Depends on what the meaning of "hurt" is. Will it distract from the brisk pace of his transition and keep his team off-message for a week or two? Yes. But from what we've seen so far, it doesn't seem too likely that this scandal will spread into Obama's administration or seriously hurt his image with voters, despite the Note's usual breathless insanity: "Chicago's Taint Stains Obama. (Special to RK: If reporters need an excuse to mine the "underbelly of the Obama political operation" for stories, they're not doing their job...)
Here's where it stands: Obama took a pass on crisis management, with his response yesterday not quite up-to-par, but was saved by the clear animosity Blagojevich shows him in the transcripts. The Axelrod contradiction on whether or not the president-elect spoke with Blagojevich doesn't look great, but I'm willing to believe the walk-back simply because If Obama and the governor did talk in the last few months, it would most certainly be on tape, so trying to cover it up would be a futile and ultimately self-defeating tactic.
It also appears that one of the reasons behind Blagojevich's arrest was Obama's lobbying for an ethics reform over the objections of both the governor and State Senate President Emil Jones (candidate 5?), which led to the passage of a law that made certain contributions illegal starting Jan. 1, 2009. Blago, eager to make his money before the window closed, went into bribery overdrive.
The only foreseeable problems are if the weird SEIU/Candidate 1 (probably Valerie Jarrett) deal-making conversation becomes more fleshed out. But again, the conversations recorded by the FBI are just the governor and his henchmen building "castles in the air," as editor Mark Schmitt put it yesterday. While I don't know enough about conspiracy law to say if this is enough to get them convicted, it's probably not enough to convict anyone else, and as Patrick Fitzgerald said yesterday, anyone mentioned in the indictment who wasn't charged should be indicted by public opinion.
Certainly, the state of Illinois will be better off with the governor in jail. Fitzgerald may not have what he needs to finish the case, as Scott Turow speculates in this morning's Times. On the other hand, the man is a brilliant and relatively ruthless prosecutor -- and one of very few public officials with unquestionable integrity -- so I certainly wouldn't count him out. Both Obama and Dick Durbin have said they hope Fitzgerald stays on into the next administration, and now it would be all but politically impossible for them to do otherwise.
--Tim Fernholz
