LAND OF LINCOLN

Posted at 8:46 a.m. ET

New Year's Day brings more evidence of the moral purity of Illinois politics.  Lincoln would like to turn over in his grave, but hasn't yet made the required "turning over" payment to Illinois cemetery authorities.

The latest:  The Illinois secretary of state is refusing to certify the appointment, by embattled Governor Rod Blagojevich, of prominent African-American politician Roland Burris to the Senate seat vacated by the president-elect. Mr. Obama has made it clear he disapproves of any appointment by the governor, who was caught on tape trying to sell the seat to the highest bidder.  The governor is facing possible impeachment.  But Obama has done nothing beyond issuing a tut-tut statement.

Burris, though, thinks the appointment is perfectly valid and has gone to court to force the secretary of state to certify it, meaning he would have the proper credentials to present to the United States Senate.  Without those credentials, the Senate could block the appointment.  Senate Democratic leaders have threatened to do just that, stating that any appointment by the governor is fatally tainted.

At the heart of the matter is the race card, being played directly and bluntly.  The question:  Will the Democratic Party refuse to seat an African-American appointee, at a time when there are no African-Americans in the Senate?  The race card has inflamed the entire controversy, as John Kass points out in the Chicago Tribune:

Since he was federally charged with trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder, Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been wrongly caricatured as some kind of hapless jester prancing on the edge of madness...

..Jesters don't pick up the race card in a nationally televised news conference and slam it into the face of every Democrat in the U.S. Senate, a palm heel strike to the tip of the nose, leaving all of them watery-eyed, their lips stinging.

Yet that's what Blagojevich—aided by former Black Panther-turned-Daley-machine-functionary Bobby Rush—did at that stupendous news conference in Chicago on Tuesday. That's when the governor appointed Democratic empty suit Roland Burris, an African-American, to fill the Senate seat vacated by Obama.

Congressman Bobby Rush of Chicago, a former Black Panther, was at the press conference to inject race right into the muscle:

"I would ask you to not hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer. Roland Burris is worthy," Rush said.

Hang? Lynch?

Isn't that the old politics of race that Obama was to have transcended for us?

Apparently not in the Democratic politics of Illinois.

"And I don't think any senators want to go on the record to deny an African-American from taking a seat in the U.S. Senate," Rush said, ominously.

Grown-ups have seen such theater before. The only things missing were cameo performances by those two prolific race card players, Al Sharpton and Chicago's own Rev. Jesse Jackson.

This is getting very ugly, with the president-elect's name involved, whether he wants it involved or not.

That talk about transcending race was just talk. Skin pigment trumps ideas, and Blagojevich, who may be facing a jury soon, wants all the friends he can get.

Of course, Tuesday's fiasco could have been avoided. Democrats in the state legislature could have stripped Blagojevich of his appointment powers and imposed a special election. Obama also could have demanded it. But as he has done so often in his career, Obama avoided a confrontation and looked the other way.

Stay tuned.  This is one of the most intriguing political stories going.  What does Obama do if confronted with a Roland Burris, holding his old seat, in the U.S. Senate?  Shun him?  Embrace him?  Endorse him when Burris is up for election?  Support someone else?

January 1, 2008.