Excellent Rezco article and an example of Mr. Good Judgement's being right on day one.

Freida5

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Fri Feb-01-08 11:09 PM
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Excellent Rezco article and an example of Mr. Good Judgement's being right on day one.

http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2008/02/01/columns/john_brummett/020208brummett.txt

John Brummett
THE MORNING NEWS

Nearly all successful politicians develop friendly relations with rich people who favor them with campaign money. Politicians can’t know which if any of these pals and benefactors will turn out to be crooks.

So I dismiss much — which is hardly to say all — of the controversy about Barack Obama’s relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the Chicago businessman now under indictment for bribes, kickback schemes and fraud.

The part I don’t dismiss, and to which I’ll return, strikes me as serious business.

Obama was from Chicago when he became the first African-American named editor of the Harvard Law Review. That got him on this Rezko character’s radar screen. Rezko called Obama and offered him a job. Obama declined, but he and Rezko became friends, as did their spouses. They hung out from two to a half-dozen times a year, we’re told.

Obama became a lawyer and community organizer in Chicago, and Rezko got into the property development business seeking to take advantage of federal programs. Obama apparently never directly represented Rezko legally, though he did represent nonprofit groups that became partners with Rezko in development projects.

Rezko helped bankroll Obama’s political campaigns, first for the state Senate and then the U.S. Senate. The Obama presidential campaign has been busy lately trying to donate to charity any money tied to Rezko. It’s into the tens of thousands.

All of that is unfortunate, but as forgivable politically as the Clintons’ dealings with the McDougals or Bill Clinton’s granting a pardon to an international fugitive whose wife had donated to Clinton’s presidential library.

What I don’t dismiss is that, when Obama wanted to buy his dream house in Chicago, he got Rezko essentially to help him do so, and made this arrangement in 2005, only months after being elected to the U.S. Senate.

Look — buy your own blasted house, just between you and the mortgage company. OK? That’s how the rest of us have to do it.

While it appears so far that Obama never did anything tangible while in public office to benefit Rezko, and even opposed him on a gambling issue, there’s a certain principle we have the right to expect from a man of such soaring eloquence. It’s this: If you’re in electoral politics, sometimes known as public service, please take special pains to avoid entanglements that would compromise or appear to compromise you.

Here’s the house deal, as related by Chicago’s newspapers: Barack and Michelle took a shine to this particular house. But the seller owned an adjoining vacant lot, and, in a hurry to unload both properties and move, wanted to sell the house and the lot at the same time.

Obama felt he could barely afford the house, much less the lot. He mentioned the availability of the lot to Rezko, who was not in any known trouble at the time, and whose wife then bought the lot. The two deals closed on the same day. Obama got the house for $300,000 less than the $1.9 million asking price. Rezko’s wife paid the asking price, $625,000, for the vacant lot.

Later, Obama bought from Rezko a strip of the vacant lot for $104,500, which was a fair price, or even above market.

You could argue that this man now under indictment, acting through his wife, paid for part of a U.S. senator’s home, since the seller wanted to package the deals.

Obama himself has called his action in this matter “bone-headed.”

It was at least that. It causes me to worry less about his integrity, which he has appeared to maintain in his official actions, than his judgment.

And it’s not relevant to say the Clintons have done things just as smelly. That’s a trite Clintonian refrain. We need politicians who reach for a higher common denominator than that.