Blago Rides Again

September 20, 2009 10:28 AM by S.M. Oliva (Archive)

Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor now under federal indictment for fraud and "racketeering," recently published an autobiography where he offers an interesting defense to the charge that he tried to sell Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat. Federal prosecutors maintain Blagojevich tried to leverage his power to appoint Obama's successor as means of securing campaign contributions and future employment. Blagojevich denies this - sort of. He did try to sell the Senate seat, but it wasn't for his gain, but for the people of Illinois.

Blagojevich said his plan all along was to appoint Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to the Senate - provided her father, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, helped Blagojevich pass several items on his legislative agenda. This included a massive "public works" bill, a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures, and a law forcing health insurers to cover pre-existing illnesses and conditions. It was a veritable smorgasbord of half-baked interventionism. Blagojevich repeatedly states that while he was repulsed by the notion of placing a political opponent like Lisa Madigan in the Senate, he would've gallantly swallowed his pride to get these laws passed on "the people's" behalf.

This raises an interesting question. The feds charged Blagojevich for depriving the people of his "honest services" as governor. By Blagojevich's account, he was in fact providing honest services by trying to pass laws he thought would help the public rather then himself. But suppose Speaker Madigan had taken the deal and dropped his opposition to the governor's proposals just to get his daughter a Senate seat. Would the feds have then charged Madigan with depriving the people of "honest services"?

Of course, it's uncommonly silly for prosecutors - federal agents no less - to second-guess every inane or stupid state government action under an "honest services" standard. State intervention is inherently dishonest. Cherry-picking certain decisions (and motives) as dishonest only shifts power towards the federal government without any guarantee of greater wisdom or accountability. Quite the contrary, federal prosecutors enjoy near-absolute immunity for their own decisions; there's nobody to ensure they provide "honest services" to the taxpayers.

A postscript: Blagojevich also claims in his book that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel asked him to appoint a "placeholder" for Emanuel's vacated House seat so that Emanuel could return to the seat in a few years and continue his quest to become speaker of the House. Governors cannot fill House vacancies, of course; the Constitution expressly requires a special election. Blagojevich said that when he pointed this out to Emanuel, the chief adviser to the president of the United States, Emanuel explained that he'd spoken with his lawyers and they found a way to get around that problem. Nothing ever came of it -- a special election was held -- but I wonder why federal prosecutors never investigated Emmanuel for his efforts to clearly violate a well-established constitutional provision.

(For more on the Blagojevich affair, see my earlier posts at Mises.org: Jan. 5, Jan. 10, Jan. 27)