Blagojevich: Politics is "Disillusioning;" Urges Teens to Run for Office
By Chuck Sudo in News on Apr 3, 2011 1:30PM
Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich has long ago proven that there is no one to whom he won't pander. Blagojevich had a rapt audience yesterday in Oak Brook at the Junior State of America convention, where he delivered the keynote speech. The theme of that speech — "Politics is a bummer, man."
We assume Governor Sound Bite watched Better Off Dead recently and the scene where David Ogden Stiers tries to speak teen lingo to John Cusack must have resonated with him, because he told the assembled teens that politics was a "disillusioning" profession before encouraging them to run for office, anyway.
“Young people can change the system,” he said. “It doesn’t happen overnight. Pick yourself up and never give in. Adversity will only make you stronger.”
"You must get involved and run for office and make things better and change things and bring that enthusiasm that you have," said Blagojevich, who is about three weeks from the start of his second trial on federal corruption charges.
Never mind that Blagojevich's time in office was one of many reasons that people are cynical about politics. The teens, for the most part, saw through Blago's bullshit yet recognized that even a man in constant spin mode had advice to offer to them. Naperville North high school student Anastasia Golovashkina, who invited Blagojevich to the convention, said, "He tried to tie everything back to how he was a fantastic governor and about what he accomplished, and about how he’s of course not guilty." But Golovashkina also said she and her fellow conventioneers thought it was worth hearing Blagojevich get loquacious.
“[P]eople really enjoyed hearing his speech not so much for its content but for the way in which he presented it. He kind of wants to overwhelm his audience with such a long speech, that in the end people forget what they wanted from the speech in the first place.”
(Emphasis ours). And that's what Blagojevich does. He uses his gift for public speaking to spin the story in his favor. That's what master politicians do.