Roland Burris doesn't get it. Either he truly doesn't understand why people are upset with his squirrelly appointment to the U.S. Senate or he doesn't seem to care. Under the present circumstances, Burris' appointment is not about the best interest of the voters of the State of Illinois. It's about taking unseemly advantage of a temporary void coupled with personal ambition -- an opportunity to inherit a position that he never attained or even sought by election.
Contrary to insinuations of his staunch supporter, Representative Bobby Rush, this conundrum has nothing to do with race. Nor is this an issue of the qualifications or competence of Burris. This is about process -- the process under which Burris was appointed by embattled (now impeached) Governor Rob Blagojevich -- the very person against whom a criminal complaint was filed with special urgency by the U.S. Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, to prevent him from making such appointment. Blagojevich, according to the complaint and his own words on tape, was attempting to sell the appointment for his own personal enrichment. Thus, anyone appointed by Blagojevich necessarily would be tainted under these sordid circumstances, regardless of his or her personal character. And nobody seriously disputed that axiom until Burris became a willing beneficiary and enabler of Blagojevich's chicanery.
But despite the surreality of Blagojevich's shenanigans to date, the issue has steadily narrowed to the technical legality of Burris' appointment by a sitting governor, not whether the appointment process itself is fatally flawed which Blagojevich is at the helm in Illinois.
When news of the criminal complaint became public in shocking detail, well before Burris' appointment, there was nearly universal agreement by Barack Obama as President-Elect and former holder of the very Senate seat vacated and leaders of the U.S. Senate that any appointee of Blagojevich should be rejected as invalid. Jesse White, the African-American Secretary of State of Illinois, indicated that he would not certify any such appointment. And the candidates previously maneuvering for the appointment indicated that they would not accept it from Blagojevich even if offered due to the untoward circumstances.
Yet, Blagojevich did not relent; rather, he chose to ignore the imploring of Obama and the others as well as the will of the Illinois public and decided to use the appointment in an effort to partially cleanse himself of wrongdoing or to mitigate it by pandering to the African-American community. Indeed, after Burris' appointment, many supporters of Burris seem as equally unconcerned as Blagojevich about the validity of the process choosing instead to focus singularly on Burris' bona fides to serve in his appointed capacity. Apparently, the new refrain among Burris diehards implicitly appears to be that the ends, i.e., Burris' appointment, justify the means, i.e., Blagojevich's fiat appointment. Consistently, those who support Burris' appointment now argue that Blagovejich's taint should not transfer to Burris who is constitutionally qualified to serve. Surprisingly, no mention bawas made as to whether Burris' appointment by Blagojevich is a service or disservice to the people of Illinois or even supported by them.
Sadly, it also appears that the "race card" has been played. Both Representative Rush and Burris, to a lesser extent, have more than intimated that the Senate seat should rightfully be filled by an African-American because it was vacated by one (ironically, in this context, due to Obama's election as President of the United States) and, because of Obama's ascension, there is no longer an African-American serving in the Senate. This argument is not only not based on any legal principle, it is especially insulting to the people of Illinois who have twice elected African-American Senators, Obama and Carol Moseley-Braun before him. In fact, Illinois is the only state in the union that has elected an African-American to the Senate in several decades.
So for Representative Rush to make this argument is to deny that America is long on its way to moving beyond racial politics, certainly at the federal level, by the very fact of Obama's election. Why he can't pridefully embrace or at least acknowledge the new reality raises a basic question about whether he will remain rooted in racial divisiveness as a political strategy. As for Roland Burris, why he is so willing to be a party to this charade by Blagojevich and blatant end-run around the Illinois electorate is base self-aggrandizement and opportunism run amuck and anathema to his past record of public service to the citizens of Illinois.
