Changing Values: "At least I'm not one of those deadbeat CEO's"

The CEO's of major corporations are among the most financially successful people in our society. They are also people who exercise a great deal of control over the lives of others. While few people dreamt of growing up to be CEOs of major corporations as children, the power and wealth inherent in the job have made it a prestigious one. The same is true, to some extent, of business leaders in general. It certainly makes sense that people who have reached the pinnacle of their profession, and in so doing become responsible for overseeing others, should be respected for that achievement, and virtually everyone would like to make the kind of money that CEOs do, but the respect and admiration afforded to business leaders in our society goes far beyond these considerations. Business leaders have been seen as embodying the American Dream, that a person can start with nothing and through their own hard work and ingenuity achieve great success. They have also been seen as the caretakers of our country, particularly by those on the right, who have long argued that giving business leaders free reign, and lower taxes, will lead to greater prosperity for all.

Business leaders have been held in such high-esteem by our society that they have often been considered qualified and credible candidates for public office based only on their business experience. Ross Perot and Steve Forbes both ran for President, and received significant support, having no serious background in politics or public interest work. Mitt Romney was elected Governor of Massachusetts based on his business experience, and made it the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Michael Bloomberg was elected Mayor of New York City based on his business success. These are only a few examples. For the most part, it does not matter whether a business leader's career really embodied the American Dream. Both Forbes and Romney, for example, were born into money. While an argument can be made that private managerial, or executive, experience is important to a prospective mayor, governor, or president, it is a weak one. In a sense, the job of a CEO is the polar opposite of the job of a governor or president. CEOs must do everything in their power to increase the profitability of the companies they run, any benefits to employees or customers resulting from their decisions are essentially side-effects. A political leader, in contrast, is responsible for balancing the needs of everyone in their constituency. While the ability to give instructions and run an organization may be important, anyone who can run a political campaign demonstrates that they have these skills.

The place of business leaders in our society, or at least how they are covered by the media, appears to have changed in recent months. Whether or not this will be a fleeting change that disappears along with the outrage over the recent wall street excesses, or something more lasting, remains to be seen. It is clear that the catalyst for the change was the financial bailouts, and subsequent revelations regarding the frivolous spending of those running the bailed out companies. The media, and many political leaders, have mocked and criticized the excesses of AIG's corporate retreats, the automaker CEOs private jets, and more recently, Merrill Lynch CEO John Thaine's $1,200,000.00 office renovation, and Citigroup's plan to purchase a $50,000,000.00 corporate jet. Yesterday, President Obama called recent Wall Street bonuses "shameful," while Vice President Biden said of those receiving them “I’d like to throw these guys in the brig.”

These sorts of perks have rightly outraged taxpayers who feel they are footing the bill for them. These sorts of expenditures were just as outrageous, however, before the bailouts, when they received no attention whatsoever. Remember, CEOs are legally obligated to act in the best interests of their shareholders, which essentially means they must maximize profits. Why were expenditures of the sort mentioned above viewed as appropriate business decisions aimed at maximizing profits before the bailouts, but not after? The answer, I believe, is that for the moment our society no longer looks on business leaders with the reverence it once did. The luxuries CEOs and other business leaders have become accustomed to receiving from their companies were always justified as necessary to attract and keep the best leaders. In a recent column, Maureen Dowd conveys the absurdity of this justification, in light of the recent financial collapse, as follows:

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on CNBC, Thain used the specious, contemptible reasoning that other executives use to rationalize why they’re keeping their bonuses as profits are plunging.

“If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise” and they’ll go elsewhere, he said.

Hello? They destroyed the franchise. Let’s call their bluff. Let’s see what a great job market it is for the geniuses of capitalism who lost $15 billion in three months. . .

This seemingly common sense perspective reflects a significant shift in how our culture views business leaders. The assertion that the largesse of corporations toward their executives was justified by the need to compete for the best people, and that these people were worth what they made, is inconsistent with the prevalence of golden parachute provisions in the contracts of these "best" people. While it is argued that these provisions protect business executives who are terminated due to circumstances unrelated to their effectiveness, such as mergers, an executive with a record of achievement should have little trouble finding another job after such a termination, and could certainly afford to take some time to find one. Golden parachute provisions would be unimaginable in most professions, and many people who are confident in their abilities would find the suggestion that they need such a provision demeaning. Thus, the fact that these provisions are not unheard of suggests that the executives who receive them view themselves, and are viewed by society, as having superior inherent value, unrelated to their competence.

The change in how society views business leaders may be a significant silver lining of the recent financial turmoil. The idolization of people who have devoted their lives to accumulating personal wealth and power has been harmful in many ways, the most obvious of which is the current financial crisis. While the change may prove temporary, there is some reason to think it will not. The change was certainly catalyzed by the current financial problems, but the failed presidency of George W. Bush, the "CEO President", was probably a contributing factor, as was the Bernie Madoff debacle. The election of President Obama can be viewed as both a possible consequence of the changing view of business leaders and a potential reason for its continuance. Obama not only has no significant business experience, but actually turned his back on a lucrative career in corporate law in order to take a low paying job as a community organizer, and regularly speaks of the importance of public service.

To say that our society has embraced Obama to a far greater extent than most political leaders would be something of an understatement. He is currently viewed favorably by around seventy percent of Americans. This embrace may be harmful in some ways, particularly if it leads to complacency among progressives, and an unquestioning embrace of Obama's policies. It may also, however, positively impact the values of our society. For some time, perhaps a long time, we are likely to see a narrative in the media of career public servants like Obama and Biden chastising business leaders for their greed and short-sightedness, working to fix the damage they've done, and setting up regulations to ensure they do not run amok again. This narrative may not be entirely fair, as not all business leaders are responsible for the financial crisis, but I believe it is a very good one for us to see.

The accumulation of excessive wealth and power should not be viewed as a respectable aspiration. This does not mean that those who achieve success in business should be looked down on; competence and skill in any profession are admirable qualities, and in a Capitalist country successful businesses are necessarily the source of most jobs. It also does not mean that business leaders should be demonized for prioritizing the interests of their company's shareholders over those of its employees, customers, or country. That is not only their job, but also their legal obligation. What it does mean is that business leaders who carry over this pursuit of profits over all else from their jobs to their own lives should not be viewed as embodying the American ideal, but as simply being offensively greedy. A more realistic perspective on the place business leaders occupy in our society may also facilitate a greater recognition that arguments made by, or on behalf of, a business or industry's leaders are motivated solely by the interests of the business or industry. Thus, for example, an argument in favor of free trade, as necessary for American companies to stay competitive, made by the CEO of an auto company, should not be considered persuasive evidence that free trade will be good for the country or the economy. but only that it will be good for the auto company.

If the change in our society's values brought about by recent events proves lasting, it could mark a dramatic change in our culture. The elevation of public service and and hard work over wealth and power could inspire future generations, and today's students, to measure their success by the good they do in the world. For some, this may mean forgoing a career in business or corporate law, and working instead as a union organizer or public defender. For others, it may mean confining their zealous pursuit of wealth to their job as a business executive, forgoing bonuses when layoffs must be made, and giving away any money they make in excess of what they need to live a reasonable lifestyle. And perhaps, for those who persist in making it their life's goal to accumulate wealth at any expense, it means being viewed by society as morally equivalent to con artists, loansharks, and others who share this priority.

Confronting Cataclysm: Obama and Lincoln

A few months ago I was struck by the following statement by Professor Cornel West on Real Time with Bill Maher: “It’s time for more than just a president. What we need is a statesman. We need another Lincoln." There have been many comparisons of Lincoln and Obama during the course of his campaign and transition, and there will surely be more during the course of his presidency. There are many similarities between them: both came from Illinois, both are known for the power of their speeches, both sought in different ways to follow a middle path, and of course, Lincoln ended slavery, paving the way for the struggle that, in a sense, culminated in today's inauguration of the United States' first African-American president.

In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, titled "A Pragmatic Precedent", Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and John Stauffer write:

"Is Barack Obama another Abraham Lincoln? Let’s hope not. Greatness — witness the presidencies of Lincoln, say, and Franklin D. Roosevelt — is forged in the crucible of disaster. It comes when character is equal to cataclysm. A peacetime Lincoln would have been no Lincoln at all. Let’s hope that Mr. Obama, for all of his considerable gifts, doesn’t get this particular chance to be great."

A very different argument against embracing Obama as the next Lincoln, is advanced in an article by Carlos Fierro, titled "An Anarchist View of Elections" which appeared on Counterpunch around the same time as Dr. West's appearance on Real Time, and reacts to comments he made elsewhere lauding Obama as a potentially Lincolnesque figure. Fierro argues that electoral politics are a distraction from real activism, and that the Obama's campaign has sapped energy from, for example, the anti-war movement. He asserts that real change has never come through elections but through popular movements, and warns against the embrace of an idealized Obama as the solution to all of our problems. Citing Dr. West's statement that “there is no Abe Lincoln becoming a statesmen without Fredrick Douglas and Harriet Beecher Stowe,” Fierro argues as follows:

"We don’t need another Lincoln, or an Obama; what we need is more Fredrick Douglasses and Harriet Beecher Stowes. We need more Martin Luther Kings, Big Bill Haywoods, and Helen Kellers. We don’t need more FDRs, we need more Eugene Debs. We don’t need more JFKs, we need more Philip Berrigans. We don’t need to look to great men to lead us to the promised land, we need to recognize the power that we, the nameless and 'the powerless,' possess when we assert our power rather than make assertions of faith directed at the great leader myths."

While I find the general dismissal of electoral change which is a characteristic of certain segments of the left misguided, I agree with Mr. Fierro that progressive change in this country has not been handed down by benevolent leaders; it has come about through the struggles of activists and agitators whose contributions are often forgotten, and who wrested change from an often resistant government. I do not believe it follows, however, that "we don't need another Lincoln, or an Obama."

Activism does not in and of itself change anything. There were demonstrations immediately preceding the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but the only response they evoked from then-President Bush was a statement that he "doesn't govern by focus group." Activists change things by pressuring those in government to respond to them, or by creating enough popular support for a position to replace politicians who will not respond with those who will. President Bush dismissed those who demonstrated against the invasion of Iraq. His replacement, President Obama, opposed the invasion of Iraq and has stated an intention to withdraw U.S. troops from the country, albeit slowly. During the Democratic primaries, Senator Clinton argued that her vote, essentially to authorize the invasion of Iraq, was based on false intelligence and that nobody could have known that Iraq was not really a threat to us. While it is impossible to know what impact activism actually had on public perception at that time, any astute observer could see that tens of thousands of people had in fact believed strongly enough that the invasion was unnecessary, to take to the streets.

This discussion, I hope, casts the statement in "A Pragmatic Precedent" , that we should hope Obama does not face a cataclysmic event that would enable him to achieve greatness in the way that Lincoln and F.D.R. did, in a new light. The Civil War did not suddenly strike Lincoln. While he did not set out to plunge the country into civil war, there were principles he was unwilling to give up in order to prevent it. Few would argue that the enslavement of human beings is not a cataclysmic occurrence, or that the existence of legal slavery in one's own country is disastrous. Yet, each President before Lincoln faced this disaster and failed to end it. There are disasters in the United States today, some of which were created by the previous administration, but most of which significantly predate it. These include that in this wealthiest of countries, more than ten percent of the population lives in poverty, that people are legally executed for crimes while potential evidence of their innocence is willfully ignored, and that members of certain minority groups are still legally denied basic civil rights. President Obama will be remembered by history as the first African-American to hold that office, and presumably if the wish of "A Pragmatic Precedent's" authors comes true, little else. Obama need only plot a safe course for his presidency, choosing not to acknowledge problems like those listed above as the disasters they are.

Despite all the attention he has received in the last few years, President Obama is still something of an unknown quantity. While many of his stated positions, some of his Senate votes, and some of his cabinet appointments, seem at odds with a truly progressive agenda for change, the truth is we don't really know what he will do. We do know that he opted to take a job as a community organizer in Chicago in lieu of a high-paying job in corporate law, and has emphasized the importance of ordinary people throughout his campaign. We can hope this means that he will be more receptive to pressure from progressive activism. To dismiss Obama as just another Democratic President who will change nothing of substance is to dismiss a potentially enormous opportunity. It has been suggested that Obama looks to Lincoln for inspiration. Those who look instead to Frederick Douglas and Eugene Victor Debs for inspiration should seek to create a popular movement for change that will allow Obama to enact a progressive agenda if that is his intention, and pressure him to do so if it is not. It may be that Obama's presidency is an opportunity for this generation's activists and agitators to enact real change by helping or forcing Obama to face the disasters of our time head on. The greatness of Obama's presidency may well depend on the efforts of activists to frame the country's problems as the disasters they are, and demand that they be met head on.

The Bush Legacy: He Kept Us Safe from Terrorists and Tigers

There seems to be a general consensus in the mainstream media that, whatever one thinks of his presidency overall, President George W. Bush indisputably kept us safe from terrorism after 9/11. There are some notable exceptions, including commentators like Keith Olbermann, who regularly points out the absurdity of giving Bush credit for keeping us safe since 9/11, while absolving him of responsibility for that horrific event, but they are essentially confined to unabashedly liberal media sources. I have heard, on more than one occasion, anchors of purportedly objective cable newscasts say, between news items, something to the effect of "whatever you think of President Bush, he has kept us safe." An opinion-piece written on behalf of the White House and printed in USA Today makes the following claim: "The primary responsibility of the president is to keep American citizens safe. By that standard alone, President Bush has achieved success." In an interview, New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman said the following:

There are many terrible handoffs the Bush administration, many many, uh, are leaving for President Obama. But there is one overriding large one -- there has been no terrorist act in this country since 9/11. And I think that is a very sobering, weighty handoff for this administration.

Whenever I hear these claims, I think of an old joke, whose details I can't recall, but which goes something like this: Two friends are walking down a city street talking. One of them stops on every corner and spins around three times. Finally, his friend asks him "Why are you doing that?" "To prevent tiger attacks" he responds. "But there are no tigers in the city!" the friend says, to which he replies "Works pretty well doesn't it?"

The joke illustrates the often blurred, but highly significant, distinction between correlation(I use the term in the common sense) and causation. It seems to be taken as a given in America that most people will fail to make this crucial distinction. For example, according to Politico, New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny said the following regarding Obama's reelection prospects: “It’s hard to imagine that he could be reelected if the economy’s in the exact same position four years from now.” Mr. Zeleny is probably right, but implicit in his remark is the assumption that people will attribute a poor economy to Obama's policies, deservedly or not.

President Bush claims to have kept America safe since 9/11, and the media has basically accepted this claim. Why wouldn't they? After all, it is undisputed that there has not been a major terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, and Bush has been President the whole time! The distinction between correlation and causation is clearer in some situations than in others. In some, like that in the joke above, the absurdity of conflating them is so apparent that an attempt to do so serves as a punchline. In contrast, carefully controlled scientific studies can justify a reasonable inference of causation from correlation, and the two are easily confused. Superficially, President Bush's claim appears more like the latter than the former.

When trying to determine whether a specific correlation justifies an inference of causation, two important factors to consider are the strength of the correlation, and the existence of a plausible connection between the correlated phenomenon. In the situation described in the tiger joke, there is apparently a perfect correlation between the two events: 100% of the days the friend spun around on every street corner there were no tiger attacks. The reaons this does not justify the friend's belief that his behavior is the reason for the lack of tiger attacks are that closer examination of the apparent correlation would reveal that before he started his strange behavior, there were also no tiger attacks, so there would be no correlation between his failures to spin around on street corners and tiger attacks; and, of course, that there is no plausible relationship between the two factors.

If this type of analysis is applied to the proposition that President Bush is the reason there have not been any terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11, it can be seen that it is not a much more plausible claim of causation than that made in the joke, even if one sets aside the obvious problems with leaving 9/11 itself out of the analysis. First, there is not a pefect correlation between Bush being President and the absence of terrorist attacks after 9/11. Recall the Anthrax attacks in October of 2001. Comparing Bush to his predecessor also undermines the purported correlation, as there were not many terrorist attacks in the United States while Bill Clinton was President. In fact, even without Bush as President, there was only one major terrorist attack on U.S. soil after the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing (it seems only fair to waive Clinton's responsibility for this if we're waiving Bush's for the 9/11 attacks). Second, as in the joke, there is no plausible connection between Bush being the President and the absence of terrorist attacks post-9/11. Undoubtedly, certain changes in law enforcement and airplane security have made us safer, but it can't be seriously argued that these largely common sense measures would not have been taken by a different president. As Paul Abrams details in the Huffington Post, there were some apparently obvious security measures which President Bush failed to take, such as inspecting shipping containers, and the actions he took which were not common sense, in particular his entire foreign policy, were actually counterproductive.

If Bush is to be given credit for keeping us safe after 9/11, why stop there? I haven't been attacked by a tiger once since he's been president, and while I don't know of anything he's done to prevent tiger attacks, I also know of nothing he's done to encourage them, so he deserves at least as much credit for this accomplishment as for keeping us safe post-9/11. I suggest that efforts to salvage his legacy focus more on his prevention of tiger attacks, Viking pillaging, and smallpox outbreaks, and less on his keeping us safe from terrorists post-9/11, as I started watching the news a lot more after 9/11, and have continued to do so, and am pretty sure that this is the real reason we haven't been attacked again.

Too Big to Fail

Over the last few months we've been hearing this phrase quite a lot in the news media. Essentially, it is proposed that recent multi-billion dollar bailouts of various financial institutions by the United States government were necessary because these institutions were so large, and consequently so integral to our economy, that their failure would have been disastrous. I am not an economist, and have no reason to doubt the truth of this claim. In my opinion, however, if one is to accept the 'too big to fail' justification for the recent bailouts, there are certain other actions which are required by the same reasoning.

Presumably, the disastrous consequences which would result from the failure of the too big to fail companies would cause serious financial hardships for all, or virtually all, Americans, not just for those with some direct financial interest in the companies. This is the premise of another claim that we've been hearing a lot of: the current financial crises encompasses both wall street and main street. Thus, using taxpayer money to bailout enormous corporations is not an outrageous upwards redistribution of wealth, but actually a necessary step to protect all citizens from financial disaster. I find this eminently reasonable, as protecting vast numbers of ordinary people from financial ruin is certainly a laudable goal. Yesterday, Hank Paulson declared his recent bailout a success, because the credit markets are apparently improving somewhat. (see Hank Paulson Declares Victory at Salon). Presumably, this will ultimately provide relief to ordinary people.

The problem with the 'too big to fail' justification for these bailouts is that in American politics, saving ordinary people from financial ruin is not typically considered a high enough priority to justify interfering with the free market, or requiring those who are doing well financially to pay to support those who are struggling. Quite frequently, it is argued that this is ultimately in everyone's best interest, as interfering with the free market or providing people with financial safety nets takes away their motivation to work harder, and contribute more to the economy. To reconcile support for bailing out companies that are 'too big to fail' with opposition to providing struggling Americans with direct aid, it is often implied that these bailouts must be an isolated exception to a general rule, where the cost-benefit analysis so strongly, and unusually, favored the bailouts, that everyone would understand they were an aberration, and not view them as setting a precedent.

Considering the vast sums allocated for this bailout, however, the potential impact if it were used in other ways appear similarly justifiable. For example, there are approximately 35 million Americans living below the poverty line. If the 800 billion dollars were divided amongst them evenly, they could each be given nearly 23,000 dollars. That's at least twice the yearly income of any individual living below the poverty line. It seems self-evident that this amount of money could lift many, if not most, of these people out of poverty. It is enough money to buy a car, or perhaps to pay for living expenses or child care while a person goes back to school. Have the benefits of the recent corporate bailouts significantly outweighed saving tens of millions of Americans from poverty?

Objections to such an expenditure as socialistic or redistributive do not seem reconcilable with support for the recent bailouts. Ultimately, what I find most disturbing about these bailouts, and the 'too big to fail' concept, is the idea that the unacceptability of failure is something that kicks in once a corporation reaches a certain size. Why is it unacceptable to allow a company to fail when doing so would plunge many people into financial ruin, but acceptable to allow individuals to suffer the same fate for other reasons, unrelated to their own conduct. Why should those who would have suffered if AIG or Bear Sterns were allowed to die be bailed out, while those who are suffering because of the subprime mortgage crisis, or who were fired because their employer moved overseas be left to fend for themselves? It may be true that, from a national perspective, these companies were 'too big to fail', but for a family struggling to stay in their home, keeping up with their mortgage or rent payments is an undertaking that is similarly too big to fail, and if the former is true, it is only because of the latter.

The Blagojevich/Burris Dispute and the Honor System of Government

I have thought about starting a blog to share my observations on current events on a number of occasions, generally when I had a strong reaction to something in the news(or something that should have been), but I always stumbled across a blogger or editorial writer expressing sentiments that were essentially the same as mine, and forgot about it. At this point, to my knowledge, no one has quite hit on what is, in my view, the fundamental issue in the current dispute over the seating of Senator-Select Roland Burris.

Watching the cable news networks, the views I see repeated generally follow one of two lines of reasoning. The first usually starts with a reference to Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, where the United States Supreme Court established that both houses of Congress are "without authority to exclude any person, duly elected by his constituents, who meets all the requirements for membership expressly prescribed in the Constitution." 395 U.S. at 522. It then procedes to point out that the Constitution empowers states to allow their governors to make temporary appointments in lieu of immediate special elections, as was done in Illinois, and that the governor has made such an appointment. Finally, it concludes that Burris, who is acknowleged to have met the Constitutional requirements to be a Senator, must be seated.

The second common perspective on this points out that the Constitution allows the senate to evaluate the qualifications of its members, and that Burris can be prevented from taking his Senate seat for a long period of time by having a prolonged review process, but not explicitly excluding him. It then concludes that he can be excluded using this technique, simply by prolonging the evaluation of his qualifications until a special election is held.

These views, as far as they go, are probably correct, however this dispute highlights a more fundamental issue in our system of government: It relies on the honor system. Under the Constitution, Burris is clearly entitled to the Illinois Senate seat, yet almost as clearly, he can be prevented from taking that seat by a procedure allowed by that same document. The Constitution was groundbreaking, and is brilliant, in many respects, but it does not anticipate intentional efforts to thwart its provisions by playing them against each other, instead relying on those sworn to uphold it to respect the intentions of its creators.

To illustrate this point, consider the following scenario:

Assume that the Democrats have won 67 seats in the U.S. Senate as well as a two-thirds majority in the House. The Majority leader, as his first order of business, announces that anyone who has expressed open support for President George W. Bush has demonstrated such excessively poor judgment, that they are not fit to serve in any government office. This is, I believe, true, and I'd love to see Harry Reid make such an announcement. Now, however, assume that he goes on to call for the expulsion of all Republicans from the Senate, and after a straight party-line vote, they are expelled. Now, there being only 67 Senators, assume that the Majority leader procedes to expel any insufficiently loyal Democrats, achievable with only 45 votes. Assume that the same procedure is followed in the House. At this point, the governors of the states represented by the expelled Senators would likely be arranging elections or making appointments, but our fictional majority leader would likely express doubt that the Senate would have time to evaluate the qualifications of any new Senators in the near future, there being Senate trials for at least four newly impeached U.S. Supreme Court Justices to conduct.

Obviously, this is not a plausible scenario, but it is arguably a constitutional one. The reason it is implausible is that the victories achieved through such maneuvers would be short-lived, as public outcry would drive those involved from office in the next election, and more importantly, everyone understands that this scenario is not what is contemplated by the constitution, even if it does technically allow for it. This is why Presidents and Supreme Court Justices are not routinely impeached, and Presidential nominations are generally not filibustered.

In my view, there has been something of a breakdown of this honor system in recent years, as party leaders put political considerations and public opinion ahead of adhering to the spirit of the constitution. The impeachment of President Bill Clinton can be seen as such a violation of the spirit of the Constitution, as it was essentially a partisan effort to find some technical crime on which to base impeachment proceedings. In my view, the failure to impeach the current President Bush is such a failure. There have been entire books written indexing the numerous impeachable offenses for which evidence of Bush's guilt exists, and yet the Democratic leadership opted to forego impeachment, presumably because it was better politically to have a criminal president from the opposing party to point to than to initiate a contentious impeachment proceeding where the Democrats would be cast as attempting to take away the president's ability to keep America safe from terrorists. The president's refusal to pursue indictments againt members of his administration who ignored subpoenas from Congress is another clear example.

The announcement by Harry Reid prior to Mr. Burris' appointment that any appointment by Governor Blagojevich would be unacceptable is clealry such a failure, as is the ongoing efforts to block him from serving. It is true that the Senate could probably prevent him from ever being seated by stating an intention to evaluate his credentials prior to doing so, and then putting off the evaluation. It could also make a determination that he is not qualified because he is not an Illinois resident, not a U.S. citizen, or not over thirty years of age. The Constitution vests the power to judge the qualifications of Senators in the Senate, and it could be argued that such a determination would not be reviewable by the Supreme Court. Either way, the Senate would be intentionally thwarting the clear provisions of the Constitution each senator swears to uphold, in an ironic effort to show that they are honest and honorable people who do not tolerate the kind of corruption Governor Blagojevich is accussed of.

I can only assume that Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership did not believe that Governor Blagojevich would make a senate appointment after having been arrested for trying to sell the vacant senate seat. The Governor's decision to do so is arguably another example of an action that thwarts the spirit of the Constitution while adhering to its technical language, as the founding fathers certainly did not contemplate the auctioning off of vacant senate seats by corrupt governors. Now, however, it is time for the Senate to admit that Blagojevich called their bluff, and seat Mr. Burris. To do otherwise would set a precedent for excluding legally appointed(or elected) Senators or Representatives, when the majority does not like the appointor or the selectee. In this case, the appointee is disliked because of pending corruption charges, in the next, it may be due to an unpopular view held by the selectee.