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"  CHICAGO \u2014 Juror No. 161 is a white female on the back end of middle age. She gets her political news from MSNBC and PBS on a nightly basis, and she volunteered for the Obama campaign. She says she&amp;#039;s heard about the government&amp;#039;s case against former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. And if Chris Matthews is any indication of her understanding, she&amp;#039;s heard quite a bit. Which means there&amp;#039;s a decent chance that Juror No. 161 \u2014 once this whole Rahm-Emanuelizing, proselytizing bout of law and order plays out by summer&amp;#039;s end \u2014 might just be willing to let Blago walk. You can see his freedom beginning to unfold when Juror No. 161 tells Judge James Zagel that she can set aside hardened opinions about the man to be an impartial juror in his federal corruption trial, which begins its fourth day this morning. Zagel \u2014 crime novelist, actor, hardass \u2014 has instructed the jury pool to determine Blago&amp;#039;s fate by the evidence presented over the next four months. Nothing else. And Juror No. 161 says she can do it, which, after all that MSNBC, seems more wishful thinking than straight answer. Across the U.S. district courtroom, the former governor is fixated on this woman, Juror No. 161. He nods his head. He takes a break from scribbling on a yellow Office Depot legal pad, nods again, and points to a note in front of his lawyer platoon. This woman, Juror No. 161, is the perfect candidate for the twelve Americans who might deliver the decade&amp;#039;s most improbable acquittal. When the government throws so much against the wall \u2014 twenty-four counts in all \u2014 something&amp;#039;s got to stick, right? Is it possible that we&amp;#039;ve taken for granted how impossibly screwed Rod Blagojevich is? Forget the foul-mouthed wiretaps or the Senate seat fire-sale \u2014 the man is accused of taking the shakedown to a not-for-profit hospital. A not-for-profit children&amp;#039;s hospital. In November 2008, Illinois appeared to give American politics another Lincolnesque statesman. The next month, it banished its clone of a syphilitic-crazed crime-spree Capone. The yin and yang of Prairie public service. While Americans were basking in a watershed moment \u2014 the fall of the racial barrier around the White House \u2014 Blago was celebrating this &amp;quot;fucking golden&amp;quot; opportunity to appoint Obama&amp;#039;s Senate replacement. While citizens waited for the new president to give them his version of &amp;quot;Ask not what your country can do for you,&amp;quot; Blago reminded his people, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m just not giving it up for fuckin&amp;#039; nothing.&amp;quot; The next two months of damage control efforts were appalling. &amp;quot;Embattled&amp;quot; seemed married to Blago&amp;#039;s official title, which, as Scott Raab detailed in earnest for Esquire earlier this year, is not at all official any more. His &amp;quot;poor me&amp;quot; press conferences paraded some less fortunates as human shields and featured him rattling off Kipling like a plebe at the Naval Academy. The man came off, as Mayor Richard M. Daley put it more than once, as &amp;quot;cuckoo.&amp;quot; But Blago appears to be getting the last coo. Because for every string of &amp;quot;embattled&amp;quot; politicians who claim they were merely &amp;quot;doing The People&amp;#039;s business,&amp;quot; there is a man with the blind persistence of Rod Blagojevich. It&amp;#039;s as if Pig Pen kept telling the Peanuts gang, No. Call me Spic &amp;#039;N&amp;#039; Span. Yeah, yeah. Nice try, wise guy. Jeez, doesn&amp;#039;t he just seem ridiculous? Seriously, guys \u2014 call me Spic &amp;#039;N&amp;#039; Span. That&amp;#039;s just batty ol&amp;#039; Pig Pen for you! \u2026 And then the schtick starts to stick. Pig Pen&amp;#039;s adamance is growing on them. He is at once out of his mind and fantastically sure of himself, like those gleeful missionaries handing out leaflets in Midtown. Hey, Pig Pen&amp;#039;s not such a bad guy. I mean, his heart&amp;#039;s in the right place. He&amp;#039;s just a little screwed up, but aren&amp;#039;t we all? And next thing you know, Charlie Brown and Lucy are calling you over, wanting to introduce you to their oddball friend, Spic &amp;#039;N&amp;#039; Span! Such is the transformation of Rod Blagojevich. He&amp;#039;s come a long way since impeachment in January 2009, rehabilitating himself with Whoopi Goldberg, Donald Trump, and, for a cool $10,000, Elvis Presley. Wherever he goes, Blago hawks his innocence with the dogmatic volume of a 1917 newsie. He is no longer the corrupt Blago whom Frank Rich labeled &amp;quot;the national whipping boy&amp;quot; so much as the whacky Blago whom TMZ feels it must keep tabs on. He has made corruption into a sort of kitsch. Even the Illinois public, who knew him as governor for six years, has had time to soften to his rebranding. Which brings us back to Juror No. 161. To paraphrase something Jimmy Breslin once said, if watching people lie is your bag, you really ought to check out jury selection in a big trial. The Southtown Star&amp;#039;s Phil Kadner recently lamented as college-educated juror after college-educated juror claimed not to read or watch the hard news. But with summer upon us and TV gone to the waste bin, chances are these wannabes are so starved for something interesting to watch that they&amp;#039;ll say anything to get on this trial. If not for that, then to be a part of history \u2014 already the fifth trial of an Illinois governor. And that&amp;#039;s just the kind of opening Blago needs. Because his strategy is to let the tapes roll for who-knows-how-many hundreds of hours, to show the jurors that he is not merely some motor-mouthed guy who claims he&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;blacker than Barack Obama.&amp;quot; Sure, the corrupt Blago was probably a bit out of line. But twenty-four counts of criminal corruption? Whacky Blago doesn&amp;#039;t even know how to operate a computer! As for his lawyers (with whom we&amp;#039;ll be speaking very soon), well, the defense&amp;#039;s unofficial strategy is apparently this: &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s a celebrity idiot!&amp;quot; Indeed, if one thing is clear this early on, it&amp;#039;s that the four-month extravaganza getting underway here will be far from a railroading. Rod Blagojevich has a real shot at acquittal. As the man said himself the day before his arrest, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t believe there&amp;#039;s any cloud that hangs over me. I think there&amp;#039;s nothing but sunshine hanging over me.&amp;quot; Looking mighty spic &amp;#039;n&amp;#039; span there, Pig Pen. John R. Bohrer is a freelance writer living in Chicago for the summer to cover the Blagojevich trial for The Politics Blog while he writes a book about Senator Robert Kennedy and his staff. His work has appeared in Salon, Politico, The Huffington Post, USA Today, and The Jersey City Independent, where he covered even more political corruption on trial. CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE BLAGO TRIAL &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a7697/blagojevich-trial-preview-060810/>