From the Chicago Sun-Times

Angry about Ryan mess? Consider who elected him
December 18, 2003
BY MARK BROWN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

I don't think this is what you're going to want to hear on the day that
George Ryan finally got indicted, a day that most of you consider long
overdue and would prefer to take a moment to relish.
But after listening to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and local FBI honcho
Thomas Kneir both make the observation that "the citizens of this state
deserve honest government," as opposed to what they say we got from Ryan, I
have a different take:
We got what we deserved, and we'll get it again if we don't start paying
better attention to our responsibilities as citizens and voters.
George Ryan is not an aberration. He is not, as somebody suggested to me
hopefully Wednesday, the end of a bygone era.
He may be an extreme example of our culture of political corruption, but the
culture lives on. There are many younger understudies willing and able to
extend the era. It starts at the local level and spreads upward. Ryan
learned this way of doing business in Kankakee, but others are still getting
schooled in Chicago.
Under Ryan, the U.S. attorney alleges, the State of Illinois was for sale.
You need to understand that parts of it probably still are.
We have too long tolerated a certain level of monkey business in Illinois.
We keep electing the folks that we ought to realize are capable of
dishonesty, and then we're surprised when we find out how far they've taken
the license they think we gave them. We can't always rely on federal
prosecutors to clean up after the mess we make at the ballot box.
Who was at the picture hanging?Are there major public officials in Illinois right now who should cause you
doubts? Certainly, although I will concede that we seem to have made some
improvements.
Is there an entire tier of lobbyists and consultants and other shrewd
operators still at the ready to provide a corrupting influence to any of
them? Definitely.
I'd like to tell you the ones you need to keep an eye on, but that's not
allowed under the rules of fair play.
It would certainly make sense, however, to give some thought to any elected
officials who went out of their way in Springfield just a few weeks ago to
honor Ryan during the ceremony to hang his official portrait in the state
Capitol. They probably thought they were doing the honorable thing by
standing by him. It gives you insight into their sense of values.
I know that it's not always easy being an Illinois voter.
Look at 1990, the make-or-break election of George Ryan's career when he was
elected secretary of state over Democrat Jerome Cosentino, then the state
treasurer. Now that was a choice.
During that campaign, a lot of people referred to it as choosing between "a
crook and a hack," which was funny, because not everybody agreed which was
which. Cosentino, who after the election would be indicted and convicted for
his corrupt dealings with a Chicago banker, always had my vote for being the
crook and Ryan the hack, but others saw the reverse.
Now we can look back fondly at that race as perhaps the only statewide
contest where both party nominees later would be indicted.
We could have voted for QuinnThe win allowed Ryan to ascend to an office that gave him the fund-raising
opportunities and name recognition to run for governor, but voters had a
chance to undo the damage four years later when Ryan's opponent was Pat
Quinn, an honest if flawed public official. Quinn was mowed down by the then
increasingly powerful Ryan machine.
I've already admitted fouling up along with the majority of voters in the
1998 gubernatorial campaign. I can't even remember why any more. Was I that
distracted by Glenn Poshard's moustache?
I'm not sure that we in the news media could have ever uncovered the type of
shady dealings alleged in the Ryan indictment, but I don't think we looked
closely enough either until it was too late. There were other clues over the
years the voters missed: Ryan's misuse of state bodyguards and state
aircraft, his inspectors shaking down car dealers for campaign
contributions.
It's doubtful that the public will ever get another chance to weigh in on
George Ryan, not even in a vote by a jury of his peers.
Dan Webb and his cadre of legal eagles will mount a vigorous defense, as
they say, and then Ryan the dealmaker will cut his deal to save his family
members the pain of a trial, at which many of them would have to testify
because they were alleged to be the primary beneficiaries of his graft.
Ryan's defenders may still try to chalk all this up to his benign neglect,
but that's never going to wash for anyone who looks at the pattern of
corruption that's been alleged.
Ryan is not the one who failed to mind the store. We did.
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