Are "Great Men" also Bad?

By Gregory A. Hammer
TMH Editor

As if president-elect Barack Obama did not already have enough on his plate; what with the state of the economy, the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the continuing politics of the bailout package(s), trying to keep the Big Three auto-makers afloat, naming his cabinet, monitoring the last 50 days of the Bush administration, and now -- today -- comes this: Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is accused of trying to sell Obama's available senate seat to -- apparently -- the highest bidder. What IS this, political E-Bay?

Blagojevich was arrested on graft charges Tuesday, and also charged with threatening to strong-arm the Chicago Tribune company by withholding state funds in an attempt to bribe and coerce the media giant into firing some of the paper's editors who had been critical of Blagojevich's political "guidance" during his time as governor. In a move not-so-surprising-in-this-day-and-age, a federal judge -- ON Tuesday -- granted Blagojevich release on his own recognizance. Even with as much political corruption as we've had lately, it's apparently still not possible to keep a politician behind bars for more than a few hours.

Suffice to say that the political corruption over the course of the last eight years has been particularly atrocious. More specifically, the political corruption which has taken place in Chicago -- where three former governors have been indicted and convicted of crimes of corruption within the last thirty-five years -- pretty much mirrors the present-day political side-show.

I don't know about you, but it's getting hard to keep track of the scandals taking place throughout the Washington political circuit, and at a time when our country NEEDS to be able to trust in its elected leaders...well, trust is a hard thing to come by, isn't it?

The hubris of American business men, CEOs, politicans, federal judges, governors and people in power continues to amaze me, but perhaps I should not be surprised. MSNBC's Chris Matthews echoed the oft-quoted, well-worn opinion of Lord Acton today on his syndicated show "Hardball" when he stated, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts -- absolutely." Acton's statement reflected his personal feelings-of-the-day and he expressed clearly his own issues with people in power in an 1887 letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton.

What Matthews failed to mention, and what many people may not realize, is the final part of Acton's quote...the part in his letter which reads, "Great men are almost always bad men." I'm sure it's not something in the water, and I'm not putting this on our president-elect, but Chicago definitely has a well-worn history of political corruption. Has this kind of corruption, greed and scandal simply become part of the larger political shell-game, or is it a case of ethical lightning striking over, and over, and over again upon The Windy City?

Don't look too closely at any American city these days, not unless you're willing to see something ugly. You're guaranteed to find something corrupt; something you won't like, something that's better left unseen and unknown. For those of you who thought the corruption would end with the Bush administration...well, there's still time for that to happen, but it's beginning to look like the great men in this country are "great" because they are so bad.

Our hopes for a political turn-around and an ethical rise in America's elected leaders to the point that they will actually listen, let alone lead, falls -- initially at least -- on the politician in the top spot, a man whose politics derive from Chicago. The questions remain: do great men necessarily have to be bad in order to be great? And will Obama be great, bad, or both?