Chicago Way the only way to settle Obama-Clinton tiff
John Kass
www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-kass_bd_09mar09,1,5866112.column
chicagotribune.com
March 9, 2008
America, there's only one way to resolve the fierce catfight on ethics between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and you know what way that is:
It's the Chicago Way.
And the only fellow who can perform the ceremony is U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago. I can see him, joining hands with Barack and Hillary. The Daley brothers would wear white, sprinkling flower petals on the floor of the federal building, crying tears of what might be true joy.
Yet before I explain our rituals to strangers, don't forget that the candidates are ripping at each other with open claws. Political cat-scratch fever is dangerously infectious, especially since both candidates are essentially Chicago Democrats.
Just the other day, Obama's people dared call Hillary a terrible, deceitful, desperate "monster," and we all know that the "monster" part is a big, fat lie.
And Clinton's side called Barack a "Ken Starr," as if the Chicago Democratic machine's candidate would ever dare become a federal prosecutor. The nerve!
"Please do something!" cried Louie the Barber on the phone. "They're bof from Chicago, and they each got the other's head in a vise and they're squeezing like they want to pop some eyes out. Naturally, I'm speaking fictionally and metaphorically, but you know what I mean."
Louie really isn't a barber, and we protect his identity so he won't receive a federal subpoena or end up in a trunk. But he's an expert in the Chicago Way.
"Trust me. You don't ever wanna see the eyes pop out," Louie said. "Do something. Make them stop fighting before I get sick."
Sickening indeed. Just imagine Clinton and Obama, on the next "Saturday Night Live," hunched over, heads in twin vises, cranking, squeezing each other's temples, shrieking, "Where are you hiding Rezko, Barack!" and "Hillary! Make your tax returns public, once and for all!"
Don't forget that she's from Park Ridge and got to play first lady in Washington the first time via the Chicago Way. And he's from the South Side and had his political road paved -- please don't make me say it -- the Chicago Way.
Obama's chief political strategist, David Axelrod, who also advises and defends and speaks for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, hasn't forgotten how politics is played back home.
"We have not hesitated to draw distinctions between the candidates and we'll continue to do that," Axelrod was quoted as saying recently. "If Sen. Clinton wants to take the debate to various places, we'll join that debate. We'll do it on our terms and in our own way, but if she wants to make issues like ethics and disclosure and law firms and real estate deals and all that stuff ... as I've said before, I don't know why they'd want to go there, but I guess that's where they'll take the race."
Go there, Hillary, go there.
Barack clearly has a Tony Rezko problem of his own making, since Obama needs to sit down again to answer more questions from the Tribune reporters who, in 2006, broke the story of the senator's real estate fairy and how the Rezkos helped the Obamas buy their dream house and a bigger yard.
The Obamas insist everything was legit, that the Rezko-Obama deal smells like lavender potpourri.
Now Rezko is on trial in the federal building on unrelated political corruption charges and, if convicted, he'll surely want a pardon from the next president.
Want to take a bite out of that one, Hillary? Double dare you, Barack. It'll be like Political Fight Club.
Yet whatever Obama did with Rezko pales in comparison to Clintonian Truthiness. Remember that Bill couldn't explain what the definition of "is" was, without sounding like a liar. New information about Bill's foundation making a $30 million score from a Kazakhstan uranium deal and the foundation's stock portfolio bulging by $700,000, as if by magic, gives Obama something to swing at.
It'll get messy. But America doesn't need presidential candidates willing to put their honor where their soaring rhetoric has been. So here's my plan:
All Barack and Hillary have to do is hold a news conference in Chicago's federal building on Monday and make a political promise by repeating the following: "If elected president, I (Hillary/ Barack) promise to retain Patrick Fitzgerald as the federal prosecutor here and give him more FBI and IRS help, and more wiretaps, to fight political corruption in Illinois."
With Rezko on trial, and other Illinois Democrats under investigation, Obama must be unequivocal about Fitzgerald's future in an Obama administration. Clinton can prove she, unlike her husband, would not hold the federal prosecutor's job out to the Daleys as some oily peace offering.
Fitzgerald can place laurel wreaths on their heads, in symbolic approval of this newly civil union. And how would we know they're telling the truth?
When the Daley boys faint and drop their flower baskets, the petals flying like confetti among the tears -- then you'd know, the Chicago Way. |
