Sex and money are the handmaidens of power. I made that up just now. Sounds good, doesn't it?
We can see that in scandals throughout the past year. Eliot Spitzer's fall from the governorship because of his tryst with a call girl. John Edwards getting busted while visiting "the other woman."
And now Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich gets busted for essentially trying to sell the vacant Senate seat, which is still warm from Barack Obama's departure. Let's listen in:
"Unless I get something real good ... (expletive), I'll just send myself, you know what I'm saying?"
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the nature of humans and power. It changes people, warps them into creatures they don't even recognize after a few years. That's just one of my reasons for term limits on everything from senator to dogcatcher.
Blagojevich's conundrum is one of the rawest grasps for money/power I've seen in a while. Spitzer needed a little sumpin' sumpin'. Edwards may very well have been led away by pure feelings. But in Blagojevich you can see an evil cunning, a misuse of the public's trust in order to gain a high-paying position for his wife and himself.
And if the price wasn't high enough, then he'd just take the seat of power for himself.
This scenario will exist forever. We can't stop it, but we should severely punish those who do.
Unfortunately, that's another problem with those in power. They tend to protect each other.
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