Chicago, Illinois

My hometown has been the center of the political world lately, as the hometown of president-elect Barack Obama and the base of his transition team. It has been lively, in all sorts of ways…

At O’Hare airport, the lamposts lining the roads are emblazoned with artistic flags bearing Obama’s face and bragging that he’s ‘Chicago’s own’. Radio news and traffic reports lately have reminded drivers in the Loop to be patient if they encounter the president-elect’s motorcade and not attempt to go around it ‘or pull up alongside to wave and try to congratulate Obama’, because (as one newsman only half-jokingly put it) ‘you should know there are snipers already aiming at you’.

It’s been colorful around here lately.

Then there was the weekend edition of the Chicago Sun-Times (last week) that carried a commemorative color photograph of a smiling president-elect Obama. Which seemed a little like Britain where houses have portraits of the Queen, or nation-states that have portraits of the leader….but then Chicagoans are (for the most part) very proud of their hometown boy going to the White House, and memorabilia is everywhere. Grant Park went global as Obama’s victory speech was telecast to the world and the world shared the excitement of that throng.

There’s a lot of pride in this city, and rightfully so for all that truly makes it great.

But then there’s this.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich wanted President-elect Barack Obama “to put something together…something big” in exchange for going along with Obama’s choice to fill his vacant US Senate seat, according to an FBI affidavit unsealed following the Governor’s stunning arrest.

And that’s only one of the many charges in this affadavit, a criminal complaint announced at a dramatic press conference in Chicago by the U.S. Attorney, the FBI, and other federal officials.

Another is that he attempted to ‘sell’ the Senate seat for big money. Stunning revelations, all. Rampant corruption is “disgusting” in its violation of the law and the people’s trust, and it’s on breathtaking display here at the moment.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald opened that press conference saying this is “a sad day for government”, and though we’ve been there before, this just dredges that up and at a time when this city is high with anticipation of the Obama presidency and we’re supposed to be turning a corner on politics as usual.

So it’s a good time to recall another ‘hometown boy’ (sort of) who served Illinois in politics for a long career, and nobly. The Honorable Henry Hyde was a people’s servant who spent his Congressional career as a champion of human rights and social justice, most notably in authoring and securing the Hyde Amendment.

THE National Right to Life Committee has estimated that more than 1 million Americans are alive today because of the Hyde Amendment. That’s like saying that more than a million Americans are alive today because of Henry Hyde. 

He tried to serve the people with the integrity and morality of his hero, Sir Thomas More, and I’ll never forget when he invoked More’s name on the floor of Congress.

The oath. In many ways, the case you will consider in the coming days is about those two words, “I do,” pronounced at two Presidential inaugurations by a person whose spoken words have singular importance to our nation and to the great globe itself.

More than 450 years ago, Sir Thomas More, former Lord Chancellor of England, was imprisoned in the Tower of London because he had, in the name of conscience, defied the absolute power of the King. As the playwright Robert Bolt tells it, More was visited by his family, who tried to persuade him to speak the words of the oath that would save his life, even while in his mind and heart he held firm to his conviction that the King was in error. More refused. As he told his daughter Margaret, “When a man takes an oath, Meg, he’s holding his own self in his hands like water, and if he opens his fingers, then he needn’t hope to find himself again.”

Sir Thomas More, the most brilliant lawyer of his generation, a scholar with an international reputation, the center of a warm and affectionate family life which he cherished, went to his death rather than take an oath in vain.

May we have more like him.