If Politics Were The Deciding Factor...

It dawned on me, this morning, as I read of the rollout of Blago's new book, that significant portions of my life have been lived in places where political corruption has been the norm.

Consider it. I grew up in a city that is noted in the annals of American political corruption for such sterling characters as Frank Hague (who came to my grandfather's funeral in 1938, I was told), an old school political boss who controlled the city with an iron fist. All through my life, people in that city were elected as "reform" mayors. They usually ended up corrupt and often ended up in jail.

I lived with the father of my children in a state that is also known for its corruption, and ran for statewide political office on the ticket of a governor who started off reasonably clean, but eventually only escaped a long imprisonment (he served a year) by throwing his own eldest son under the bus and saying all the bad things were the son's doing! For the record, I didn't know what he was about during the very strange year when I ran for office. You know what they say when the axe murderer is led off in chains, "I don't know...he seemed like a pretty average normal guy to me." It is also a place where a mayor went to jail for kidnapping and threatening his wife's lover, and later for corruption. Drama of Verdian proportions!

I worked for the Federal government in the Executive branch of an administration that, thankfully, was never accused of this kind of malfeasance, but had its own set of problems, and then worked in the legislative branch where I saw much of it around me on a daily basis. Suffice to say, a year there was enough.

I later worked as a lobbyist. I heard "What have you done for me lately" on a daily basis. Enough said.

So now I'm considering various options for calls. One would take me to the land of Blago, one to north Jersey, although not the part where I grew up, one to a small university town.

If politics were the deciding factor, I might be uncomfortable with a couple of these places. But it is not. Thanks be to God.