Obama and the Blagojevich-Chicago Machine Scandal

John Kass explains Barack Obama to Paul Gigot:

But the larger issue is that I think--there was a desire by the high priests of the Beltway media to sort of see him as--I call it the Mr. Tumnus effect, the gentle fawn from the "Narnia" books and movies. They wanted to see him as somehow gentle and pristine and separate from the machine. But if you look at it, he made all--every time the machine, the Daley machine, wanted him to endorse some--either crook or questionable thug or political thug, he did so.

He has people from the Chicago Daley machine working with him. Rahm Emanuel is most often identified nationally as a Clinton guy, but actually he's a Daley guy. David Axelrod is Daley's, what I call mouthpiece. So he has people in place around him that come directly out of this culture. And he's participated in it, if not as a corrupt person--I'm not saying he's corrupt--but there are different levels of corruption, Paul. And one is, I guess, to present yourself as a reformer when historically every time you have a chance to challenge the corruption, you look away from it or pretend it doesn't exist or avoid it. And the larger issue's not Obama, because Obama's just a politician.

An interesting interview.