Editorial: Jesse Jr.'s dilemma

Editorial: Jesse Jr.'s dilemma
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
6:26 p.m. CDT, July 12, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-jesse-20100712,0,3394173.story


The conversation was informal and the congressman, black sweater over blue jeans, spoke with candor. He was grateful to have benefited from his father's tutelage and fame, he volunteered. Yet even as he had moved into his 40s and become his own man, some people held his name against him and always would. He had won re-election by an eight-to-one margin and, in one of the nation's most Democratic districts, he probably could keep the job as long as he wanted. But capturing a statewide office in Illinois, he acknowledged, would be difficult for Rev. Jesse Jackson's son.

That conversation took place a few years ago. Today the dilemma of being U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has grown still more complex. The trial of Rod Blagojevich has sucked Jackson into its tornadic vortex. Last week a federal prosecutor said a witness could put Jackson at a Loop restaurant meeting in October 2008. There one of Jackson's backers allegedly offered to raise $1 million for Blagojevich if the then-governor would appoint Jackson to the U.S. Senate seat that Barack Obama would vacate if he was elected president.

That breathtaking disclosure — some elements of which the judge ultimately didn't let jurors hear — tempts all manner of scenarios based more on human imagination than on trial testimony. The complete story of Jackson, the meeting and the million hasn't been subject to full exposure or cross-examination in court. In a statement Friday, Jackson continued to deny, as he has since Blagojevich's arrest in December 2008, that he was part of any improper scheme to secure the Senate seat. He also said he isn't at liberty to "clear up the misstatements made by some" until after the trial. We wish he was guided less by the cautions of his lawyers than by an overarching need to level with his constituents and all Illinoisans.

Until that happens, Jesse Jr. twists in the wind, both elevated and suspended by his political ambitions. He has been here before:

The 2010 edition of the nonpartisan "Almanac of American Politics" neatly sums up his public record: "In the House, Jackson has combined liberal advocacy with careful attention to the interests of his constituents and to the steady advancement of his own influence." In September 2006 he said it was "more likely than not" that he would challenge Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2007, although he stayed put in the House after Democrats retook it in the November 2006 election. Loyalists said he was smart to rise in House seniority; critics said the episode proved he was all talk. And before Obama earned the presidency, Jackson Jr. was mentioned whenever pundits speculated on who might be the first African-American to win the presidency that had eluded Jackson Sr.

We pretend no insight on whether the federal investigation that has thrust Jackson into the Blagojevich trial, or a pending House ethics probe now on hold, will deliver him to full exoneration or anything else. Like much of Chicago, we have followed his career with hope and fondness. He plays a role in the Jackson clan that the mayor plays in his: Each has emerged from his father's potentially smothering shadow to live a career of public service. Jackson has pushed for a third airport that we support, and he has tried, with a fair amount of success, to attract and elect good candidates to public offices in his city-and-suburban realm.

To do more than extend his present flat trajectory, though, Jesse Jackson Jr. will have to explain in fullest detail his pursuit of the Senate seat. He will have to bring all of us back to that Loop restaurant table and let us see that he behaved not just legally, but wisely and honorably, too.

That day can't come too soon — for Jesse Jackson Jr. or for the rest of us.