Bad Timing

The fall of Rod Blagojevich couldn't have come at a worse time for George Ryan-or Barack Obama. Ryan, the previous Illinois governor, was angling, with the help of Sen. Dick Durbin, for President Bush to commute his six-year sentence on a corruption conviction.

After serving barely 13 months and with Bush about ready to leave office, Ryan did something unthinkable, at least for him: He apologized. (One Chicago family saw its children perish in an automobile crash because of Ryan's corruption while in charge of the state department of motor vehicles.) Then Blagojevich, his successor as governor, gummed up the works by getting caught.

Question: How could Bush pardon Ryan with Blagojevich so notoriously in the news and the stench of Illinois corruption still so strongly in the nation's nostrils?

Answer: He can't, and won't.

Hey, if Durbin really wants Ryan to be sprung right now, why not ask another Chicago pol, Barack Obama, to do it once he's inaugurated? And while Obama's at it, he can pardon Blagojevich, too.

What's that, you say? Obama doing these favors would spoil his carefully crafted image as an outsider, as a reformer?

Well, after all the abuse the president has taken from his Democratic opponents, if they want some dirty work to be done, they're going to have to do it themselves.