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A brief sojurn into grubby electoral politics: 

Recall from years ago, the enormous amount of press received by GOP strategist Karl Rove as George W. Bush’s political “Brain” ? A similar role with Barack Obama is played by Illinois Democratic political consultant David Axelrod, except that Axelrod keeps a far lower profile than Rove did and Axelrod has inifinitely better relationships with the working press, notably with the nominally Republican Chicago Tribune where Axelrod was formerly a political reporter and columnist.  Axelrod is also tightly connected to Chicago’s all-powerful Democratic Party boss, Mayor Richard M. Daley, another longtime Axelrod client; and to Exelon/Com. Ed. , the politically powerful Illinois utility that contracts with Axelrod’s public relations firm and whose employees have been among the largest financial donors in Illinois to the Obama campaign.

What kind of campaign can we expect from Axelrod in the general election? Overtly positive themes and public posturing  complemented by covertly delievered and mercilessly negative “stiletto” attacks against key people around John McCain that are not directly traceable to Axelrod. The model for this strategy is the previous Obama senatorial campaign in Illinois, where Obama’s two most formidible, centimillionaire, rivals, Democrat Blair Hull and Republican Jack Ryan were personally destroyed in the primaries when salacious details from their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked to the media, which then pressured for their full release, notably in the pages of the Chicago Tribune. Thus, ultimately permitting Obama to run against an out-of-state, clown candidate, religious conservative firebrand Alan Keyes, in the general election.

 Negative political advertising is reliably effective, something known since the days of Murray Chotiner running Richard Nixon’s California races, but the information age imposes “blowback” costs when it is used too openly by a candidate. Axelrod’s long courtship of the media will permit similar “fingerprint free” attacks against the GOP to work unless McCain’s campaign is smart enough to start doing social network analysis of key media people crossreferenced with Obama Campaign functionaries and Axelrod associates.

It’s also noteworthy of how little escapes Axelrod’s attention. The conservative intellectual and writer, Dr. Stanley Kurtz, has been digging into the UIC archives on Senator Obama’s extensive political relationship with Dr. William Ayers, the 60’s radical and unrepentant ex-Weatherman terrorist, now a professor of Education at UIC where he is a leading advocate of politicizing teacher certification programs along Leftist lines (Ayers is the son of the late, prominent Chicago business leader, Thomas Ayers, former chairman/CEO of Commonwealth Edison and board member at he Chicago Tribune). Kurtz was invited to be a guest last night on Dr. Milt Rosenberg’s highbrow Extension720 WGN-AM radio show and discuss his research and Rosenberg’s switchboard and email system was instantly flooded and essentially shut down by an orchestrated wave of Obama supporters ( here is the Obama Campaign action alert).  While something of a local legend, Rosenberg’s radio show is, in the national media scheme of things, a fairly obscure program. Sort of a conservative NPR, except a lot smarter and writ small.

I would expect the ante be upped against Obama critics to include nuisance suits and worse  if the fall campaign tightens.

UPDATE:

It appears that the Obama-Ayers-Annenberg story, which I expect will soon feature the infamous pic of Ayers trampling a U.S. flag in an alley, is making it on to the MSM radar. Michael Barone does a superb job as political anthropologist here, explaining the ” Chicago Way” to Americans in more normal communities:

Obama Needs to Explain His Ties to William Ayers

….Ayers was one of the original grantees of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school reform organization in the 1990s, and was cochairman of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, one the two operational arms of the CAC. Obama, then not yet a state senator, became chairman of the CAC in 1995. Later in that year, the first organizing meeting for Obama’s state Senate campaign was held in Ayers’s apartment. Ayers later wrote a memoir, and an article about him appeared in the New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001. “I don’t regret setting bombs,” Ayers is quoted as saying. “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Ayers was a terrorist in the late 1960s and 1970s whose radical group set bombs at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.

You might wonder what Obama was doing working with a character like this. And you might wonder how an unrepentant terrorist got a huge grant and cooperation from the Chicago public school system. You might wonder-if you don’t know Chicago. For this is a city with a civic culture in which politicians, in the words of a story often told by former congressman, federal judge, and Clinton White House counsel Abner Mikva, “don’t want nobody nobody sent.” That’s what Mikva remembers being told when he went to a Democratic ward headquarters to volunteer for Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s, and it rings true. And it’s a civic culture in which there’s nobody better to send you than your parents.

Read the rest here.

I thought the internet rules issue for the House of Representatives might be dying down when Rep. Capuano issued a heated denial of intending to censor or restrict access to social media. Unfortunately, that denial contrasts 180 degrees with what Rep. Culberson claimed was said by Capuano at a meeting on the subject:

“Cong Capuano confirmed to me today that rule will limit Member video posts to approved sites w approved content w disclaimer &  He said text/blogs/Twitter social media sites next. My analysis correct: we could only post approved content on approved sites w disclaimer Twitter would be prohibited to Congressmen because We the People are free to post political comments recommending who to vote for or against”

We are now down to the point where one congressman or the other can only be a liar. It should be evident as to whom within a few days.

If you are inclined to believe, as am I, that the Democratic Party leadership fears that their longterm electoral and legislative success depends upon restoring at least some semblance of the liberal dominance over public debate that prevailed in the pre-internet, pre-talk radio, pre-cable TV days by rejiggering the rules of the game, reviving the “fairness doctrine” and initiating regulations on political speech online – then you might wish to check out Let Our Congress Tweet.

Seldom has a public figure of obvious intelligence and education running for president left so scanty a political trail of breadcrumbs to follow. His geniality and ability to connect on a personal level is such that even Illinois archconservative GOP legislators and lobbyists found him to have been, despite his politics, a reasonable person with whom they could deal, at least on occasion.

Obama has a disconcerting number of hard-core, ex-revolutionaries and shady Machine fixers  not only in his past but his immediate present ( you’d think the Democratic Party would have enough raw talent that the Obama campaign would not have to scrape and make use of Communist wingnuts) but seldom has Obama himself ever uttered a controversial word or committed a suspect deed. His voting record, thin as it may be, troubles me:

SENATE:

Voted against free trade zone with Central America (2005)

Voted against letting the IC spy on foreign suspects without a court order (2007)

Consistently voted for timetables for troop withdrawals on several funding bills (2007)

Voted against the confirmation of the superbly qualified Samuel Alito and John Roberts ( 2005, 2006 – I suppose if President Obama nominates the superbly qualified Lawrence Tribe to SCOTUS then all the Senate Republicans should vote “No”.)

ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE:

Voted against allowing homeowners to argue self-defense who used firearms against local ordinances (2004)

Voted to limit handgun purchases to one per month ( 2000)

Voted against making street gang “hit men” eligible for the death penalty (2001)

In Obama’s defense, while in the Illinois legislature he voted to allow at least former police officers and military personnel to have “conceal and carry” rights which cannot be said of all Democrats in a state where the all-powerful Mayor Richard Daley is near to insane on the issue of gun control. Nor is his brief stint in the Senate any less substantive than John F. Kennedy’s “gentleman’s C” record who served a longer time before running for President than did Senator Obama.That said, Obama is still disturbingly close to our first, modern vaporware, candidate. 

What hill would this man die on, figuratively speaking in terms of political issues?  Whom or what can Barack Obama not abide?  We all saw the video of a young Bill Clinton shaking hands with JFK by this time in 1992 and heard about innumerable Arkansas characters but Obama in contrast has remained a relative cipher. Does Obama have any longtime friends? Keep in touch with Harvard classmates? Anybody? Where are his Indonesian schoolyard chums popping up on CNN ? If the MSM can find John McCain’s  75 year old North Vietnamese jailer from the Hanoi Hilton they could at least find someone who hung out with Obama somewhere, sometime and heard him express an unguarded opinon. Fred Thompson was runing for all of five minutes and every chick he ever had dated had been interviewed by the Post or the NYT before the New Hampshire primaries opened. It’s weird.

I have readers who are Right, Center and Left.  If I’m missing something here or if you care to sound off in Barack’s defense please do so but I’d really like to know what this man holds as non-negotiable principles.

A big thank you to blogfriend Pundita for sending Rezko Watch readers my way!

Generally, local poltics are not my primary interest but for Rezko Watch readers outside of Illinois who are interested in the background of Chicago’s unique brand of politics, they might want to check out the following sources:

American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley – His Battle for Chicago and the Nation by Adam Cohen, Elizabeth Taylor

An excellent, highly detailed, social and political history both of the city of Chicago as well as the rise to power of the first, legendary, Mayor Daley, and his iron fisted rule over the Democratic Machine. The Shakman Decrees have changed he rules of the game  in the city of Chicago but the current Mayor, Richard M. Daley has adapted and is, in some ways, even more powerful than his larger than life father.

Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko

This book is a shorter but far more colorful and grittier read. Penned by the late Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko, it is filled with a cast of infamous Chicago characters such as Ed Kelly, Tony Accardo, Paddy Bauler, Cardinal Cody, William Dawson, John D’ Arco, Tom Keane, Charlie Swibel, Benjamin Adamowski and Saul Alinsky. Incidentally, Mayor Daley reportedly hated Royko for writing this book.

Chicago: City on the Make: 50th Anniversary Edition, Newly Annotated by Nelson Algren

One of Chicago’s great writers, as well as a friend of Royko’s, Algren painted a bitter picture of the Machine at the zenith of it’s power and corruption.

For contemporary coverage of the underworld of Chicago politics, I recommend former City Hall beat reporter turned columnist for The Chicago Tribune, John Kass. Kass is well versed in the current array of ward heelers, mobbed-up businessmen, buffoonish aldermen, ex-gangster disciples, crooked cops, shadowy fixers and Outfit soldiers under the latest Federal investigations (it’s a lot to keep track of).

” Chicago ain’t ready for reform!”  – Alderman Paddy Bauler, 1955.

Coulda…..woulda….shoulda.