Blago Declares Self the 'Anti-Nixon,' Promptly Acts Like Nixon
Like the Richard Nixon groupie he is, Rod Blagojevich quickly broke his promise to Rachel Maddow to become the "anti-Nixon." Instead he broke court rules and dodged questions, on national television.
The disgraced Illinois governor appeared on Maddow's MSNBC show after the Illinois senate heard for the first time on Tuesday federal wiretap recordings of his conversations. His strategy seems to be to keep talking and talking until everyone gets bored with him and forgets what he did wrong. Hence his tour of morning shows like Good Morning America and the View and his chat with Larry King.
By the time he made it to Maddow's program, Blagojevich had gotten bold. He said he wanted "every taped conversation to be heard so the whole story can be heard in the full context" since "I consider myself the anti-Nixon."
But the Democrat is not the "anti-Nixon," because within seconds he got all jumpy. He said "I can't go into the details" when Maddow pressed him for a real answer on whether he tried to get Chicago Tribune editors fired. He later sputtered a half-denial, saying he didn't tell Tribune Company to lay off, and his aide was "never directed" to do so.
The guv apparently managed to run afoul of judicial regulations, since, Blago said, there's a "Supreme Court rule" that won't let him discuss the specifics of his case. Which he had just discussed. Rather unconvincingly.
Blago surely plans to keep talking, Supreme Court rule or not, because his embarrassing presence in the national media is one of his only remaining political bargaining chips, and because he knows his constituents will eventually beg him to finish out his term if he promises to just stop talking, on television.