This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 14, 2010 - Scott Lee Cohen essentially has exhausted his 15 minutes of infamy, but the clock still ticks for our supposed leaders and the rest of us.
Although the pawnbroker with a past will fade into political trivia, we should not trivialize the shameful circumstances that facilitated his primary victory over other Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor who compiled records in elective office instead of a police station.
For nearly four decades, lawmakers have dared this debacle by failing to provide that candidates for governor and lieutenant governor select each other in the nominating process - an eminently reasonable approach given that the 1970 Constitution locks their fates in the general election. The media and the citizens of Illinois have not pressed for the reform. They also have not done enough to create an informed electorate. Now legislators and the public may overreact, prodded by opinion leaders who have discounted the possible side effects of their proposed remedies.
Junk the office of lieutenant governor. Move another elected official, such as the attorney general, to the front of the gubernatorial succession line. Save a few bucks. Protect dupable voters from themselves. So goes the sermon from many who are justifiably anguished over this latest contribution to making Illinois a punch line across the nation and even the globe. But history should give us pause and a sounder prescription.
Designate the attorney general as the governor-in-waiting? If that had been the case, Republican Bill Scott would have been in line to succeed Democrat Dan Walker even though the two tangled so fiercely that their policy differences plunged the General Assembly into a marathon 1974 session.
Democrat Neil Hartigan would have been positioned in the 1980s to replace Republican Jim Thompson, whose administration he sued on several occasions while polishing his credentials as the most formidable among potential challengers to the governor's re-election. Democrat Roland Burris, a frequent critic of Republican Jim Edgar, would have been poised in the 1990s to march into the governor's office.
Then how about tapping the next in rank from the governor's party? Not so fast. If Secretary of State Mike Howlett, a loyalist of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, suddenly would have been given command of a Walker administration full of Daley detractors, the ship of state would have tossed in troubled waters.
To be sure, the seas would have been equally roiled if Hartigan, Walker's lieutenant governor back in the early 1970s, would have been thrust into command at that time. The two, nominated from polarized Democratic camps, detested each other and fashioned yet another lesson from the annals that should guide us as we contemplate the future.
Although no system promises perfection, the odds for a smooth transition soar if the governor and a successor bond at the beginning. Moreover, a lieutenant governor who has been tapped as a ballot sidekick is much more likely to become a productive governing partner.
Consider the national model. Presidential nominees anoint their running mates, subject to ratification by delegates to national conventions. Likewise, winners of gubernatorial primaries should select their ballot companions.
Framers of the 1970 Constitution left the nominating process to the General Assembly - a big, big mistake. Lawmakers proved utterly irresponsible. They eschewed joint nominations even after a 1986 fiasco in which the shocking triumph of a politically extraterrestrial candidate in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor deflated the party's once ballooning hopes of derailing Thompson's fourth-term bid.
If our leaders don't heed this latest wakeup call, dump them - not the office.
Mike Lawrence, former director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, writes a twice-monthly column.