Serving Time: Governor George Ryan Returns Home

I wrote the following about two years ago, when former Illinois Governor George Ryan was seeking early release from prison to attend to his dying wife. He was released yesterday and is now on house arrest till the full term of his sentence ends sometime this summer.

On the same day Ryan was released I got together for coffee with my friend Fred, a pastor and volunteer chaplain at Stateville Prison in Joliet, Illinois. Fred wrote a book for inmates, Spiritual Survival Guide, which I helped him get into print. Every few weeks he takes a team to the processing center for new inmates and passes them out. Having met some of the inmates Fred quotes, and having handed some new inmates Fred's book, I've developed complicated feelings about the penal system in the United States. Governor Ryan, I suspect, has similar discomfort with the system and, I hope, could lead a truly constructive conversation about how it could be reformed. Time will tell; for now, he's sitting at home, finishing his time, coming to terms with the past five years of his life and the decisions that precipitated them. I'll say a prayer or two for George Ryan, and for the folks who aren't so fortunate to serve their time at home.

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Former Illinois Governor George Ryan is still in prison. He was denied his request for a new trial, based on changes to "Honest Services" laws imposed by the Supreme Court, and to be allowed to live free during the retrial to attend to his dying wife. The details of Ryan's conviction are complex, amounting to abuse of office while he was Illinois Secretary of State that resulted (somewhat indirectly) in the accidental deaths of six children. His wife Lura's cancer has spread throughout her body, and she will likely die in a matter of months.

Governor Ryan could not seem more different, on the surface at least, from his successor and fellow convict Rod Blagojevich. Ryan looks like a stereotypical Republican--old, white in hair and skin, stocky and suity; Blagojevich looks like a Chicago Democrat--young and healthy, with bushy dark hair and mildly progressive white skin, with an inexplicable optimism and an aura that invites suspicion or derision, depending on the context. I've never really liked Blagojevich; I never really liked Ryan either, but I feel more sympathy for Ryan than for Rod.

Ryan, for one, has served time. He's in prison and dealing with it. He has been since 2007. Also, his wife is dying, and he can't get to her; she can get to him, of course, but she's unwell and they're separated by a state and a penal system. It's hard not to feel for a guy who has to endure these extreme hardships--including watching his wife die from afar--in the public eye.

Beyond his current situation, I'd like to suggest that Ryan handled his scandal better than Blagojevich. Rod became a national laughing stock in the wake of his arrest, embarrassing himself on talk shows and reality television--even making a commercial for pistachios, of all things. After his scandal broke, by contrast, Ryan became a national leader, declaring a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois and commuting the sentences of all Illinois death row inmates, and visiting Fidel Castro in defiance of a national embargo on Cuba. Both were reasoned acts that provoked nationwide conversations; the closest Blagojevich came to such statesmanship was a showy offer of free public transportation for senior citizens, which many didn't need and which deepened state debt and nearly undid the public transportation system for everyone.

So I think of Ryan as a governor, and Blagojevich as a politician. That doesn't mean I think Ryan is innocent of the charges he was convicted of, nor does it mean I think he's incapable of playing politics. Ryan is unique among people in the prison system in that he can appeal his situation not only to the courts but to the public. He has a willing accomplice in the media, many of whom are now old family friends by virtue of his career in politics and their career in news. They also have their own interests: there's value in milking a story as prolific in human drama as Ryan's, from the kids that died to the cancer that's killing his wife. We follow this drama not because Ryan is an inmate in federal prison but because he knows the right people to play, the right buttons to push.

There are doubtless countless other inmates in prisons throughout the country who face the loss of loved ones while they're inside; they have no reporters visiting their cells or their loved ones' hospital beds. Prison is a desolate place, with so much attention given to keeping order that little time or energy is left for tending to the hurting. I don't blame the guards or the wardens or anyone for that; it's the system we want, I think it's fair to say. We just don't want to admit we want it.

We feel bad for Ryan because we know who he is; we feel nothing for most inmates because we don't know who they are. Ryan is asking for clemency and special treatment; I'd love to see him lead again, to tell his story not as a plea for special circumstance but as an illustration of a fundamental flaw in how we dispense justice. I'd love to see Ryan show solidarity with his fellow inmates, to use the power available to him to provoke a national conversation again, to help us figure out how to acknowledge the humanity of the convicted--with all the relational complexity that attends to it.

So, while I'm not a fan of George Ryan per se, I'll be praying for him this Christmas, him and those like him who are separated from their loved ones for reasons we understand. I'll also be praying for me and those like me who don't like crime but are uncomfortable with our current system of punishment.

Blago Trial, Recap

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was recently found guilty in federal court--of one charge, one out of twenty-four. I hate to brag, but I called it.

OK, I called it wrong, but at least I took a stand--something Camera-Hoggo Blago himself declined to do. Fourteen days ago I considered

the curious case of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, whose political career has been ruined not so much by his impeachment as by his ineptitude and irrepressible camera-whoring, but whose trial for conspiracy to sell a Senate seat seems destined to end with his acquittal. The jury is still out, but all signs I can see point to a not guilty verdict; the government, the defense argued effectively, has proved nothing.

The one charge Blago was found guilty of was making false statements to federal investigators. That carries a prison sentence of up to five years. On the other twenty-three charges, the jury was hung. The feds may retry him, but then again, they may not; public sentiment is against a $25 million retrial when Illinois can't pay its teachers to teach. For all intents and purposes, the former governor is getting off easy.

In my previous post I considered the Bush doctrine an accomplice to the criminal negligence (if I may be melodramatic for a moment) of the federal prosecutors. The Bush Doctrine was drafted early in President Bush's first term as a mandate to act pre-emptively against anticipated threats to the United States, a policy that made the Iraq War possible. President Obama has effectively killed the Bush Doctrine, but as presidential directives often do, this one has taken root. Blago was stopped before he committed the crime he was accused of; consequently, the jury couldn't bring themselves to find him guilty.

The governor has become a laughing-stock, so it's hard to take his case seriously. But there are other, more serious cases that seem to suffer from a similarly itchy trigger finger. Most notably in my mind is the case of Warren Jeffs, who presided over the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and allegedly (and almost certainly) helped adult men marry little girls. He was convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape of a minor, but his conviction was overturned on a technicality: since the man who married the little girl hasn't been convicted of rape yet, Jeffs can't be convicted as an accomplice. It only goes to show (if I may resort to violent imagery for a moment) it doesn't matter in a gunfight how quick you draw your gun if you can't hit your target.

Fortunately, Jeffs is facing extradition to Texas to be tried on charges of his own sexual violence against children. Texas, it's safe to assume, still loves the Bush Doctrine, and they love to put people on trial.

The Blago Trial and the Bush Doctrine

Some people, for what it’s worth, know even less about the Bush Doctrine than I do. But what I do know about it makes me wonder if its genie is permanently out of the cultural bottle. The Bush Doctrine suggests that it’s appropriate to act preemptively to prevent violence against the national interest. Or something like that. Shoot first, ask questions later. Fire till you see the whites of their eyes. The Obama Doctrine may have reversed this policy in the execution of our foreign relations, but closer to home, the logic of the Bush doctrine seems to be flourishing.

Its outcomes, unfortunately, are not. Last week I read two articles about two separate criminal prosecutions, both of which seem to have been undermined because the authorities acted preemptively. The first is the curious case of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, whose political career has been ruined not so much by his impeachment as by his ineptitude and irrepressible camera-whoring, but whose trial for conspiracy to sell a Senate seat seems destined to end with his acquittal. The jury is still out, but all signs I can see point to a not guilty verdict; the government, the defense argued effectively, has proved nothing.

Blago's case, boiling down to an abuse of power, is irritating but also largely amusing, thanks to the defendant himself. The second case I read about last week is far more serious: Warren Jeffs, who presided over a polygamous wedding between an adult man and an underage girl, was sent to prison during the Bush era but has been relieved of the conviction in the Obama era—not, I hasten to add, because President Obama approves of polygamy and statutory rape (someone will leap to that conclusion, I’m sure) but because the government failed to honor due process and establish the crime of rape (by convicting the man who married the girl) before convicting Jeffs as an accomplice. Thankfully Jeffs can be retried; arguably, since the rapist remains unprosecuted, he will still get off. Maybe the Texans will get him; he’s under investigation there for his own child abuse allegations, and Texas is not so quick to leave the Bush era behind.

The problem with the Bush Doctrine is, as I see it, essentially its immateriality: it sanctions action, often extreme action, before wrongdoing has actually been done. It’s like Minority Report, only instead of having psychics we have hunches, inference, hearsay and arcane legal logistics. Rod Blagojevich was arrested because it was painfully evident he was thisclose to selling then-President-Elect Obama's Senate seat, not because he had actually sold it. Warren Jeffs, meanwhile, is almost certainly overseeing a network that systematically exploits young girls. While I can appreciate the impulse to rush to judgment in either case, in both cases we’re learning the cost of rushing, and in both cases the clearly guilty, it appears, are going free.

Who Should Be Most Embarrassed?

All right, I think the week merits this conversation: Who should be the most embarrassed by his or her conduct in public this past week?

Was it Serena Williams, whose tirade and threats cost her a tennis match she was about to lose anyway?

Was it Representative Joe Wilson (R, South Carolina), who broke protocol in the congressional chamber by shouting "You lie!" at President Obama during his health care address?

Was it disgraced former governor Rod Blagojevich, who reacted to the apparent suicide of his close friend, codefendant and possible witness for the prosecution, Chris Kelly, by suggesting that prosecutorial pressure on him to "lie" about the governor's actions led to his suicide?

Was it Michael Jordan, who used his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame as an opportunity to publicly ridicule people with whom he's had decade(s)-long grudges?

Was it Kanye West, who grabbed the microphone from award-winner Taylor Swift to berate the voters for not selecting Beyonce instead?

Was it someone I'm overlooking? Was it me? Was it you? Let's try to learn together from the most uncivil week in recent memory.

Ask Not for Whom to Credit Tolls

Illinois has a new governor. The former governor has been impeached, removed from office, and barred from seeking public office in Illinois ever again. Now all we have to do is take his name off of everything.

I was listening to former Governor Rod R. Blagojevich reflect on his removal from office as I jetted through the I-Pass lane on I-355, the north-south tollway in the Western Suburbs of Chicago. Emblazoned across the radar station was a blue sign trumpeting the relatively new, boothless, no-delay convenience lanes; Blagojevich's name was prominently featured, complete with his recently stripped title.

Blagojevich didn't build this tollway, although on his watch it was extended further south. He did oversee the conversion from booth to open-road tolling, which has eased commuter traffic significantly. Technically, I suppose, he wasn't taking credit for the easy ride, but he did, I guess, think it important to remind the state as it made its way from points a to points b that it does have a governor and that governor is--or was, I guess--him.

It's perfectly natural for a person to want to leave his or her mark, a legacy that will extend his or her memory and influence. I suspect though that Blagojevich more likely was taking advantage of the interstate traffic that uses the Illinois toll system. I suspect he was seeding the clouds for his eventual presidential campaign, getting his name in the heads of future voters from Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and all other points north, east, south and west.

But for now, until new Governor Pat Quinn can muster up the money out of the state's drained coffers to pay painters to update those signs, I guess we'll continue to think of Rod Blagojevich every time the toll authority magically takes money out of our bank accounts without our even noticing it. In other words, we'll think of our former governor every time our pocket is picked.

That Moldy Opportunist

On Wednesday of this week, Neil Steinberg from the Chicago Sun-Times wrote a really clever, really helpful assessment of the State of the Impeachment. Here's a representative piece:

Were I teaching the novel Our Political Moment, I would try to draw my students into seeing how the author -- in this case, fate, or God if you prefer -- so handily supplied [Roland] Burris, that moldy opportunist, rising out of his political grave to dog [Barack] Obama's inauguration.

"Why is he there?" I'd purr, eyebrows raised, spurring the class with a quizzical look.

Perhaps as foreshadowing -- should Obama eventually be caught straying from the straight and narrow. Perhaps to give our story a Gothic twist -- [Rod] Blagojevich is not yet dead, but his ghost child, Burris, haunts the ramparts; his remarks lifted from the speeches of Shakespearean clowns, grandly struggling to turn his benefactor's cheap stunt into democracy's bright lamp.

That's why I don't write fiction -- you can't make this stuff up.

I see the two major players in Illinois's political scandal in really only two dimensions; I describe them each in only one word. For Governor Blagojevich that word has been, since prior to his first gubernatorial election, twerp. I've already explained that here, so I won't go into it. But Roland Burris is a late entry into my political consciousness. For all his much-ballyhooed life of service--elected thrice to statewide office, blah blah blah--I'm discovering him as we go. Whereas Illinois and federal officeholders are tripping over themselves to show Burris due respect for his political tenure, however, I have nearly no power (including, as of yesterday, significantly less purchasing power--but I'm not bitter) and consequently significantly less accountability. So I choose for Burris the word opportunist.

Not "moldy opportunist." You'll have to talk to Steinberg about that one.

Burris isn't the first person in the annals of power that I've reduced to the word opportunist. He's only the most recent. But in his company, he would be sorry to learn, is a fictional icon of opportunism, Lex Luthor. I wrote about Luthor in my first book, Comic Book Character (which, probably, can technically no longer be called a book--but I'm not bitter):

Motivated, apparently, entirely by self-interest, [Luthor] has built himself a material empire by outwitting and usurping anyone who gets in his way. He has a knack for turning adversity into opportunity, even turning the sale of his soul to to the devil to his own advantage. . . . Luthor, convinced that his successes in life prove his worldview correct, is stymied by Superman's great power and apparent altruism. Since they inhabit the same city, their paths often cross. Superman's agenda is straightforward--truth and justice--but Luthor's vendetta against him is nuanced by his obsession with power. Given the right set of circumstances, Luthor will go the extra mile to help Superman out.

Luthor's opportunism is fueled by narcissism; in issue 123 of Superman he co-opts messianic language to describe his own exploitation of Superman's plight: “As always, the question is this: do I gain more from Superman’s suffering—or his salvation?” Power consolidated through the methodical manipulation of people and events. Ripped right out of the headlines, no?

Take away his less savory plots of world domination--causing California to sink into the ocean, killing his parents, selling his soul to the devil, what have you--and Lex Luthor begins to look a little bit like Roland Burris. He sees an opportunity and takes it. He takes someone else's lemons and sells lemonade to his neighbors. He creates a political circus and denounces his opponents' political theatrics. He gets a senate seat (and a senate pension) for free while watching his benefactor go down the tubes for trying to sell it. Yes, if I were forced to choose one word to describe senior statesman Roland Burris--and let's face it, no one's got a gun to my head--that word would be opportunist. It would most decidedly not be Senator.

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Oh, out of fairness to the reader, I should note that my thoughts on Lex Luthor once inspired the only time someone offered to pay me to stop writing. But I'm not bitter.

Oh, and in other comic-book news, check out the story on Spider-Man declaring Barack Obama "Nerd-in-Chief." Junot Diaz is right: we do find ourselves square in the Nerd Age.

I’m the Governor! I’m Important, Yo!

Pardon my long post, but I'm feeling a bit heady. Illinois is a heady place these days, after all: the Bears may make the playoffs, the junior U.S. senator is about to become president, and the governor is about to be impeached and imprisoned. The 2016 Olympics are a possibility here that is strengthened by our favorite son ascending to the presidency but weakened by our chief executive allegedly conducting a political crime spree.

I’m fascinated by the governor’s story. He’s been in view here far longer than President-Elect Obama, to be honest, and his own presidential aspirations have never been far below the surface. Senator John McCain, the “maverick” reformer cum failed presidential candidate, told David Letterman that Governor Blagojevich once told him that he considered himself a reformer like McCain, thanking him for being a political role model. McCain and Letterman shared a laugh over those comments, absurd as they sound alongside transcripts of foul-mouthed shakedowns from the governor’s office.

The conversation about Governor Blagojevich has shifted, at least temporarily, to the question of his mental health. People think he must have been crazy to conduct so brazen a campaign as the one to sell a senate seat and force the firing of critical journalists. The mental health community, however, is stopping short of calling the governor psychotic; instead, they’re calling him a narcissist.

Dr. Daniela Schreirer is a forensic psychologist at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and she does not see any sign of mental illness in the public Blagojevich, but believes he does have sociopathic traits.
"We're just talking about traits. We're not talking about full-blown diagnosis. But certainly, there's the same sense of entitlement, the same sense of thinking I am superior. I can do whatever I want. I am not going to be caught," Schreirer said.

Blagojevich was, at one time, a rising star. He achieved office initially by being charming and self-deprecating; an advertising campaign consisted of everyday Illinoisans struggling to pronounce his last name but admiring his qualifications and energy. He eventually became a U.S. Representative and made a name for himself by helping to negotiate the release of three American soldiers, who were being detained in Yugoslavia under dictator Slobodan Milosevic.

Three years later he was running for governor, but the presidency was on his mind. In an ad that cemented his reputation in my mind as a twerp, he had grade-school students quiz him about American presidents: “Sixteenth president?” “Abraham Lincoln! . . .” Ostensibly about his commitment to education, the ad told me that he viewed the governorship as a stepping stone to his true destiny as president of the United States. And yet he spoke clearly, candidly and winsomely with interviewers, among other things stating with enthusiasm that he and his family “love Jesus.” This at the time was one of the most plainspoken, unambiguous comments on personal faith I'd heard from a candidate who wasn't in the pocket of the religious right. So while I didn’t vote for him (remember, I thought he was a twerp), I had hopes that his tenure as governor would be marked by policies that reflected his love for Jesus—just and compassionate programs, ethical policies and practices.

Blagojevich became governor in what might be considered the easiest campaign ever: the current Republican governor, George Ryan, was on notice that he’d be facing trial after his term ended, and the Republican candidate to replace him shared the same last name: Jim Ryan, no relation. For the second time in his career, Blagojevich’s last name carried him into office. Four years later the Illinois Republican party still couldn’t get its act together; State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka was the only Republican holding statewide office, and when she ran against the governor on the argument that he had failed both to manage the state’s economy and to fight corruption, one video of her dancing with former Governor Ryan put an end to her chances to unseat Blagojevich. He made Elvis jokes about being “All Shook Up” over his victory and settled into his second term.

The governor’s second term has been characterized mainly by gridlock. It seems that he’s systematically alienated everyone in state government, such that the legislature and the Chicago Transit Authority, among other institutions, faced near-implosion while he sat in the bleachers enjoying hockey games. Some tried to call a constitutional convention for the express purpose of making it legal to recall his position; others spoke explicitly and frequently about his grandstanding and bullheadedness.

Barack Obama, it’s presumed, frustrated Blagojevich’s career plans by taking the national spotlight in 2004's Democratic National Convention and launching an ultimately successful presidential campaign in 2007. This was to be Blagojevich’s year, if you believe the scuttlebutt, but public and peer opinion had turned against him, so that by election day 2008 he had, among his liabilities, a federal investigation into his office and a devastatingly negative reputation among his constituents, and as almost his only asset, a recently vacated senate seat.

I feel bad for Rod Blagojevich. That’s a relatively new feeling for me; I’ve typically dismissed him as a mere worshiper of “the characteristically American bitch goddess of Success,” as Mark Stritcherz put it in America magazine. But Blagojevich is merely the most recent and most pronounced example of the pervasive streak of narcissism, with its attendant sense of entitlement and invulnerability, that runs through our culture and, I think, every human heart.

Blagojevich is, in that respect, this year’s Gary Hart, who dared reporters to follow him in their suspicions of his infidelity, and who resigned his own presidential campaign when they did exactly that and caught him in an affair. Blagojevich is this year’s Richard Nixon, who publicly told onlookers “I am not a crook” but who privately and obscenely violated the law on tape. He’s this year’s Ananias, who made a grand public gesture in donating his wealth to the early church but who was revealed to be just another poser with a wicked heart. He's this year’s Cain, who killed his brother and then stared down God with a brazen dismissal of the accusation: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He's this year's me, and all the mes here in Me-Ville.

Stritcherz goes on to lament the Me-Ville we find ourselves in, a world effectively incapable of policing itself or aspiring to self-sacrifice toward the greater good, by describing the world we've fallen short of:

In a morally and spiritually robust society, institutions identify such characters as rascals and discipline them accordingly; they can separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.

I paraphrase the apostle Paul: Who will rescue us from this city of death? Thanks be to God who, if we dare follow, will deliver us from Me-Ville, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen. Come Lord Jesus.