Undistinguished Obama

The Undistinguished Obama:

Protein Wisdom fills in the story. It's hard to call Senator Obama a failure, having reached at a young age the Senate and a reasonable shot at becoming President of the United States. How many people are asked to write memoirs as college students? (Or paid forty grand advances on the memoir, as a reward for missing their deadline?) In that one regard -- self promotion -- he has been a remarkable success.

In every other regard, however, his undertakings have not been impressive. Nothing he has attempted has really ever come off: yet he has run for higher office every three years, and often succeeded using the machine politics of the Chicago system.

We are starting to learn a bit more about Obama's work in Chicago -- thanks, by the way, to the Chicago area commenters who've written here. It's not an impressive story in any good way.

Meanwhile, speaking of The Chicago Way, the trial of Tony Rezko, fundraiser and land-deal maker for the Senator from Chicago, continues:

Rezko and Odinga are important persons in their own right, but it is their connection to Barack Obama that has the press interested.

He's right -- they are, and especially Rezko is, interesting quite on their own. We do owe the Senator that much: I would never have been aware of the fascinating story of Middle Eastern money in Chicago politics if Sen. Obama hadn't been so tied to Rezko over the years. That's garnered a lot of press attention, and has shone light where it otherwise might not have shone.

Rezko's apple pie had strange and persistent Middle Eastern spices. The Sun-Times wrote: "Rezko was indicted in October 2006 while on a trip to Syria, and he had returned to face the case. He remained free on bail until Jan. 28, after prosecutors raised an alarm with the judge that Rezko had received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Lebanon. [Judge] St. Eve jailed him until April, when family and friends put up $8.5 million to secure his release."

The $3.5 million was sent by Nahdmi Auchi of all people. The Sun-Times continues.

Rezko opened his letter by apologizing to St. Eve for not informing her of the $3.5 million, which had come to Rezko through Beirut from General Mediterranean Holding SA, a company led by Auchi. He said he took the money in because he was under "tremendous pressure" to pay his legal bills.

Even the $8.5 million bond raised by his Chicago friends had a connection with Iraq. It included $1.9 million put up by Rezko's old classmate and onetime fugitive Aiham Alsammarae. Alsammarae was a former "Iraqi Electricity Minister ... who in 2006 fled from Iraqi prison. Alsammarae's $1.9 million equity in his Oak Brook home and two other properties made up more than one-third of the $8 million in properties postes to ensure Rezko's bond. Rezko was ... arrested Jan. 28 after failing to disclose an overseas wire transfer."

That's remarkable. Rezko insists, of course, that he never intended to use that money to skip the country for Syria.