Objections to Roland Burris Pick Have Nothing to Do with Race

By: Deborah Mathis

He’s certainly an interesting character, this Roland Burris, whom I suspect most of us outside of Illinois had never heard of until the governor of the Prairie State appointed Burris to fill Barack Obama’s U.S. senate seat.

The proof of his popularity rests in the fact of his multiple elections as state comptroller and state attorney general. Therein also lies the credibility of Burris’ appointment. He appears to be qualified enough, and nearly every political operative in Illinois seems ready to vouch for that.

The rub, of course, is that Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s fitness to appoint Burris, or anyone else, is dubious and, to hear a certain U.S. attorney tell it, dangerous. The governor does not seem to do much of anything official unless there’s something in it for him.

Question: Since no one thinks Burris bought, or offered to buy, the opportunity from Blagojevich, just what does the governor get out of the Burris appointment?

Answer: The nasty, naughty, shameless satisfaction of burning his enemies and tying them up in knots.

Blagojevich has repeatedly said he’s done nothing wrong regarding Obama’s senate seat and that he will fight the charges tooth and nail. He’s entitled to defend himself, but a decent man would have wanted to prove how cooperative and conciliatory he is, perhaps even laid low, rather than make more trouble for himself.

But, unable to contain himself, Mr. InYourFace chose not only the defiant road, but the obnoxious one too, ignoring every appeal to waive his gubernatorial right under these inauspicious circumstances.

Obviously, Blagojevich doesn’t care about the cloud he casts over Burris, the difficulty he presents for Senate leaders, or the bloodletting he causes in Illinois politics. He’s getting a rush from watching folks squirm over what to do about Burris.

The governor had to have gotten a warm and fuzzy feeling when Rep. Bobby Rush injected race into the Burris appointment, allowing that the country should not stomach the specter of its only black U.S. senator being barred at the door.

It is woeful that the world’s most deliberative body has had only three black members in modern times and never more than one at a time. It is a national embarrassment that a nation growing browner and blacker by the day might have not a single person of color in one of its legislative chambers.

But, for once, objections to a black candidate have nothing to do with his blackness. It’s not who he is or what he is, but how he got there.

Burris, good man though he may be, has gotten so caught up in the star chamber that he is oblivious to how bad he looks – overly ambitious, too eager, too hungry for this power to take the high road and respectfully decline, as did Rep. Danny Davis.

Maybe that’s asking too much of a man who has the highlights of his resume etched into a granite mausoleum in Chicago’s Oak Woods Cemetery.

So, off he goes on Tuesday, vowing to seek admission to the Senate. The conventional wisdom is that he will be accommodated somehow, but not seated, at which point he will take it to the courts. Thus, the web will become a bigger and bigger tangled mess.

But taking the post under these conditions is like taking dirty money – you didn’t commit a crime to get it, but taking it, knowing where it came from, says something. And that something isn’t good.

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