Coming up as he did in Chicago’s notoriously, ah, shall we say, “creative” political machine, one does have to wonder if the Rezko association is the only possible source of scandal lurking in Obama’s past or present.
I get the distinct impression that the media and even his Democratic opponents haven’t looked as closely into the potential for scandal as they might have for another candidate. Do any Chicagoboyz with more immediate experience with Chicago politics have any more insight into this?
My sense from what I hear is that he kept his nose clean.
The Rezko thing he is even using to his advantage, giving whatever money he got in donations to a lot of charities in the area and getting a lot of good will as a result.
Obama is pretty smart, and not very old, and has always had wider ambitions than just to cash-in locally.
I will be surprised if some major scandal that has any substance to it emerges.
I am not worried about his connections to the Chicago machine. I am worried about his socialism and his connections to his pastor and the pastors ideology.
Maybe Lex will correct me but I don’t think Obama is a product of the Chicago machine. (Didn’t he initially run for office against a machine candidate?) Thus he is relatively uncorrupt for a Chicago pol.
I agree that his socialism is the real problem.
Yeah, he ran against Bobby Rush, and lost.
He is not part of the Chicago establishment. There is really not much of a “machine” anymore. There are a bunch of smaller machines around the city, and there is corruption, but not a machine like Richard I had. See the brilliant book: Stephen P. Erie, Rainbow’s End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840-1985, which tells the whole tale in context.
Thanks for explanations.
Example of his “socialism,” please? do you mean govt insurance for Americans to choose their own doctors?
Whatever is in his background, I doubt it will be as bad as the presumptive Republican nominee’s involvement in the Savings and Loan crisis in the 80’s.
Sure, his wife got a huge high-paying new job as VP of University of Chicago Hospitals, based on no discernable qualifications that 10,000 other people couldn’t better, other than familial, right as her spouse was elected a US Senator in 2004; she has at least one appointment to a corporate board of a supplier to Wal-Mart, which her husband had been critical of, and she seems to have plenty of time to campaign for him.
But, the Clintons can hardly bring this up risk-free, after Hillary’s partnership at the Rose Law Firm, also with no particular qualifications other than family connections, while Bill was Arkansas AG and then Governor.
Basically, Obama is just another Chicago pol, the, “oh, he’s so wonderful and new and different” stuff is laughable, but the whole political culture in this country is something of a cesspool of self-dealing, and Obama is just one of the critters living there.
A tip of the hat to you guys for sharing all this. I don’t know squat about all this Chicago political machine thing, being from Boston where we can’t see beyond the backyard! Obama has a huge support network in Cambridge and his name is EVERYWHERE. Younger voters are all over this ‘new and different’, carefully marketed squeaky clean persona that has been crafted for him. People here are just dying to grab onto some kind of hope, someone that the political mud can’t stick to and the naive idealism, frankly, is making me ill. It looks like even if you ask them to comment on the Rezko situation, if they even know about it, they want to wave it off.
So thanks again for keeping the flow of info coming….we need it here especially!
Idealism is one thing, but believing in someone who doesn’t deserve it is heinous!!!