The Illinois General Assembly decided that Rod Blagojevich was an unfit public official, and the members of his jury will ultimately decide if he was a law-abiding citizen. But one thing that is clear: By early November 2008, the former governor had become his own worst career planner and financial adviser.
If Blagojevich’s prevailing motivation at the time – as the prosecution claims and its witnesses corroborate – was to find a way to make as much money as quickly as possible, then wiretapped phone conversations during Tuesday’s testimony only reinforced the notion that the former governor was – as his lawyer Sam Adam Jr. proclaimed before the trial – an “idiot.”
Despite being financially strapped, Blagojevich, it seemed, had a knack for making his mission as difficult as humanly possible.
“How about Health and Human Services?” Blagojevich asks his senior aide John Harris on a Nov. 3, 2008, phone call, in which the two discussed how the then-governor could leverage soon-to-be President Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat into something for him. “Can I get that?”
Cabinet-level officials, like the Secretary of Health and Human Services, make $196,700, which was only about $26,000 more than what Blagojevich was making at the time as governor. However, it was clear from his presidential campaign that Obama was looking to make health-care reform a central priority of his administration, which meant that the role of health secretary would likely be a grueling one.
Not to mention, Blagojevich would have to go through the rough Senate confirmation process, a long hard look that helped knock out Obama’s first choice for the post, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. The job ultimately went to former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and health care went on to become an epic partisan political battle in Washington.
“There’s opportunity here,” Blagojevich told Harris. “Now I want you to think about, you know, look, I’m gonna offer in good faith to make a good, a decision for the U.S. senator but it, it, it is not coming for free. It’s gonna come, it’s gotta be good stuff for the people of Illinois and good for me. That’s what I’m looking at.”
Blagojevich also thought about sending himself to Congress.
The following morning, on Nov. 4, 2008, Blagojevich spoke by phone with his wife Patti. In a telling conversation, she informed him that U.S. senators were paid $169,300. “Or more than I make,” Rod Blagojevich said. “I don’t know,” Patti Blagojevich said. “I think you make the same, about the same. I think you make like a ($170,000).” Rod Blagojevich retorted: “No, I make one sixty.”
She called back 20 minutes later to inform her husband that he was, in fact, making $170,917 at the time. Not only that, but had he become a senator, Blagojevich would have had to buy or rent a residence in the pricey Beltway, in addition to maintaining a residence in Illinois.
Two hours later, Patti Blagojevich called back with a eureka idea: Rod should put in to become ambassador of India. He thought it might be a difficult position to get, but was intrigued.
“So the ambassador to India is some white guy right now, David C. Mulford,” Patti explained, ever so nonchalantly. Mulford, a Rockford, Ill., native, served as the ambassador to India under President George W. Bush from 2004-2009.
Prior to that, he was an executive at Credit Suisse and a long-time official in the Treasury Department. The India-US relationship is one of the most important and challenging diplomatic efforts in the U.S. State Department – right in the thick of geopolitical issues involving terrorism and nuclear weapons.
Blagojevich, however, seemed most concerned that his daughter might not find the cuisine palatable in New Delhi.
The job of U.S. Ambassador to India ultimately went to former Indiana congressman, 9/11 Commission member and Center for National Policy president, Timothy Roemer. The post has proven to be anything but a walk in the park.