Word: blagojevich
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Maybe you watched the now former Governor Rod Blagojevich make his tardy and halfhearted "closing statement" to the Illinois senate that was poised to boot him from office. More likely, you didn't. After his media blitz through New York earlier in the week, what could he possibly say that...
...heard one disgraced politician backed to the wall, you've pretty much heard them all. Blagojevich touched all the ritual bases. He recalled the sacrifices of a sainted parent, recounted the struggles of the humble voters for whom he worked night and day, acknowledged and apologized for his ultimate offense - the crime of caring too much. "Charge it to my heart," he said, adding at another point, "Sometimes I get too frustrated. Sometimes maybe I get too impatient with the process." (See pictures of Rod Blagojevich...
...ceiling, their desks, cell-phones - anywhere but at the man who was arrested in December after federal agents recorded him allegedly discussing the goodies he might receive in exchange for his appointment of Barack Obama's successor in the U.S. Senate. No one was willing to buy what Blagojevich was tepidly selling. The vote to oust him was unanimous, 59 to none...
Freud would have been intrigued by Blagojevich's frequent mentions of Richard Nixon in his many TV appearances this week. Nixon came up again in the state-senate soliloquy, which drew heavily on Nixon's signature blend of bathos, defiance, self-pity and implausibility. The same thing that tripped up Nixon felled Blagojevich: tapes, yes - but also the fact that the SOB-with-a-heart-of-gold act can work only if people are willing to believe that you might have a heart...
Like Nixon, Blagojevich specialized in collecting enemies only to find himself in need of some friends. He made the point repeatedly on Thursday that none of the charges against him have been proven in a legal sense - and that's true. Though U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has been investigating him for some time, Blagojevich has yet to be indicted, much less convicted. (See pictures of TIME's Watergate covers...