Congress gets another “taste” of the Chicago Way (Updated)

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass writes today:

So the Chicago Way hauled off and slapped the U.S. Senate in the face—one of those backhands with the knuckles to unsuspecting lips—and guess who blinked?

It wasn’t Chicago.

It was the Senate.

Get used to it, America. And it won’t be the last time either.

What is Kass talking about, you ask? Well, get used to future references to Kass’s “Chicago Way.” Even Kass’s nomenclature is fully-loaded:

“Dead Meat”? That would be Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

“Tombstone”? Oh, that’s “Dead Meat”’s appointee, Roland Burris, who is set to fill the barely- and rarely-used seat PEBO “vacated” in the U.S. Senate.

The rest of Kass’s article is pure gold. Experienced as he is at recognizing the “Chicago Way”, Kass gives America a heads up on how things will go down in the future.

Background: Harry Reid (right) caves on the Burris Senate appointment — the “Chicago Way”:

What Obama forgot to mention is that he ordered the Tombstone issue settled because it became his problem. So he told Reid to cave.

In political terms, Reid rolled up his sleeves, put on his favorite “Kiss the Chef” apron, got his fingers dusty with flour and baked himself a big humble pie. He scarfed it down in front of reporters Wednesday, without a fork, all but licking his fingers, that pie was so sweet and tasty. Mmm-mmm.

“For me, who had never met the man, it was very enlightening,” oozed Reid, heaping praise on Burris after meeting him for the first time. “He is very engaging, an extremely nice man and he presents himself very well.”

Reid was joined by another oozer, perhaps the most accomplished public oozer in the Senate, Dick Durbin of Illinois.

“I’ve known Roland Burris for 36 years in Illinois politics. We have always been friends,” said Durbin, who a few days ago was calling the Burris appointment “an act of political defiance” that “will lead nowhere.”

Then they agreed that Tombstone would probably get to join their club, and they also agreed that race had nothing to do with it, even though they are Democrats and Blagojevich played the race card as adroitly as Al Sharpton eating soul food with Caroline Kennedy in Harlem.

Sure, they’re white guys and Burris is African-American, but race had nothing to do with it. It was just procedure and technicalities, they said.

“People ask a lot of times why we have to do various things procedurally here in the Senate,” Reid told reporters. “It’s because we’re the Senate: That’s how we operate.”

Correction. That’s how you used to operate. You’re from Nevada, but Obama comes from Chicago.

It’s sure got to be difficult to eat a big hunk of humble pie when your lips are stinging, but here’s some advice, Senators.

Have another slice. There’s plenty more.

Oh, it seems we forgot to add Kass’s two references to PEBO in his article. Let’s look at the latter one first, in which Kass refers to the upcoming transition of Obama from PEBO to POTUS, when he

… formally becomes the agent of the change we can believe in.

BHO as an “agent of change”? We’ve heard that one before. Pretty tame, eh?

It’s Kass’s first reference, one which, by the way he has used before — Mr. Tumnus — which is most interesting.

Kass writes:

But today’s news is that Obama, often treated by the national media as the gentle Mr. Tumnus of American politics, got privately hardball with Reid over the Tombstone issue.

Plucking straight from the Wikipedia we find Mr. Tumnus is

a fictional character in C. S. Lewis’ series The Chronicles of Narnia. He is featured prominently in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and also appears in The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle…. Lewis said that the first Narnia story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, all came to him from a single picture he had in his head of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels through a snowy wood. [...]

Lewis describes Tumnus as having reddish skin, curly hair, a short pointed beard, horns on his forehead, cloven hooves, shiny black goat legs, and a long goat’s tail.

Way back in May 2008 Kass wrote:

As a candidate, Obama will do what he has to do to win. My argument is not with him – but with the national political media pack that refuses to look closely at what Chicago is. They’re fixated on what it was, and they think it’s clean now.

And they’ve spent years crafting, then cleaving to their eager and trembling Obama narrative, a tale of great yearning, almost mythic and ardently adolescent, a tale in which Obama is portrayed as a reformer, a dynamic change agent about to do away with the old thuggish politics.

It’s as if Axelrod channeled it, wearing a peaked Merlin hat. Obama is a South Sider and does not hail from Camelot or Mt. Olympus or the lush forests of mythical Narnia.

I’ve joked that reporters feel compelled to hug him, in their copy, as if he were the cuddly faun, the Mr. Tumnus of American politics. But I was only kidding. The real Mr. Tumnus never had Billy Daley or Ted Kennedy carving up Cabinet appointments.

So why the disconnect? Why is Obama allowed to campaign as a reformer, virtually unchallenged by the media, though he’s a product of Chicago politics and has never condemned the wholesale political corruption in his home town the way he condemns those darn Washington lobbyists. [...]

Our Chicago politics sure must seem sweet from that high altitude as journalists fly by. From up there, our politics must smell pretty, like vanilla beans in a jar, or lavender potpourri: you know, something truly authentic and real.

Daniel Larison summed BHO up in his December 11, 2008, American Conservative post:

Obama never transcends categories, as some people seemed to hope he could at one time, but he isn’t easily pigeonholed into any category, either, because he is very, very adaptable (which his admirers call “pragmatism”!). Just as they misjudged his political know-how because of his high-flown rhetoric, and just as they misjudged his foreign policy because of his opposition to the Iraq war, they are going to misjudge him again and try to tie him to Illinois corruption or claim that this reflects poorly on him or “taints” the incoming administration. Those who say this will be proven wrong again, and much to the frustration of his critics and enemies Obama will keep evading the categories and labels people try to stick to him and will separate himself from any associate, no matter how close or distant, the moment that associate becomes a liability.

Members of Congress have now been warned. Question is, are they paying attention? And what happens when they don’t?

Update 01/08/09 14:00 p.m. ET: No sooner did we ask whether Congress was paying attention — and what The One would do if they don’t — along comes a little something something to test their mettle:

President-elect Barack Obama warned Thursday morning that the nation’s recession could “linger for years” unless Congress acts to pump unprecedented sums from Washington into the U.S. economy, adding that the current economic crisis is “unlike any we have seen in our lifetime.”

Now it’s Congress’s turn.

Best response so far comes from Michelle Malkin, who writes:

Oh, no. Not again. I need to wear a safety helmet to cover the Republican incompetents trying to muster up a response to the Obama Generational Theft Act of 2009.

Mitch McConnell, if you are not going to be able to stop this disaster, please just shut up.

Allahpundit at Hot Air has more.