Rezko-Obama 1-26-08 "REZKO IS OBAMA'S PROBLEM"

chicagotribune.com
If you look closely, it's plain: Rezko is Obama's problem
John Kass
January 26, 2008
There was some buzz about it, but it wasn't really a gotcha photo, and it really doesn't help Barack Obama, that photo of Bill and Hillary Clinton sandwiching indicted political fixer Tony Rezko at some forgotten fundraiser.Billary were like two icy slices of white political bread, and Rezko stood between them like meat. All the Clintons probably knew of Rezko was what they could feel coming through his palms pressed against their backs: some ambitious somebody ready to make some moves.That won't hurt Hillary. And she's probably got some other images in mind—either real photos or word pictures—about Rezko and Obama that she'll probably drop on the way to Super Tuesday.One image will surely involve the dream house that Rezko helped the Obamas buy. And another involves Rezko himself, about to stand federal trial in a huge political corruption case involving not only Democrats, but old bull Republicans in Illinois, with Rezko passing through the metal detectors in the federal courthouse.
Those are the images Obama must concern himself with. The Rezko-Clinton photograph wasn't much."I've probably taken hundreds of thousands of pictures," Hillary Clinton told "Today" show host Matt Lauer. "I don't know the man. I wouldn't know him if he walked in the door. I don't have a 17-year relationship with him."Perhaps some of the Obama folks hoped that photo would help them—a play on the old Clinton strategy of pulling everyone down into the mud. But Rezko won't stick to her. She scraped him off her shoe with ease."I try not to attack first, but I have to defend myself—I do have to counterpunch," said Sen. Clinton, playing the unwilling combatant, the victim forced to protect herself.As she spoke, you could hear the razors clacking against the back of her teeth. Sen. Obama must have heard them, too.He's the one with the long relationship with Rezko. He'll pay for that friendship. If he wants to survive the Clintons and their ambition, Obama will have to fight back, hard. He's been much too timid, much too gentle with them. He's too nice, and he's in a street fight."OK, well, I can't tell who I am running against sometimes," an exasperated Obama said the other day after another series of Clinton tag team attacks, with Bill punching low and Hillary with that roll of quarters inside her velvet glove.Up until now, politics has been so easy for Obama, with his opponents either exploding or imploding, as he ran for the Senate in Illinois. He didn't even have to run. Instead, he sauntered easily into Washington and then after just one speech at the 2004 convention he became the Democratic savior/rock star.So perhaps it's been too easy for him. When I called him the Mr. Tumnus of American politics, after the gentle, magical faun in the C.S. Lewis stories, I wasn't joking.Last week, the Clintons tricked his campaign into playing racial politics, and as others have noted, the Obama people bit, and played the race card and he finally fell out of the sky and became the black candidate. Now that he's scrambling on the ground with the mortals, the Clintons will try to bury him with Rezko.It's ugly and political and predictable, but fair. Obama has had the benefit of a loving media. If the Clintons want to force a constitutional crisis upon the country with a co-presidency, they must continue on the offensive.And now that John Edwards stubbornly and selfishly hangs in the race, splitting the anti-Hillary vote, the Clintons have the luxury of time, and can reach for the mud when Obama approaches.The Clintons must have waited for the national media to pick up on the Rezko Real Estate Fairy story broken by Tribune investigative reporters in 2006. But Hillary had to bend down herself and grab a few handfuls of Rezko to throw and she got her fingerprints all over things."Dirt shows up more on a white horse," a conservative political wise man who knows and likes Obama told me at breakfast the other day. "It doesn't show so much on a gray horse. But on a white horse, it's dramatic."So watch for the Clintons to push the story of the dream house the Obamas wanted and couldn't quite afford and how the Rezkos helped. Hillary Clinton couldn't quite make the case that Obama helped do legal work for his "slumlord" pal, but homeowners will understand Rezko as Obama's Real Estate Fairy.If there were a good gotcha photo of Bill and Hillary and Rezko, they'd be in the back yard of a dream house that Rezko helped them buy in a shady deal, Bill passing a PBR longneck through the wrought iron fence in the evening.They'd laugh, the three of them, Bill biting his lip, twinkly, Hillary with that sharp-eyed laugh, and Rezko, calm, the beer cold, condensation beading, some steaks burning on the patio grill, fireflies, night crickets, good times.That would be a gotcha photo, but it doesn't exist. Rezko belongs to Obama.