The rest of us might well think about all we still don’t know.

Even if the former governor is convicted, and prosecutors dutifully proclaim how the jury has sent a “message” to the community, let’s leaven either our hope or cynicism with amodesty about all that remains fuzzy in this nationally-dissected case — at least publicly.

For starters, there are the 1,001 questions one couldn’t ask the former governor because he didn’t testify. One involves his lofty claims for selecting a successor to the United States Senate seat once occupied by President Barack Obama.

The day after the presidential election, Mr. Blagojevich spoke of Mr. Obama’s win affirming the legacies of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln; the need for a superb successor; and his lack of interest in the job. How did that square with wiretaps that very day in which he badmouthed Obama as a “demigod;” used an expletive when referring to the vacancy as “golden” and said he might pick himself?

There are the conversations we’ll never hear, perhaps some that reflect well on him. If we could hear the hundreds of hours, we might combine them with former President Richard M. Nixon’s secret White House tapes for a complete Nixon-Blagojevich Audio Library. It would constitute a primer on American government, high and low.

We know that co-defendant Robert Blagojevich and his younger brother had a strained relationship. We really don’t know the whys from the mature ex-Army platoon leader who has known Rod longer than anybody.

The absence of Christopher Kelly, a close confidante and chief fundraiser for Mr. Blagojevich, deprived us. Indicted three times and convicted twice, he was to go on trial with Mr. Blagojevich. Not long after telling the news media, “My life is over,” he killed himself.

Having declined to flip for the government, imagine the secrets he took to the grave. What did he know that we don’t?

As WTTW’s Elizabeth Brackett reminded me, without testimony from United States Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., we wonder about a Loop restaurant meeting he held with Ragu Nayak and Rajinder Bedi, Jackson loyalists who allegedly angled to give Blago money if he picked their guy for the Senate. Is it a tale of benign blue-skying or illegal conniving?

Then there’s no Tony Rezko, the convicted swindler and once-respected developer deemed so untrustworthy that neither side beckoned him from prison.

The defense sees Mr. Rezko as a slimy manipulator who was putty in Rod’s hands. But his absence leaves much unclear, including details on a 2003 $10 billion state bond issuance to bolster pension funds.

It’s the sort of under-the-radar deal that we in the media rarely mention or understand. We’re left hanging as to what was going on between Mr. Rezko and Robert Kjellander, a Springfield-based lobbyist and former Republican National Committee treasurer.

For the bond deal, the Democratic governor picked the now-defunct Bear Stearns, whose lobbyist was Mr. Kjellander, as lead underwriter. It was part of what the government said was a kickback scheme to enrich the governor and his aides, and which did enrich his wife, Patti Blagojevich, via her close-to-no-show job with Mr. Rezko’s real estate firm.

It remains unclear how and why Mr. Kjellander got the business; what he did for an $809,133.96 fee from Bear Stearns; and why he wasn’t either a witness, perhaps even a co-defendant, given the prosecution’s unsubtle portrayal of a slimy deal.

After a phone conversation between Mr. Kjellander and Mr. Rezko, the Republican gave $600,000 of the fee as part of a no-collateral loan to a Rezko chum he didn’t know. The friend, who testified with immunity, kicked back $460,000 to creditors of Mr. Rezko, who then started paying Patti $12,000 a month.

Mr. Kjellander, who was not charged with any illegality, got his money back with interest. But how did he get the business in the first place and why no due diligence before loaning to an unknown running a faltering pizza business? He declined comment.

Especially frustrated over Mr. Rezko, I sought wisdom from a prominent local political scientist, Mayor Richard M. Daley. He told me that he had one lengthy dinner withMr. Rezko and came to an instant conclusion.

“Cuckoo,” he told me.

Maybe some things are clearer than I realize.

“Four months, four felony charges” is how he concisely summarized to me his state of jeopardy created by stepping into the ethical La Brea Tar Pit of his younger brother’s political life.

The four months were in 2008, at the behest of a dying mother’s wishes, assisting as a fund-raiser to a brother with whom relations were and remain strained. The time led to charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit extortion, attempted extortion and conspiracy to commit bribery.

It was coincidental that I watched a State Department briefing on C-Span the other night, with the chief spokesman criticizing leaks of 92,000 pages of classified documents on the Afghanistan war. Robert smiled when I noted how the spokesman had cautioned about putting undue stock in often-uncorroborated “field reports.”

It was akin to a term Robert used when testifying about accusations that he was a middleman for his younger brother, Rod, in corrupt dealings with prospective campaign donors. He defended himself as passing along “field information” on a law firm lobbyist’s annoyance over not getting state bond business.

“Let’s be realistic,” Robert said in a government cross-examination. “In the real world, you’re out there raising money and people come to you.”

In a distinction at the heart of the whole trial, he said that he never mixed fund-raising and state business. Yet he conceded that “sometimes they bleed over,” or unavoidably blend, which is why he is in hot water.

In his fleeting role as a fund-raiser for his brother, then the governor, he testified, it was inevitable that people sought him out for everything from their preference for a new United States senator to getting a nephew’s résumé into the right hands.

Robert, 54, who spent his postmilitary career as a banker and businessman, mostly in Tennessee, is a more mature and centered fellow than his brother and exhibits none of Rod’s Clintonian insecurity, marked by the preening need to please strangers. He’d probably be a poor fund-raiser, given a clear impatience with fools — including his occasionally unresponsive brother, according to testimony — and a limited reservoir of overt insincerity.

The government case turns partly on a wiretapped conversation in which Rod tells Robert to inform a prospective donor, who wants Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr. picked for Barack Obama’s Senate seat, that he must “deliver something tangible up front.” Rod is also heard cautioning Robert to “assume everybody’s listening, the whole world’s listening” prior to the meeting with that donor, which never took place.

When the government pressed Robert on the witness stand, he exhibited the mild peevishness of a self-confident military guy not accustomed to a skeptical grilling. “You’re about to tell me,” he said at one point with a slight sneer at a prosecutor who asked what Robert felt was a rhetorical question.

But it’s clear that Robert deemed absurd the Jesse Jr.-for-Senate notion and didn’t take as credible its proponents’ claims that $6 million would be raised for Rod if “Junior” were picked. Robert called Mr. Jackson’s backers Keystone Kops and their central player a goofball who “was all over the place,” prompting Robert not to pass to his brother all the relevant “field information.”

Robert got caught in a slimy system, aiding a desperate brother in the search for lucre. Even by the government’s version, his allegedly suspect acts on Rod’s behalf pale compared with the heavy lifting of crud by chums already convicted or who testified with immunity.

We spoke about the vast federal wiretaps and my belief that politicians on all levels should knock on wood that the government isn’t listening to them. He told me that there is even a wiretap that catches the sounds of his son’s urinating in a bathroom.

There’s a certain irony in a military veteran — one who ran a platoon overseeing three Pershing nuclear missiles in West Germany during the high-stakes craziness of the cold war — grousing about undue power.

But as the newly released field reports on Afghanistan suggest, even the best-intentioned people can be undermined by a failed mission and untrustworthy allies.

Since the indictment of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, little has intrigued me as much as what’s on wiretapped conversations between the profane coosome twosome of Blago and Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff and Blago’s successor as a North Side congressman.

The Hail Mary decision by the Blagojevich defense to rest without presenting witnesses means we may never relish two voracious political practitioners parrying one another. One known topic — filling the United States Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama — would be worth most any price of admission.

Imagine being at the next table this weekend at Gibson’s, or another celebrity eatery, if managerial chums Lou Piniella of the Cubs and Tony LaRussa of the Cardinals break bread and gossip. You just know hot-head pitcher Carlos Zambrano would come up. And what Piniella thinks of the team’s new owners.

Even assuming the laser-sharp Rahm was on guard, what did he say about political neophyte Valerie Jarrett, Tammy Duckworth, Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Lisa Madigan — or her father, the powerful Mike Madigan — or even Blago himself as the Senate selection? How did Rahm deal with his by-then-radioactive, self-pitying friend who knew he was under investigation?

“The world is passing me by, and I’m stuck in this job as governor. I’m stuck,” is one wiretapped Blago declaration to advisers.

The talk would be salty, even if Rahmbo believes that image of him is outdated, as Naftali Bendavid, a Wall Street Journal reporter says. Mr. Bendavid’s book, “The Thumpin’: How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution,” chronicled his leadership of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2006 midterm election.

“He always tells people he loves them,” Mr. Bendavid recalled of Mr. Emanuel. He’d sign-off calls by mixing a particular expletive with “I love you.”

Indeed, he has hung up on me, then called back — “Hey, buddy, it’s Rahm” — in the same 24-hour cycle.

The decision not to have Mr. Blagojevich testify “was wise but it’s left all of us feeling cheated,” said Paul Meincke of WLS-TV, Channel 7.

Still, we can dream about a how a hypothetical discussion on the Senate vacancy might have sounded on tape, with requisite editing and euphemisms:

Rahm: Hey, buddy, what’s up? Sphincter muscles getting tight? Who’s the next of your guys to wind up in an orange jumpsuit?

Blago: What do I get if I pick Jarrett?

Rahm: Passover at my house.

Blago: You gotta be kidding, you [dear fellow]. What about Health and Human Services?

Rahm: Medicare claims adjuster in [wondrous] Indianapolis.

Blago: What about Jesse [Jackson] Jr. What do I get?

Rahm: The [prestigious] Stupid Award of 2008. Jack the Ripper would have a better chance in the general.

Well, even if we never hear the genuine tapes, we do know that by the late fall of 2008, their real worlds were turning.

Blago had been a mentor of sorts to Rahm, with his 2002 election as governor paving the way for Rahm’s taking over his Congressional seat. Some Blago staff members stuck with Rahm, and the two spoke regularly, and worked on policy matters.

But they grew apart, as many saw the governor as a lazy poseur. Meanwhile, a cauldron of grievances was bubbling beneath the Blago surface. There’s that “I’m stuck” comment. An African-American politician from his backyard, for whom he didn’t have much respect, was going to be president, while his old buddy Mr. Emanuel was going to run the White House.

But the governor had made his own bed. Consider this small anecdote from Mike Flannery, the longtime political reporter now with WFLD-Channel 32: In 2007, early in Senator Obama’s seeming quixotic presidential quest, he told Mr. Flannery he had not heard from his state’s governor in 18 months!

In a few weeks, Mr. Obama will be here to raise money for the Democratic candidate for Senate, Alexi Giannoulias, whose name never came up in 2008. Rahm can pick and choose his next career as the world is passing the former governor by. Closing arguments are Monday.

By rich coincidence, the trial of Mr. Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor, took a climactic recess, in which it was revealed he would not testify, just as prosecutors elsewhere in the federal courthouse were completing their case alleging crooked hiring by the former commissioner of the Chicago Streets and Sanitation Department.

Both suggested how corruption and politics can mingle so easily, the average citizens might wonder what’s legal, and what’s not. They also suggested distinct commonalities.

At the Blagojevich trial, co-defendant Robert Blagojevich, the ex-Marine brother and seeming adult in the family, testily rebutted implications that he sought to assist Anthony Freveletti. Mr. Freveletti is a former Blagojevich administration official who is director of legislative affairs, or political fixer, at the law firm of Chapman and Cutler, and also is a son-in-law of the former governor’s chief administrative assistant.

Wiretaps by the Federal Bureau of Investigation caught Mr. Freveletti, who is not charged with illegality, fuming about his firm’s not getting state bond business in return for his loyal service to Blago as a “bundler,” or fundraiser assembling multiple contributions. Law firms crave bond work because it brings fat payoffs for modest labor, a tidy hallmark of the pinstriped patronage that pays many a mortgage on the North Shore and Gold Coast.

Robert Blagojevich said Mr. Freveletti was “nibbling around, trying to get a state contract for a contribution,” but refused to call the outreach an illegal quid pro quo.

In communicating Mr. Freveletti’s frustration to the governor, Robert said he was simply passing along “field information.”

“Here’s a guy with expectations of getting state business and he didn’t get it,” Robert Blagojevich said he told his brother.

With the unexpected break in the Blagojevich action, I watched as Mr. Sanchez was pilloried by Manish Shah, an assistant United States attorney. Mr. Sanchez’s conviction last year was overturned due to belatedly-disclosed kinkiness involving a government witness.

Mr. Sanchez not only ran the city’s biggest department but was first among equals in the Hispanic Democratic Organization, a group crucial to Mayor Richard M. Daley’s political success. The organization’s army also provided help to many other candidates.

Both the original case and retrial focused on apparently blatant illegalities in steering jobs to members of the Hispanic organization, and on heeding the dictates of City Hall’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

The system included phony test grades for applicants and pro forma signing by Mr. Sanchez of a court-mandated declaration that states: “I understand that political considerations may, in no manner, enter into decisions to hire employees for the City of Chicago.”

“Al Sanchez said he worked within the system,” Mr. Shah told the jury, which would quickly convict Mr. Sanchez the next day. “That’s the problem. He worked within a corrupt system.”

On the surface, a universe separates the quest for multibillion-dollar bond business and Mr. Sanchez’s condoning false ratings and lying about interviews of candidates for streetlight repairman jobs. But maybe not.

The unifying thread is the quest to obtain, retain and exercise power and reward loyalists. The goodies in the Blagojevich trial represent higher stakes — including a United States Senate vacancy — but it’s still about money, control and favoritism.

The tricky thing is differentiating between what’s legal and illegal, given the key recent United States Supreme Court ruling that one must show an explicit link between a political contribution and a governmental act. If there’s no explicit quid pro quo, there’s no crime.

The court long ago made subtle, non-explicit forms of bribery legal and, in a recent decision on campaign finance, ditched many limits on donations. The supposed “free speech” right that influence-seekers’ exercise via their checkbooks is now expanded.

It’s why the United States Attorney’s Office must seriously consider an initial public offering and allow us to buy shares. Whether the goal is be a United States senator or streetlight repairman, the combination of human nature and money assures a growing business for the office for decades. Cha-ching.

The office of David Doig, a real estate developer, in an 11-story building just west of the Bishop Ford Expressway at 111th Street, affords a view of economic disarray fit for an urban archaeologist — and the contours of Chicago’s consumer future.

The area is de-industrialized and distressed, with little to see beyond billboards, a dilapidated frontage road, 200 acres of overgrown weeds and the old Pullman railroad car plant and its planned community that had been conceived as a utopia in the 1800s, with its own schools, hotel, library and theaters.

The Pullman plant is not associated with worker dreams now, but instead with an 1894 strike that occurred after George Pullman cut wages 28 percent. President Grover Cleveland ordered in the United States Army, and 13 strikers were killed.

Students of current affairs, including Mr. Doig, know the 200 acres as the just-approved future home of a 145,000-square-foot Wal-Mart SuperCenter. He’s the developer, and, as he looked at the Far South Side neighborhood from his office, he said, “It’s not just a food desert here; it’s a retail desert.”

Stores like Jewel and Dominick’s used traditional indexes of population density and median family income and decided to stay away from the neighborhood or to leave it. That reluctance opened the door for Wal-Mart here and in the West Side Austin neighborhood, where a branch has been since 2006. The company plans stores in more retail-heavy neighborhoods and it may make other merchants nervous, given its vertically integrated invasive essence.

Wal-Mart, as Mr. Doig explained, looks beyond a location’s one- or-two mile radius and assesses access from expressways, drive-time data and proximity to public transit. For the Pullman store, most likely to open in 2012, it figures three-quarters of the customers could come from outside the neighborhood — from the south suburbs and northwest Indiana.

Another little-understood reality comes from Paul Vogel, a Chicago retail analyst. “Big cities are understored,” Mr. Vogel said. “We don’t have enough stores in Chicago and are losing significant sales-tax dollars.”

A city the size of Chicago, understored? Wal-Mart said credit card purchases show that $500 million of its suburban sales come from city residents. Over all, Mr. Vogel estimates that city people spend $1 billion yearly on goods (not groceries) in the suburbs.

Wal-Mart needs the city. Having conquered the suburbs, the chain sees its future dependent on urban growth.

In a phone chat, Mayor Richard M. Daley, a Wal-Mart supporter, bemoaned business lost to “Palos, Stickney, Evergreen Park.” He wondered why labor didn’t organize to stop low-paying big-box stores in those places instead of waging a battle in the city, including huge anti-Daley spending in the 2007 aldermanic elections.

The tussle over the Pullman store, and Wal-Mart in general, is a labor-management Rorschach test. Substitute “Wal-Mart” for inkblots and responses are quick, visceral and revealing. Some people drive many miles to exploit bargains at the stores; others won’t deign to give the company a dollar because they can’t shake the image of an aggressively anti-union company.

Say “Target” and you think urban, cool and classy. Say “Wal-Mart,” and some will think rural, brutish and downscale. I asked a Teamster lawyer why unions hadn’t fended off Target, which has comparable wage levels, and nonunionized work forces.

“Wal-Mart’s the goliath; they set the standards,” he replied. “Target is tiny by comparison.”

That scale explains why key unionists, including Keith Kelleher of the Service Employees International Union and Jorge Ramirez, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, found solace in the final Pullman deal — an $8.75 starting hourly rate, with a minimum 40-cent increase after a year.

“It’s something to build on,” said Ron Powell, leader of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents 34,000 Jewel and Dominick’s workers.

Perhaps. Future Wal-Mart inroads could threaten the comfortable middle-class existence of city members of the food workers’ union, who can earn upward of $20 an hour.

And if the city is “understored,” the future is also found in long downbeat Uptown, where a Target store opens July 25 at Broadway and Montrose Avenues, adjacent to an existing Aldi, the German-owned discount grocer.

On Thursday, consumers didn’t mind Aldi’s austerity — the private-label goods in boxes, the paucity of salespeople, the need to bring one’s own bag. It’s all about prices, in many cases much lower than the ones a few blocks away at Jewel.

It’s also what Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian economist, called the “creative destruction” of capitalism.

Even in our lovely neighborhood north of Wrigley Field, crime is depressingly unavoidable. In recent days, there have been two dozen crimes, including at least three shootings, a car theft, a street assault, a narcotics arrest and an act of pet brutality as an owner apparently beat the stuffing out of his dog in full view of a passerby.

I’ve not only been victimized by a garage theft, in which our car radio-CD player was stolen, but I’ve also been victimized by someone who sawed off the catalytic converter of our Jeep Cherokee parked in front of our house. Catalytic converters of a certain vintage included platinum, which crooks can sell for $70 and more, and their theft has been rampant in recent years.

Then came an e-mail from John Willner, a 19th District police lieutenant.

Lt. Willner and colleagues in the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy program scoured the Internet for a set of profoundly simple crime-avoidance tips attributed to a security consultant, a criminology professor and convicted burglars interviewed for a book, “Burglars on the Job.”

The things a burglar supposedly won’t tell you include:

“Sometimes, I carry a clipboard. Sometimes, I dress like a lawn guy and carry a rake. I do my best to never, ever look like a crook.”

“The two things I hate most: loud dogs and nosey neighbors.”

“I’ll break a window to get in, even if it makes a little noise. If your neighbor hears one loud sound, he’ll stop what he’s doing and wait to hear it again. If he doesn’t hear it again, he’ll just go back to what he was doing. It’s human nature.”

“I’m not complaining, but why would you pay all that money for a fancy alarm system and leave your house without setting it?”

“Avoid announcing your vacation on your Facebook page. It’s easier than you think to look up your address.”

“Of course I look familiar. I was just here last week cleaning your carpets, painting your shutters, or delivering your new refrigerator.”

“Yes, I really do look for newspapers piled up on the driveway, and I might leave a pizza flyer in your front door to see how long it takes for you to remove it.”

“A good security company alarms the window over the sink. And the windows on the second floor, which often access the master bedroom and your jewelry. It’s not a bad idea to put motion detectors up there, too.”

“Do you really think I won’t look in your sock drawer? I always check dresser drawers, the bedside table, and the medicine cabinet.”

“You’re right: I won’t have enough time to break into that safe where you keep your valuables. But if it’s not bolted down, I’ll take it with me.”

“Hey, thanks for letting me use the bathroom when I was working in your yard last week. While I was in there, I unlatched the back window to make my return a little easier.”

“Loud TV or radio can be a better deterrent than the best alarm system. If you’re reluctant to leave your TV on while you’re out of town, you can buy a $35 device that works on a timer and stimulates the flickering glow of a real television (find it at faketv.com).”

“Wow, that was delightfully breezy!” said Adrian Holovaty, creator of Chicago-based Everyblock.com, an MSNBC-owned service that provides daily, neighborhood crime updates in Chicago and 15 other cities. “It was pretty useful and interesting, I thought.”

The 19th District’s e-mail to residents included other advice, generated by the district, that’s both obvious and too often forgotten. A “Criminals Love to Go Window Shopping” flier reminds us not to leave anything vaguely valuable visible in your car, such as GPS devices, laptops, cell phones, clothes, bags, purses or tools.

We should take heed, lest we be left with “96 Tears” (Question Mark & The Mysterians).

Mr. Starr, please meet Rod R. Blagojevich, a kindred spirit when it comes to dealing with adversity.

Testimony in his trial reveals that the former Illinois governor wasn’t big on bad news, either, hiding in a bathroom when his budget director was on his way to discuss the state’s complex, debt-filled fiscal status.

There is a lesson to be learned: if you’re a coward, at least opt for hot and cold running water, as did Blago.

As a self-styled student of American history, Mr. Blagojevich would have a hard time comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy or even Gerald Ford when it comes to dealing with duress.

Presidents Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt showed inspiring ample moral courage in the face of difficulty, especially war. J.F.K. faced up to, and took responsibility for, the botched Bay of Pigs invasion (his poll ratings rose as a result). Mr. Ford faced the tricky pardon of his humiliated predecessor, Richard Nixon, with grace and nerve.

On the personal side, as historian Richard Norton Smith pointed out, Lincoln responded to the 1862 death of his son by taking an hour of private time each Thursday (the day he died), mourning and finding solace in reading Shakespearean tragedies. The death, which devastated his wife, arguably transformed him by linking him to all those who had lost sons in the war.

Before he became president, Mr. Norton noted, Teddy Roosevelt famously suffered the death of his mother and wife on the same day. He quit politics and headed to the exotic Badlands to heal, coming back less the patrician he had been and more the democratic hero he would become.

On the other hand, some presidents were given to Blago-like avoidance. After surgery for colon cancer, Ronald Reagan actually declared, “I didn’t have cancer. Something inside of me that had cancer in it, and it was removed.”

David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers University, cited how President Nixon erupted at his aides who brought him bad news. “And all of them — Henry Kissinger, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman,” he said, “became fawning yes-men.”

The Nixon culture is akin to the fawning, intellectually dishonest culture revealed in the Blagojevich trial. It’s probably not unusual throughout most institutions, especially at the highest levels of corporate America.

James B. Stewart, a terrific financial journalist and author, finds top executives for whom there’s no bad news. They are the “power of positive thinking” people, with the glass never half empty. However, there are those who “ignore it, or discourage people from ever telling them,” he said. “They go into denial. There are lots of these people.”

The ones known for confronting and dealing with bad news in an honest manner include Jack Welch, the retired General Electric boss. But people like that are in the minority.

A great tale about leadership comes via Robert Monks and Nell Minow, who started Lens Investment Management — a self-styled “activist investor” — and The Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm. It involves Mr. Monks’ self-nominated, 1991 candidacy for the board of directors at Sears Roebuck back when, well, Sears was Sears.

For Mr. Monks and Ms. Minow, Sears epitomized corporate arrogance and aloofness to shareholders. The late Edward A. Brennan, notes Ms. Minow, was not just chief executive and chairman of the board but chief executive of retail operations, the company’s “worst performing division, reporting to himself.” He chaired the nominating committee that picked board members, and was a trustee for the employee stock plan.

“It was like making Obama president, chief justice of the Supreme Court, Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House,” Ms. Minow said.

Mr. Monks’ candidacy failed, but not before he got a meeting with Mr. Brennan. He was met in the lobby of the then-Sears Tower by a top official, who would escort him to Mr. Brennan’s office. Mr. Monks recalled for his biographer a tense elevator ride and, finally, the executive breaking the silence as the elevator doors opened.

“This is the first time bad news has gotten above the 77th floor,” he said.

For all of Mr. Brennan’s faults, at least he did not flee to a bathroom.

The guests are players for Manchester United, perhaps the planet’s most famous sports team. Consider the potency of the New York Yankees and the celebrity of individual stars like Derek Jeter. Multiply that dozens of times, and you’ve got Man U, a quasi-United Nations of all-stars led by a legendary coach, Scotsman Sir Alex Ferguson.

By some estimates, the team has more than 300 million fans worldwide. There are 1.1 billion homes in 227 nations with access to its games; a core of 88 million who watch them weekly during their long season; a Web site with 60 million views a month, with 70 percent from outside Britain; and jersey sales exceeding 6 million a year, with 2.2 million licensed and the rest bootlegged.

They will arrive here on the heels of the World Cup finale Sunday in South Africa, in support of Aon, a 36,000-employee, Chicago-based company that operates in 120 countries. Most Chicagoans don’t really know what Aon does — it’s a risk manager, the No. 1 insurance and reinsurance broker in the world — even if they know the name adorns a famous, white-granite-clad skyscraper. (A big competitor is Willis Re, whose name now adorns an even taller building we all know.)

“Aon” will be emblazoned across the Manchester United jersey for the next four years in what has been reported — neither side will confirm — to be a roughly $125 million deal. As Phil Clement, Aon’s global chief marketing officer, said on Thursday, “This is a significant event in bringing our brand together and putting Aon on a global stage.”

Aon is candid about how it has not yet “pierced into one of the most recognized brands,” as Mr. Clement put it, even if it is top dog in its industry and a player in the civic and political life of Chicago. “That’s what we’re trying to do,” he said.

The company had spent several years trying to come up with a sponsorship vehicle to put it on a global stage in a cost-effective way. It came up dry.

Then American International Group, ensnarled by a liquidity crisis, federal bailout and disputed bonus payments to executives, did not renew its sponsorship deal with Manchester United. Yes, in the middle of A.I.G.’s public relations disaster, Man U was wearing its logo.

The team was already plotting a better jersey deal, studying companies with a desire to expand in emerging markets, notably in China and India. It singled out such firms and sent their chief executives a fancy package with a formal pitch brochure — and a mock Man U jersey with the company’s logo.

Nobody knew who else had been solicited. But Aon knew that its marketing and branding needed more cohesion. Sponsoring bullfighting, auto racing, dog sledding and dragon-boat races was nice but didn’t do the trick. A soccer deal could help unify an amalgam of hundreds of smaller companies assembled by Patrick G. Ryan, Aon’s founder and retired executive chairman.

Aon did its homework. It could pool much of its existing sponsorship money and double the impact of all its existing marketing efforts via a Man U deal, according to an internal assessment shared with executives. Beyond marketing efficiency, it said, Man U would assist recognition in “our greatest growth markets like China, Korea, India, the Middle East and Latin America.”

The assessment conceded that “in these high-growth emerging markets the Aon brand is not yet established.” Further, “we are not yet to our marketplace what Goldman Sachs is to investment advisory services, Accenture is to technology services and outsourcing, and McKinsey is to consulting.”

But a critique of the impact on sales, return on investment and the increase in A.I.G.’s own business and recognition as a result of a Man U link led to an against-the-grain decision to invest big in a recession.

So even if you don’t recognize Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic, Edwin van der Sar or Ji-sung Park ambling about town at the start of a United States tour — they’ll practice at cozy Toyota Park in Bridgeview — rest assured that they now have a primal Chicago connection.

Beyond signs promoting the thousands of road projects nationwide that have come to symbolize the stimulus package in action, many smaller programs are financed without fanfare, giving careers — and livelihoods — a shot at making it through an unforgiving recession.

William Spencer, a businessman, will open Daybridge School, his private pre-kindergarten-through-third-grade institution in a 30,000-square-foot facility that used to be a racquetball club in an office park. Another group originally planned to turn the space into a school but went out of business, allowing Mr. Spencer to pick up the property at a foreclosure sale.

He said that his encounter with “Put Illinois to Work,” a mostly temporary jobs program now financing 17,000 jobs, was a coincidence. “I ran into another employer with a kid coming here,” he said, “heard about the program and looked at the state Web site.”

Mr. Spencer met the stimulus program’s criteria, so the state will pick up the $10-an-hour cost for 15 positions for the previously unemployed, including teaching assistants, receptionists and clerks. That money runs out Oct. 1.

“I could not possibly have hired those 15 without this help,” said Mr. Spencer, who plans to charge tuition of $18,000 a year. He said more students have already enrolled than he can handle. When the federal subsidy runs out, he hopes that the ability to attract and accommodate more students — he’s aiming at the children of black professionals — will allow him to keep employing them.

Then there are projects like as the Rosa Parks Apartments in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. The development comprises 94 affordable housing units in eight buildings, and results from $10 million given to the nonprofit Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation. The private investor market in such housing has collapsed, said Joy Arguete, the company’s executive director.

Ms. Arguete created 109 jobs, including 55 in construction, with permanent spots remaining in the $35,000-to-$50,000 range. Those include a “green resident organizer,” Liz Andujar, who ensures that tenants understand the project’s green elements and, heeding the Obama administration push for sustainable communities, how best to use public transit and recycling.

Christy Webber Landscapes in Chicago uses “Put Illinois to Work” money to train about 16 people to help the company design, build and maintain landscapes. These jobs, too, pay $10 an hour and last until Oct. 1. But Ms. Webber is delighted to give so many unemployed people a chance and might keep at least half of them.

“The idea is to get these people in and hit on some winners,” Ms. Webber said. “It’s always a goal of mine to hire local people and change their lives.”

For sure, the stimulus money also created far-better-paying union jobs. For example, Lorig Construction of Chicago put 177 people to work on five projects resulting from a $26 million stimulus grant, notably construction on a new retaining wall and a ramp extension on Interstate 94/90 from Hubbard’s Cave to Interstate 290.

But my favorite project involves a mere $20,000.

It went to Little Theatre on the Square in rural Sullivan, Ill., about 160 miles south of Chicago. The organization serves 55,000 patrons a year with a 418-seat theater, 32 classes in dance and drama and outreach to schools. As music and art keep getting axed from school budgets nationwide, Little Theatre on the Square has become the arts bastion of Moultrie County.

The money allows the organization to retain Heather Doré Johnson, 28, an actress who is the education director. Ms. Johnson teaches classes, directs the children’s programming, writes grant requests, hires teachers, oversees costume design and handles marketing. She runs a “Broadway Boot Camp” for 80 young people from around the state.

Let economic historians give the final grade to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. John Stephens, the Sullivan theater’s executive director, has a more targeted reason to be grateful.

Speaking from an office a block away from cornfields and a world away from Washington think-tank debates on the stimulus, Mr. Stephens said, “It’s just a godsend to be able to keep Heather.”

The former president craved pressing the flesh wherever spectators were standing. Similarly, these days the former Illinois governor is working the courthouse cafeteria like a hyperkinetic maître d’. Given their insecurities, they both feed off, and need, the affirmation of strangers.

If you’re standing with your plastic dish in hand, surveying the offerings — the Caesar salad, a mayonnaise-laced tub of tuna — you may be unable to avoid Blago.

He even served as uninvited hallway greeter Tuesday afternoon when a naturalization ceremony concluded in the courtroom next to the one where his trial was taking place. On one of the proudest days of their lives, men and women who had just taken the oath as new citizens unexpectedly found themselves shaking hands with the ebullient celebrity defendant.

Thus, in one room were the hopes, dreams and ideals of American democracy. In the next were the wiretapped realities that might make the Statue of Liberty cry.

The details are so rich, there should be a pool reporter for the American Political Science Association. Every Ph.D. candidate should be steeped in this case, so as not to proceed to a lifetime in academe with even a smidgen of naïveté.

There should also be a pool reporter for all political journalists since the evidence unveils so much of what we dream of learning about the system and its players. All of our rank –and often erroneous — speculation and conspiracy theories now confront the corroborating truth.

It was always one thing to be suspect of Blago’s intoning righteously about a “Chinese wall” separating government and his fund-raising. It’s another to see confirmation that it was folderol and, even if not illegal, how much of his time was spent on tactical plotting that melded the two. And more.

He says in a vulgarity laced recording that he is not going to do the bidding of Senators Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Robert Menendez, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and will not pick Lisa Madigan to fill President Obama’s old Senate seat, since picking her would damage him with his black constituency.

How might one disagree with his political calculus? He wasn’t going to anger a core constituency unless he could get something big in return. In this case, he would seek a deal in which Michael J . Madigan, the Illinois House speaker and Lisa’s father, agreed to a big capital program, expanded health care and no tax increase.

The latter was never going to happen, as underscored to the then-governor by Tom Balanoff, the Chicago leader of the Service Employees International Union. Mr. Balanoff’s testimony suggested he had mixed apple-polishing of Blago with tough love.

The apple-polishing included telling Blago that his off-the-wall notion about exiting office to run a union-sponsored, tax-exempt nonprofit to lobby on health care was a good one. The tough love was telling him that the idea of the politically radioactive Blago winding up in the Obama cabinet was nuts.

The unionist acted with a sense of entitlement and highlighted another reality, namely how money talks. The S.E.I.U. was a huge contributor to Mr. Blagojevich. If Mr. Balanoff wanted a meeting, presto, he got it.

And if Mr. Balanoff didn’t like what he heard, he raised the prospect in at least one conversation with the former governor of withholding his union’s ample purse in the next election — in this case, if Blago didn’t quickly pick Valerie Jarrett as Mr. Obama’s successor.

Mr. Balanoff, whose friendship with Mr. Obama dates to the early 1990s, initially desired Representative Jan Schakowsky for the seat. Yanking his union’s contributions would be perfectly legal, of course, but it also constituted a slice of the realpolitik that has Blago sitting at the defense table.

If the curtain is being raised on prospects we only guessed at, it is also unveiling notions that seem to be beyond even late-night barroom grousing by cynical reporters.

For example, there’s word that Blago theorized about how he would justify appointing himself to the Senate — by pointing to his inability to get much done in the state as governor.

Having worked in Washington, I know Capitol Hill as an avenue to failure. I’d never quite known it as a reward for it. Then, again, he did ultimately pick Roland Burris.