LOOK SMALL? HE'S NEGLIGIBLE:

Those nuisance voters (Chicago Tribune, 5/30/10)

Rod Blagojevich must be wondering how he can introduce the Sestak affair into his upcoming trial on charges of, um, trying to barter a U.S. Senate seat.

If this episode looks something short of brazenly corrupt and illegal, it doesn't leave the president looking like a shining agent of change, either. In the first place, it involved the kind of grubby deal-making that has to be kept out of sight because it would offend the public. In the second, the goal was to deny voters a reasonable option at the polls.

The president further tarnished his knightly armor by deciding to stonewall the whole issue. Sestak said back in February that the administration had offered him a job to withdraw, but the White House stubbornly refused to address the issue for months — on the apparent premise that what the citizens don't know can't hurt them.

Candidate Obama promised to transcend the pettiness of our politics. But this gambit makes him look small … and like an old hand at the Chicago way.