An empty suit from Illinois

Steve Chapman:

Wall Street titan Bernard Madoff proved you can take an outstanding reputation and ruin it overnight. Now Roland Burris has demonstrated that even a mediocre reputation can be instantly destroyed.

Burris is the prototypical time-serving career politician who owes his success to being simultaneously ambitious and bland. He has never been one to challenge the status quo, but no one underestimates his self-esteem. The two Burris children, after all, are named Roland and Rolanda.

The result of his immodesty has been a persistent hunger for offices that most people thought beyond his abilities. He has lost races for mayor of Chicago, U.S. senator, and governor of Illinois (three times).

Burris' chief claim to fame until this week was his 12-year term as state comptroller, a job whose significance can be measured by the fact that few Illinoisans could identify the current occupant (Dan Hynes). Even among accountants, Burris left few strong impressions, but he also never gave any prosecutor grounds to indict him, which is not something Illinois voters take for granted.

When the news broke that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was trying to auction off Barack Obama's Senate seat, Burris called his behavior "appalling." After the governor appointed him to fill the vacancy, though, the onetime comptroller-for-life lost interest in the scandal. "I have no comment on what the governor's circumstance is," he demurred.

But logic has never been his strong suit. A longtime advocate of a national handgun ban, Burris organized Chicago's first Gun Turn-in Day in 1993. But when he ran for governor the following year, he admitted that he owned a handgun ("for protection,") and did not hand it over to police as he urged others to do.

"He had simply forgotten about it," his spokesman said at the time -- a claim that, if believable, suggested Burris was not exactly the model for conscientious gun ownership. "Honey, didn't I used to have a pistol around here? Any idea where it might be?"

But now he finds himself chosen for a body where his ego would be among equals. Burris attested Tuesday that he is "the most qualified person in the state of Illinois." Besides that disinterested testament, he was hailed as "a good and honest man" by a benefactor who faces not only indictment but impeachment.

U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, a fellow African-American, couldn't resist a racial appeal, urging Blagojevich's critics "to not hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer." The governor rewarded the effort by saying, "That was excellent, Bobby," which may not stand as the former Black Panther's proudest moment. The overall effect was to confirm that Roland Burris is to racism what Harriet Miers was to sexism -- not a victim.

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Liberals have always been big on gun control for others. It is a good example of just how empty Burris rhetoric maybe on subjects of current passion including his original statements about Blagojevich. His anecdotal evidence of Burris as an empty suit is persuasive, but then you should have guessed that of a Blagojevich appointment at this point.

Listening to Bobby Rush and what a lightweight racial demagogue he is mace me also really question the judgment of voters who chose him over Obama a few years ago in a primary running against Obama. Illinois continues to show a continued lack of judgment in many of its elected officials.