Golden (89 page)

“The people have had enough,” Schar said. “They've had enough of this defendant. They've had enough of those who are corrupt like him…. They should have the highest expectations that their elected leaders will honor that faith the people put in them.”

When Blagojevich finally stood to speak, he seemed to brace himself on the lectern in front of Zagel, leaning forward with both hands on the sides of it, gripping tight.

He was standing there, convicted, he said. And he was unbelievably sorry. He said the jury had found him guilty, and he accepted it, though he did not flat-out tell the judge he believed he had done something worthy of being labeled a convicted felon.

“I have a tendency sometimes to speak before I think. And I've had plenty of time over the past several months to do a lot of thinking and reflecting and to think about all that's happened and all the things that have led up to me standing here before your honor and not being anywhere near the places that I dreamed of and hoped I'd one day be,” Blagojevich said.

He wanted to apologize to the people of Illinois and to the court for his mistakes.

“If there's any consolation that I can offer the people, to you, and to myself, it is that I honestly believed—let me withdraw that. Let me—I—I never set out to break the law. I never set out to cross lines,” he corrected himself. He had caused all of his own troubles and said he was blaming nobody but himself.

He was also sorry for dragging the case into the media and for criticizing prosecutors while Chicago and America watched. He was sorry for the disrespect.

“I was very keen on your comments yesterday when you described how I saw it as a duel and a boxing match. You captured me,” Blagojevich told Zagel. “I saw it exactly that way, for whatever reasons. Alexander Hamilton in dueling Aaron Burr back in the eighteenth century I've read a lot about. The boxing experience I had, I did see it in those terms, and I should have known better.”

He was self-absorbed and childish, he acknowledged. Much of what he had done had been unproductive at best and foolish at worst.

“My life is ruined—at least now,” he said, signaling ever so slightly the personality of the man who refused to quit. “My life is in ruins.”

It was taking until right then, standing in front of a judge who held the rest of his life in the palm of his hand, for Blagojevich to realize what his future was.

He wanted to apologize to his brother for dragging him into his descent. But most of all he wanted to apologize to Patti, who sometimes leaned forward in her seat in despair nearby, and to his family. Home was the only place Blagojevich had wanted to go after the jury found him guilty, he told the court. He had been able to distract Annie by getting her to play, but Amy, who was fifteen years old, had been much harder to assuage. The press was still swarming the family home, and Amy had wanted her father to go outside as he usually did and explain again why he was wrongfully accused, to tell the world why he was being misunderstood and prosecuted for nothing at all.

“And she asked me and begged me, ‘Daddy, please go outside and talk to the media and tell them that you didn't do it and tell them that this was wrong,'” Blagojevich said, telling Zagel he had been forced to accept what had happened to him as his girl cried. His selfishness had jeopardized the one thing he should have held most dear: his ability to be there for his children. To protect them and watch them grow through some of the most precious years a father can have with those he loves the very most.

“And I asked her not to be ashamed of me, and I hope I didn't let her down. But that was the moment where I had to teach my daughter to try to accept what had happened, and it was a moment where I began the process of accepting the new reality.”

Zagel took a break to consider all he had heard and then emerged from his chambers at almost exactly high noon. He strode to the bench in his normal slow and plodding way, placing papers down in front of him and then taking a seat.

It was no surprise he had much to say about the case that he had overseen for three years. There had been two trials, much argument, and seven days of Blagojevich on the stand trying to explain himself. Then lawyers on
both sides had argued about what the former governor's sentence should be. In Zagel's mind, though, some of the arguments had been the wrong ones. The defense had said five years in prison was enough of a deterrent. What government official would trade five years of their life for the potential benefits corruption brought?

“Some are never caught. And then, to cite a not so hypothetical example, after they die, huge amounts of cash are found in their closets,” Zagel said, in a reference to the infamous Paul Powell. “If you think you're not going to get caught, you do it. The problem with deterrence always is that you have not only the price to be paid if you are caught but the chances of your being caught. And while economists know how to discount this probability, we don't have reliable statistics on the good way to do it.”

Then peering down at the once ever-buoyant man who had overshot all expectations to become governor, he added, “If you are a corrupt public official and you are an optimist, there's a much better chance you're going to do it than if you're a pessimist.”

So what of Blagojevich?

It was impossible to dispute what the federal government captured on its wiretaps. That evidence had left the ex-governor to argue he had been misunderstood. Had Blagojevich been played by those in his inner circle? Zagel didn't think so. It seemed Blagojevich had called for certain actions and his minions did as they were told.

The judge also did not believe Blagojevich had gotten bad legal advice from them—or no legal advice at all from some who might have stopped him. The truth was, Blagojevich didn't ask for such advice, because the fact was he did not want the answer.

“A few of his plans may, arguably, have been legal. The ones he was convicted of were not,” Zagel explained. “In the end, his defense morphed into a claim that he did not believe his proposals were quid pro quo, which he did know was an illegal exchange. The jury did not believe him, and neither do I.”

Ultimately, what Zagel said he heard on the recordings was a man who had the personality of someone who was arguably not fit for public office at all. What had been caught on tape was what happened when that man sank in over his head.

“Much of what I heard in the recordings and both heard and saw in your testimony support this view, some unfortunate elements of immaturity,” Zagel told Blagojevich, who sat sometimes looking down toward the defense
table and sometimes managed to glance toward the bench. “The unwillingness to admit, even to yourself, that you have done something seriously wrong until you are forced to do so, blaming others for your misconduct, the impatience, the endless talking, the lack of focus, and the need for praise and plaudits say from people whose grandmothers got a free ride on the free bus.”

Zagel said he did believe what Blagojevich had told him that day, that he was no longer blaming anybody but himself. That had caused the judge to give the former governor an ounce of good credit. And the judge said he was sympathetic to the plight of the Blagojevich girls. It was a sad reality that hung in the courtroom like a chill, no matter how those in court had viewed Blagojevich, and Zagel was just pointing it out. Blagojevich did, in fact, clearly love his girls. He doted on them. Why hadn't that fatherly devotion stopped him when nothing else would? It had been foolish to even approach the line with what Blagojevich had at stake.

Finally, the judge shifted in his chair slightly and seemed ready to give Blagojevich the sentence he would announce minutes later, the fourteen years. Above all else, it was the judge's duty to be concerned with the times that Blagojevich had used his tremendous power not for the millions whom he had led but for himself. The office of governor was among the very worst to corrupt, he said, second only to the office of president of the United States. The harm in the case was not about money and property. It was not about the money Blagojevich had or hadn't tried to get. It was about the erosion of the public's trust in government. For the American system of government to prosper, it was best when people trust their leaders to do the right thing most of the time, the judge said, and to try to do it all of the time.

“When it is the governor who goes bad, the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily or quickly repaired,” Zagel told Blagojevich.

“You did that damage.”

There are many who came from more humble beginnings than Blagojevich and who climbed over more life obstacles, but few with his kind of working-class roots rise to the heights he did. He finished law school, but his academic career was largely average. He got a government job as a state's attorney but showed little promise there as well. What he eventually became was a man who ascended to places he probably shouldn't have reached and who
won jobs he couldn't have attained without the right connections, propelled by an extreme personality. That reality carried the day, until Blagojevich blazed out in frenzied desperation while federal investigators recorded him. He overcame adversity but ultimately failed the character test. He asked for the public's trust and received it, elected amid promises to reform a money-fueled system that ultimately swallowed and destroyed him.

Even his policies left much to be desired. His plan to import prescription drugs from Canada failed. His idea to spend millions to import flu vaccines ended up not helping anyone in Illinois or Pakistan, where he ultimately sent them and where they were destroyed because they had expired. His fight to ban youngsters from buying violent video games never went anywhere amid claims it was unconstitutional. He borrowed billions of dollars to balance the budget, leaving Illinois in a deeper hole ($13 billion) than when he found it ($5 billion). Even what he described as his greatest achievement—the All Kids insurance program—had serious problems. He never provided enough funding for it, seriously increasing the state's deficit.

Those policies were often questioned by the press or lawmakers during Blagojevich's time as governor. Some wondered if they were done more for publicity than policy. Others thought they might even be illegal. But Blagojevich usually dismissed the criticisms with a wave of his hand. He wouldn't be held back by the rules of man-made law or governance. He had a higher rule that guided him: the Golden Rule.

“You should do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” he lectured.

As Zagel said, Blagojevich the man was not fit for public office. But what does it say about our political system that he excelled at it?

From the beginning, he was a man of clear contradictions: He was privately conservative yet publicly hewed to a liberal ideology solely because it was in his political interest. He was a true narcissist who overcame inherent shyness with an electric personality that won over nearly everyone he met. He was the “neighborhood guy” who loved fine clothes and high-end schooling. He was the younger brother who idolized his older sibling and nearly destroyed his life. He was the nobody who needed the help of his father-in-law but resented the assistance even as it made his career. He was a politician who hated authority yet yearned for power more than anything.