Obama, Tony Rezko and More!

Although the majority of Americans won't notice them right away, clouds are beginning to gather behind Barack Obama. The line of attack, or at least of questioning since day 1 has been simple: how in God (aka Mike Ditka)'s name did Obama rise so fast in Chicago's political machine? He got some lucky breaks in South Side politics, yes, including throwing his political mentor (and state senate predecessor) under the bus.* But any Chicagoan for whom Obamamania didn't require psychiatric evaluation has and had doubts. The media's starting to get on the trail, both in the city itself and nationally - and while it's only the Journal right now, events in coming weeks means that it'll be hard for the others to follow suit.

John Fund wrote a worthwhile piece for yesterday's Opinion Journal asking that question, especially with regard to indicted Chicago fixer Tony Rezko. But it's deeper than just Rezko - who will soon stand trial - and the story of Obama's dream house, which has actually received some play in the media. It also ties in one of Rezko's close partners, a secretive Iraqi-born billionaire property developer, who may or may not have had dealings with Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War. Rezko himself, Fund notes, "traveled 26 times to the Middle East between 2002 and 2006, mostly to his native Syria and other countries that lack extradition treaties with the U.S."

Barring hard evidence of wrongdoing - or at least sufficiently damning circumstantial evidence, it's hard to push this line of questioning too far without giving the Obama campaign a prime pushback opportunity; they'll just claim it's the old "Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim" story in a new burqua.

John Kass is one of the Tribune's most undervalued columnists, nationally speaking. But I have a feeling that if there turns out to be any juice in the Rezko trial, he'll quickly become pretty famous. He isn't so much conservative as he is contrarian - an old-school political muckraker raking the muck around an old-school political machine.

His latest column asks one of the big questions to non-Chicagoans: why isn't the McCain campaign more outwardly jubilant about the pending trial? The reason: it's Chicago and everyone pays to play - and Rezko could easily take down Republicans as well as Democrats (potentially including Governor Rod Blagojevich, an Obama ally). One of those Republicans may be Bob Kjellander, an RNC committeeman.

Thus the McCain campaign's unwillingness to pop the champagne too soon becomes evident: if a big elephant goes down too, that may be the part that dominates the media headlines (especially if Obama doesn't take any serious hits); worse, that Republican might have donated to McCain.

But there are other reasons for McCain & Co. to back off. Letting the trial run its course, and claim its victims, will generate its own media maelstrom. They may have to give it a gentle nudge once in a while, but odds are this one will generate headlines. Further, as Charlie Cook noted yesterday, they're understaffed and underfunded; a trial that may or may not blow Obama up isn't their primary worry at the moment.

*I realized that I made reference to this without it being a well-known phenomenon. I wasn't aware, either, till the Politico buried it on p.2 of that story about Obama's ties to unrepentant members of the Weather Underground; I'll go ahead and quote it in full: "The exact date [of a meeting between Obama and the terrorists] is not known, but it was in the second half of 1995, before Palmer’s [his predecessor and mentor] decision — late in her losing congressional primary against Jesse Jackson Jr. — to jump back into the special election for her state Senate seat. (Her decision produced a rift between her and Obama, who was able to get her thrown off the ballot on technical grounds.)" That's change you can believe in!