI-24191233708714/) he has a sense of humor.