Well, the new president today said he and his aides did not discuss his empty Senate seat with our governor, though the NYT story mentioned that his campaign manager said in late November that he had done just that. The Trib also noted that new chief of staff and long-time Dem apparatchik Rahm Emanuel was not at the "We didn't do anything" press conference today. He's had past ties to Rod Blagojevich.
If I'm being snide, forgive me, but it would be a huge disappointment if this went any deeper with the new administration. My guess is Barack Obama will pull away with maybe just a few specks of mud and perhaps light a couple of aides, who would be forced to resign for shenanigans in a worst-case scenario. I don't think they'll touch the man himself.
It's just a shame that the local merry-go-round of corruption pseud-news (does the excessive coverage ever really solve the problem?) has now become what the rest of the country is following. The NYT and Trib main sites are nearly identical at the moment. Obama and his campaign did a good job of tamping down his connections to the Chicago political machine (Blago is just a machine creation in Springfield) — though that's also due to the McCain campaign. Perhaps they thought the Rezko link was too weak or too small potatoes ("Chicago Corruption" is kind of like a carnival ride now, which no one takes seriously) or perhaps they just didn't take the time to understand it. But a situation like this begs the question of just how deep and complex the ties are.
Blago is the X-factor: what he knows and what he will reveal. If he's gone mad, as some people are suggesting, he might spill the beans as an act of revenge. Wouldn't he have done it by now? Maybe. Would he take down others with him? Who knows. Would it hurt Obama greatly if there was in fact some kind of back-room deal between the two camps? Well, Bill Clinton survived a lot worse.
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