"Blago gets the boot"

I think I'm going to miss Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Seriously, the guy had really begun to win my sympathy in his last few days in office. It's not that I disbelieve the charges against him, nor that I thought of him as a particularly venerable political figure. Rather, it occurs to me that for much of my adult life, I've been growing accustomed to watching the winners in politics act like gloating, petulant jerks, even as ever more of their victories could be chalked up to fiat, dishonesty or error, while the losers were expected to behave politely and contritely, in the interest of stablity and decorum. Reading excerpts this morning from governor Blagojevich's final address to the Illinois senate, I realized that I had begun to get a special pleasure from watching a loser defiantly refuse to give in, even as the tide of inevitability rose all around him. Having spent the last few weeks recoling from the sickening grey spectacle of George W. Bush leaving the presidency with the false air and gestures of a gentle, respectable statesman, it's been a refreshing change for me to watch a villain boldly refuse to go quietly. If all politics is theater, Rod Blagojevich's was at least an impassioned, compelling performance.