Chambers on Obama and corruption:
The same goes in Illinois. Public corruption is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. Itâs an Illinois problem. A huge problem.
Obama will have a unique opportunity to press his home state to clean up its act. The Chicagoan will have the nationâs attention.
He will have what Teddy Roosevelt coined the bully pulpit â the power to move public opinion and compel change with his own voice â over the next year or two.
If he wins the White House, he will have the power to appoint the ranking federal prosecutors in Illinois. As a Democrat in the U.S. Senate, a body run by Democrats, he has some influence over whether these appointees are confirmed.
âWe donât seem to be as mindful as we need to be about appearances of impropriety,â Obama told me.
Then, positioning himself above the fray, he added: âI canât judge where there have been improprieties and where there havenât been because I havenât been intimately involved in whatâs been happening in state and local politics over the past couple years.â
Anybody following Illinois politics, even tangentially, knows whatâs up in Illinois: Pols and their pals are gorging themselves at the public trough, and those pals are in turn helping the pols.
Illinois put Obama into the national spotlight. He could show his appreciation by putting its people before the gang.
For all of the whining about how he endorsed Daley, this is a far more practical way he can address the issue.
And after some really horrible site designs in the past, the Rockford-Register Star’s current incarnation is quite nice.
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