The issue may be justice, but the consequences could be political.
Former Gov. George Ryan's plea for clemency to Barack Obama puts the president, who worked with Ryan during his years in the Illinois Senate, in an awkward position.
On one hand, the president is looking at a former governor who bilked taxpayers out of millions of dollars and sold licenses to unqualified truck drivers. On the other, Ryan's an old man with a dying wife, spending her last days alone as he waits behind bars.
The longer the president dwells on a decision regarding whether to free Ryan, the more his pondering could hurt state politicians.
"It's certainly not the issue that any incumbent wants in the papers over and over," says Kelly Dietrich, a political consultant with Chicago's Dover Group. "We're trying to talk about job creation and the economy. Having front-page stories about corrupt Illinois governors is not one that politicians of either party want to be confronting."
Yet while Democrats are the dominant incumbents in Illinois, having Ryan in the news is a step up for them from the usual media scrutiny of their own problem child, Democratic former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Dick Simpson, professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says the Ryan story relieves the Democrats of some pressure.
"It's certainly better than if George Ryan were a Democrat," Simpson says.
Still, Simpson says, any corruption story is bad for any incumbent.
"I think most voters take it as a pox on all your houses," Simpson told me. "The Ryan thing comes up, and it just reinforces that" sense of corruption in the the state's political ranks.
Dietrich, at the Dover Group, agrees.
He explains that the problem for incumbents is that, as Ryan's clemency plea makes the news, it also renews a discussion about corruption in general.
And when the issue of corruption is in the air, voters tend to blame whoever is in power, not just politicians outside of their own party, Dietrich says.
"Having these issues that are reinforcing the corruption of Illinois politicians of either party is not doing anything to reinforce the public's trust in any of their elected officials," Dietrich says.
Dietrich wouldn't handicap the odds of the president granting Ryan clemency. President George W. Bush, a fellow Republican, didn't grant it to him.
But Dietrich says that the former governor would have a better chance at getting out of jail than the disgraced Blagojevich.
Despite his problems, Ryan had some positive relationships with fellow GOP leaders, evidenced not least by the fact that his lawyer is former Republican Gov. Jim Thompson.
That's not so for Ryan's Democratic successor.
"Blagojevich had a terse relationship with just about every other Democratic leader, save a few," Dietrich says. "Plus, Ryan's not caught on tape badmouthing other people."
Ironically, it could also help Ryan that he's a member of Obama's rival party. Dietrich says Obama could let him loose without dealing with questions of favoritism, as he would if he were to grant clemency on a Democrat.
"If you were letting the Democrat go, you could make the case: Why wouldn't you let the Republican go?" Dietrich says. "I don't think there are going to be many people in Illinois who are going to be crying out for the president to give any kind of leniency or clemency to Blagojevich."
Regardless, the president may be unlikely to even look at both Illinois' governors' cases through a similar lens.
David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, says clemency for convicted criminals is an issue debated on a case-by-case basis, and at several levels of the executive branch.
"I don't think one would have any relevance on the other," Yepsen says of the Ryan and Blagojevich cases. "The only similarity is that they're both former Illinois governors."
Yepsen explained that the U.S. Justice Department reviews hundreds of these cases every year, and that the department's recommendations mix with a president's often unpredictable instincts to determine the fate of a prisoner.
With Obama, he says, "it's too early in his presidency to know" whether he'll rely mostly on legal opinions or his own instincts when he decides on clemency.
But Ryan may have a few advantages over Blagojevich. Simpson, at UIC, can name a couple.
"Rod Blagojevich doesn't have a dying wife, and isn't himself ailing and old."
Windy Citizen 