"I've got this thing..."
I’m a dreamer – yes I am, a died-in-the-wool dreamer who dreams that liberty and justice and the American way mingle together in peaceful co-existence. But lately, as you can imagine, my dreams leave me with the strange, nightmare sensations of anxiety, panic and fear.
I wake up these days realizing that what we're witnessing today is a total failure of leadership. We live in a society where we simply cannot trust bankers, mortgage brokers, priests, presidents, vice-presidents, the CIA, Treasury secretaries and governors.
At least not the governors of Illinois. Especially not the current governor.
Just last month – in fact, it was just the day after the celebratory send-off party in Grant Park for Barack Obama as he said good-bye to his senate seat and hello to the presidency – Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was recorded as saying, “I’ve got this thing and it’s f***ing golden, and uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for f***in’ nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there.”
We all know by now that he was, of course, referring to the senate seat left vacant by our president-elect, the seat that Blagojevich wanted to sell to the highest bidder – or use to parachute into the senate himself.
But I still dream and yearn for the day that our politicians realize that all of them possess that “thing and it’s f***ing golden” and it’s a thing that they should really never want to give up – ever.
It’s called the public trust.
And when politicians and business leaders trash this trust, as we’ve seen in 2008, something golden is lost forever.
I wake up these days realizing that what we're witnessing today is a total failure of leadership. We live in a society where we simply cannot trust bankers, mortgage brokers, priests, presidents, vice-presidents, the CIA, Treasury secretaries and governors.
At least not the governors of Illinois. Especially not the current governor.
Just last month – in fact, it was just the day after the celebratory send-off party in Grant Park for Barack Obama as he said good-bye to his senate seat and hello to the presidency – Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was recorded as saying, “I’ve got this thing and it’s f***ing golden, and uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for f***in’ nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there.”
We all know by now that he was, of course, referring to the senate seat left vacant by our president-elect, the seat that Blagojevich wanted to sell to the highest bidder – or use to parachute into the senate himself.
But I still dream and yearn for the day that our politicians realize that all of them possess that “thing and it’s f***ing golden” and it’s a thing that they should really never want to give up – ever.
It’s called the public trust.
And when politicians and business leaders trash this trust, as we’ve seen in 2008, something golden is lost forever.
Comments