Illinois - Where Our Governors Make Our License Plates

The title was recently sent to me as a facebook flair by a friend of mine who also lives in Illinois. The sad thing about this flair circulating around online is that it seems to be true from looking at history. It's bad enough to have one governor arrested publicly for attempting to auction off a prominent Senate seat to highest bidder, but to have numerous governors serving time in prisons for various crimes is downright ridiculous. It's almost enough to make one stop and question the ethics and morals of our friends in the Chicago political realm...almost.

The real question is not how could Blagojevich do such a thing to us. The more appropriate question is how can we the people of Illinois be so thick that we'd actually let him? It seems that in spite of our history with governors and Chicago politics, we still have faith in our candidates. Perhaps this is a misguided hope that is holding us back from getting a good governor. Blagojevich is not the first corrupt governor, nor will he be the last we are forced to deal with openly, unless we stop ignoring the problem. It would be wonderful if the average voter cared if enough to do some research, find a voting history on senators and representatives, check up on what incumbents have been doing throughout their term, or even just look up their website to see what they claim to believe. But no! We not only don't do the research, we don't always even know who's running.

Once Blagojevich was arrested and what he'd been doing came to light, the state was full of outraged citizens who "had no idea how corrupt our administration was" or even worse the ones who "knew all along" and were "glad they finally got him." It's not hard to keep track of what's going on. Our country is founded on the ideal of citizens choosing their own leaders, but what good is the choice to pick your leaders if you still pick bad ones? We have no right to complain about how horrible our leadership is if we're the ones who voted for him.

A recent editorial made the point that Obama was said to be free from any wrongdoing in this matter whatsoever, but he was right in the middle of it nonetheless. The author had an interesting statement that hasn't been brought up much in mainstream media. The editorial said that if Obama didn't know what was going on in Illinois then he was too naive to be president, and if he did then he was too corrupt. It's simple, we pat ourselves on the back for choosing such a "squeaky clean" President elect, but what kind of political arena did he emerge from?

It's easy to get in a huff about how terrible Blagojevich is, or even to become one of the insane loyal few who are hollering about how horrible the state of Illinois was to Blagojevich, but looking at the facts, the people of Illinois got what they deserve. His political corruption is supposed to have been continuing since at least 2002. We knew he was doing wrong, whether we knew the extent of it or not, we knew. It wasn't rocket science. People are said to get the administration they choose, and we chose him. Perhaps this debacle with federal intervention will open our eyes to the importance of actually picking leaders who won't use our tax dollars to line their own pockets. Maybe this will finally shake up the Chicago machine and force them to actually hide their dirty dealings for a while.

However, one thing it won't do--it won't protect us from another administration just as filthy, unless we know whom we're voting for. As long as Illinois citizens are willing to follow a party blindly (Republican or Democrat) without scrutinizing its values and platform, the people will be vulnerable to whatever candidate the party decides on, and they will suffer the results of the choices that candidate makes in office. We must start thinking and voting for candidates with standards, or we'll forever be stuck in this era of Al Capone.