The transparently gauche “pay-for-play” shenanigans of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich provides an interesting first “moment” for President-elect Obama and his promise of fundamental change. In a sleazy attempt to “sell” the Senate seat vacated by Mr. Obama (“I’ve got this thing and it’s f***ing golden, and I’m just not giving it up for f***ing nothing”), not only has Blagojevich revealed what most present and former Chicagoans (including yours truly) know about the corrupt politics practiced in the ill-named Windy City, he showed how remarkably free of taint is Chicago’s most storied “native son.”

Blagojevich himself expressed this sentiment in conversations secretly recorded by our nation’s designated do-gooder, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald (he of Valerie Plame fame), when the Illinois Governor said, “they” [the Obama campaign] “are not willing to give me anything but appreciation.”

Nevertheless, the statement also suggests that members of Team Obama were aware of not only Blagojevich’s attempt to “defraud the state of Illinois and the people of the state of Illinois,” but also the exact nature of his proposed “pay” (Blagojevich's selection as National Director of the Service Employees International Union-affiliated Change to Win federation). It's a perversely logical suggestion. After all, the SEIU spent about $29.2 million in support of Obama’s presidential campaign (more than any other “outside group,” according to Federal Election Commission documents). They are obviously sweet on Obama, as a prominent photo of the President-elect on their website illustrates (see http://www.seiu.org/splash/).

Naturally, the first instinct of Chicago political hounds and right-wing conspiracy nuts alike is to tie Obama himself to the accused, even if “The Blag-o-vator” colorfully expressed frustration with Obama’s lack of cooperation. After all, the eminently readable, vastly entertaining, 78-page criminal complaint (see http://media.suntimes.com/images/cds/MP3/blagojevich_criminal_complaint2.pdf) is so rich in its wide-ranging cast of scoundrels (including Obama friend and neighbor Tony Rezco) it not only gives a new meaning to “F.O.B.” (in this case, Friends of Blagojevich), it defies common sense to suggest that neither Obama nor any of his staff, donors, or consultants is remotely complicit in the affair.

Yet, though it is hard to conceive how a decent, trustworthy person could rise from, say, a crime-infested housing project or the womb of Courtney Love, miracles do happen. It is indeed possible that Barack Obama is such a miracle: a politician who used the Chicago Machine to advance his agenda without getting snared by its baser instincts. Like a lotus flower born from muck, Barack Obama can still say he is a politician from, but not OF, Chicago. Perhaps it explains the urgency behind his early run for the Presidency -- like Michael Corleone’s concerted attempts to lift his family up from its Mob roots to mainstream respectability – before he became another “reformer” (like Harold Washington and now Blagojevich) undone by the entrenched mores of the Chicago status quo.

While a case can be easily made that Obama doesn’t overtly play Chicago-style quid pro quo (though one’s man’s “horse trading” is another man’s “influence-peddling”), there are suspicions about Obama’s trusted Chicago advisors. And that’s where the wicket might get a little sticky in the coming days for the likes of Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett (“Candidate #1” in Blago-speak). If they have even a whiff of connection to Blagojevich’s machinations, as does Obama National Campaign Co-Chair, and Illinois Representative, Jesse Jackson, Jr. (the infamous “Candidate #5,” who Blagojevich claimed offered him $500,000 in exchange for Obama’s Senate seat), they and others might be forced to take the fall, both to get Mr. Obama back on track towards the fresh, progressive agenda he promised during the campaign and to clear the stench of Chicago-style patronage from the Obama White House.

Please forgive me for reminding you that long ago I not only predicted that Mr. Obama would be forced to turn to Clinton operatives for DC insider guidance, but I also raised the prospect of corruption in an Obama administration. Though some of you railed against my sentiments then, none of you are naïve enough now to think that Mr. Obama’s presidency will be about “real change in the nature of politics," are you?

In any case, most Chicagoans wouldn’t care if Obama received a bit of payola. After all, most Chicagoans take political corruption like they take lake effect snow: a given. The list is long: from Otto Kerner, Jr. (Illinois Governor from 1961-68, convicted of taking bribes from race tracks) to Naval Academy grad, Northwestern University Law School alum, and anti-Daley “reformer” Daniel Walker (Illinois Governor from 1973-77 who, post-politics, raided his own savings and loan for personal gain) to Daniel Rostenkowski (portly son of the 32nd Ward Boss, who lost his U.S. Congressional seat and Chairmanship of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and served 15 months in the clinker for mail fraud, using government money for personal favors, and other misdeeds), to George Homer Ryan (Illinois Governor from 199-2003, who was convicted on bribery charges and is currently serving a six-year prison sentence), to former Chicago alderman and Mayoral candidate “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, who pled guilty to federal charges of Conspiracy to Commit Wire and Mail Fraud and who currently awaits sentencing.

As one Chicago media insider (call him “Advisor C”) confided in me, patronage and bribery are “the price of doing business” in Chi-town. While political corruption occurs all over America -- Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, Louisiana Representative William Jefferson (who stashed $90,000 in payola in his freezer), and former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, all come to mind -- Chicagoans, being Midwestern realists, or maybe just more cynical, seem to accept it as a necessary evil. As Chicago author Nelson Algren (“The Man With the Golden Arm”) described the Second City, "You may well find lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real."

Chicagoans instinctively ascribe to the dictum made famous by my former Northwestern professor Martin Rakove: “Don’t Make No Waves, Don’t Back No Losers.” It’s a pragmatic dictum that the drama-free, leak-free, and presumptive Obama presidential campaign worked to perfection. In fact, in his post-election appointments, Obama has followed the time-honored blueprint of a Chicago Machine politician by publicly rewarding those who unequivocally backed him. Forget the lofty rhetoric Obama and Axelrod expertly used to sway the masses, capable, if decidedly "establishment" politicians like Congressman-turned-pharmaceutical-industry-lobbyist Tom Daschle (Health and Human Services), Bill Richardson (Commerce), and Janet Napolitano (Homeland Security) all knew they would receive big slices of patronage pie when they threw their support behind the “Chosen One” (in both divine and Machine vernacular). And you can bet for sure that powerful Obama backers like political “fixer” Vernon Jordan, Mike Williams (of the African-American Lobbying Association), Larry Duncan (lobbyist for Lockheed Martin), Tom Quinn (DNC power broker), Moses Mercado (lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, the Blackstone Group, Monsanto, and the Carlyle Group) and, yes, Chicago Mayor Ritchie Daley (he of several corruption investigations) and his powerful brothers John and William Daley will, at some point, gently lean on the President-elect for policy payback.

As my friend and Obama campaign publicist Mike Smith wrote in a December 5th column for the Huffington Post entitled “How to Get a Job with the Obama Administration” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-smith/how-to-get-a-job-with-the_b_148701.html), it’s, in part, “about leveraging your personal relationships” and highlighting the campaign work you did for the President-elect (and, IMHO, it wouldn’t hurt to mention your donations too). Nowhere in his article does Smith -- who is not, contrary to rumor, “Candidate Number Six” -- mention the need for genuine qualifications for the highly specific jobs outlined in the Plum Book (what I term the DC Patronage Directory). That’s because job-specific qualifications are incidental to Machine politicos. Close enough is good enough (“Hillary would be a natural fit at Health and Human Services, but let’s put her at State, where she will keep our allies happy and not cause mischief at home”).

If this “Chicago Way” of doing business strikes you like a Tony Soprano-style syndicate, well, it is. It’s just that former beneficiaries of that syndicate had the good sense to keep their mouths shut. Evidently Governor Blagojevich lacks that skill. And this is what bothers Chicago political insiders most, NOT the deeds themselves.

The degree to which Chicagoans accept corruption as the sine qua non of efficient government was evidenced by long-time Chicago political handler, Don Rose, when he told the Associated Press, Blagojevich’s “got to be completely off his rocker to be talking like that at a time when he knows the feds are looking at him.” In other words, the crime is in “talking like that,” NOT in the deed itself.

This would all be simply hilarious, if the implications for public policy were not so serious. Just like Bill and Hillary Clinton’s sexual, financial, and legal misadventures back in Arkansas, and Jimmy Carter’s uncontrollable brother Billy back in Georgia, the insidious corruption back in Illinois is the crazy Uncle in the otherwise pristine Obama closet. The President-elect strives to be politically clean, but, as he knows, making political sausage is, despite his desire to sanitize the process, a dirty business. No doubt this is a reason Obama backed Blagojevich for reelection in 2006 (despite the cloud of corruption, and federal investigations, already hanging over the Governor’s head) as well as Ritchie Daley for reelection in 2007 (despite the Mayor's Hired Truck Program scandal and a federal investigation into his administration’s employment practices, which led to the conviction of Daley patronage chief, Robert Sorich, on mail fraud charges).

Still, as with all the other guilt-by-association salvos thrown Obama’s way, his occasional dealings with, and backing of, Governor Blagojevich will probably not amount to a hill of beans. However, it does give particular resonance to Obama’s pledge to clean up Washington. Mr. Obama is the child of a corrupt political apparatus. Perhaps it takes a new kind of Machine player to reform American politics once and for all. The state of our environment, our economy, and our standing in the world all hang on the answer.