After almost a decade as the body's minority leader, Jones ascended to his current position in 2003. And Obama came calling.
(Obama) came to me and he said, 'You're the Senate president. You have a lot of power,' " Jones recalled.
"I said, 'I do? What kind of power do I have?' He said, 'You have the power to make a United States senator.' 'Oh? I didn't realize that. If I have that kind of power, do you know of anyone I could make a United States senator?' He said, 'Me.' He caught me by surprise. I said, 'Let me think about it.' And we continued to talk, and I told him, 'That sounds good. Let's go for it.' That started the campaign."
What Jones did was slap Obama's name on numerous pieces of legislation so he'd have a record to run on. Jones is not in the US Senate, so he was unable to repeat the favor--which means Obama's message of "Hope," is an empty one--Obama has no significant accomplishments after three years in Washington.
You can say the same thing about his eight years in Springfield.
Jones is leaving office on a sour note. In what is now a tradtion among Chicago Democrats, after winning a primary election--Jones pulled his name off the general election ballot--and placing his son in his place.
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This is interesting. As a swing voter (I've gone from McCain to Obama and back again.) who is independent of party identification, I want to try to evaluate on objective (impartial) criteria when possible. I had heard rumblings that even Obama's state record was suspect. This seems to support that argument.
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ReplyDeleteI've been looking into this some more- it seems that a big part of Obama's ability to even make it into the US senate was Jones' handing him legislative leadership on issues and bills which rightfully may have belonged to others with more seniority and who had already been championing the issues.
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