Who’s the Governor (of Illinois)?

I must make the disclaimer that I am not an expert on law. Having said that, I have to admit to some confusion regarding the case of Roland Burris as he unsuccessfully tries to take his U.S. Senate seat after being duly appointed by current Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for the position vacated by President-Elect Barack Obama.

Governor Blagojevich, it is true, has been arrested and charged with trying to sell that very Senate seat earlier to other interested parties. And the Illinois state legislature is currently undertaking impeachment proceedings against him for this. But at this moment, Blagojevich is the full governor of the state of Illinois, with all of the authority and responsibility which that position entails. And since we supposedly still have something in this country known as due process, at this moment he (at least legally) has done nothing wrong.

I remember two different occasions in the past when U.S. presidents were under clouds of scandals. In the 1970s, Nixon was on the verge of impeachment when the damaging tape was released, unequivocally connecting him with the Watergate cover-up and ushering in his resignation. And in 1999, Clinton actually underwent a full impeachment trial in the Senate for perjury and obstruction of justice. IN NEITHER CASE was the embattled president specially restricted regarding what he could or could not do as president. And with the presidency, we’re talking about a lot more than what a governor could do. Including the ability to make war, even nuclear war!

Just because someone in a position of authority has been charged with something, that does not give those affected by his/her decisions in that position the right to pick and choose which actions to accept and which to defy. I would be very careful if I were the Democratic leadership in the U.S. Senate. For they obviously have their own political conflict of interest in deciding to deny Burris his seat: There will be an election in 2010 for a full six-year term for this seat and Burris, even as an incumbent, would be a relatively weak candidate for the Democrats against a probably insurgent Republican opposition. The Democrats would prefer to have a politically stronger senator there instead.

Also, that leadership needs to take into consideration the fact that Obama has been going out of his way to build an image of himself as being squeaky-clean ethically and is doing everything he can to delegitimize the actions of the Illinois governor regarding his vacated seat. But as I said, the governor is the duly constituted authority, while he/she is in office, to fill Senate vacancies, and no one, even the President-Elect, has the right to pick and choose which actions to obey and which to ignore. After all, how would Obama like it if, down the road, various parties accused him of impropriety in office and used that as a pretext to defy unfavorable (to them) presidential decisions?

Well, as I said before, I’m no expert in law. But Illinois either has a governor or it doesn’t. So who’s the governor? At last check, I believe it was Rod Blagojevich. He appointed Burris, and there has been no hint of scandal regarding this particular appointment. So Roland Burris should be seated. In my opinion.