The criminal troubles of an Illinois governor would not normally be one of this blog’s topics, but this Michael Barone op-ed on the Rod Blagojevich affair is just too good not to pass along.

Barone is well-versed in the complicated web of influences that define Chicago politics, so he is right in his element explaining Blagojevich to other pundits not so steeped in Chicagoland:

The answer, .   .   . is that [Blagojevich is] not crazy, but simply stupid, hugely stupid. I’ve long since come to the conclusion that Rod Blagojevich is clearly the stupidest governor in all of our 50 states, and he may be the stupidest governor I’ve had occasion to write about in the four decades when I’ve been co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. And a stupid man (or woman) in high political office can be very dangerous to all concerned. I have long said that as a political operative I would prefer a smart opponent to a stupid opponent. If you’re pretty smart yourself, you should be able to figure out what another pretty smart person will do. But whether you’re smart or stupid, it’s hard to figure out what a stupid person will do. That’s even more true when the stupid politician is your political ally. Stupid people do all sorts of things that are against their own interests. Like tell the press on Monday that you wouldn’t mind being taped, even when (as we learned on Tuesday) that you’ve been saying all kinds of things that you should have known could easily send you to the slammer.

Meanwhile, Joe Queenan compares Blago to Nero, and then wonders what we have come to when a governor of a big state can shake down Bank of America and nobody really notices:

The idea that the governor of a state as prosperous and important and sophisticated and upscale as Illinois would make this kind of threat is terrifying. Even more terrifying is that Bank of America saw no alternative but to give in. Yet even more terrifying is that nobody outside Chicago seems to have gotten terribly worked up about the situation, riveted as they are on the governor’s more theatrical transgressions. But peddling a Senate seat or using scare tactics to shake down a newspaper are nowhere near so serious a menace to society as letting the government arbitrarily intervene in financial transactions between banks and creditors. A crooked governor we can all handle. But a governor who capriciously decides which commercial enterprises a bank must finance and which it can ignore is a scary proposition indeed.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. But get the wrong politician in office, and you can burn it in a day.

Meanwhile, Patrick Fitzgerald, a prosecutor who is quite capable of pursuing a weak case that nevertheless puts him in the center of the media spotlight, ought to shut up about the Blagojevich case, says Victoria Toensing:

In the Dec. 9 press conference regarding the federal corruption charges against Gov. Blagojevich and his chief of staff, Mr. Fitzgerald violated the ethical requirement of the Justice Department guidelines that prior to trial a "prosecutor shall refrain from making extrajudicial comments that pose a serious and imminent threat of heightening public condemnation of the accused." The prosecutor is permitted to "inform the public of the nature and extent" of the charges. In the vernacular of all of us who practice criminal law, that means the prosecutor may not go "beyond the four corners" — the specific facts — in the complaint or indictment. He may also provide any other public-record information, the status of the case, the names of investigators, and request assistance. But he is not permitted to make the kind of inflammatory statements Mr. Fitzgerald made during his media appearance. [.  .  .]

Throughout the press conference about Gov. Blagojevich, Mr. Fitzgerald talked beyond the four corners of the complaint. He repeatedly characterized the conduct as "appalling." He opined that the governor "has taken us to a new low," while going on a "political corruption crime spree."

Of course, we know all about federal prosecutors violating such ethical duties down here in Houston.

Finally, the always insightful Larry Ribstein puts the Blagojevich affair in proper perspective:

Let’s keep that in mind before we hand over more regulatory power to politicians because we think we can trust them more than the market participants who would be regulated.