Forty years ago, during the convention in Chicago, someone explained to me, success in politics often requires rising above your principles. In the face of the Daley machine, this was hardly a great insight. This was a city famous for transcending law, ethics and principle. Where else was there such democratic fervor that 110% turnouts weren't unheard of? Some even would rise from the grave to cast their ballot.

Truman once said he faced the choice, early in life, either to be a politician or a piano-player in a whorehouse. To which he added, “to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.” Some years later, the Great Communicator echoed Harry. Reagan observed, “Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”

Maybe this explains why, even though we all would like to vote for the best person, they're never a candidate.

So why is it surprising that in Illinois, where it's become too common for the inhabitant of the governor's house to move on to the big house, and in the Windy City, a guy like Rahm Emmanuel is found tickling the ivories?

Is it more than just plain old blind faith that makes us ignore the relationship between an up and coming political leader and conniving influence peddlers? Yes, it's a depressing, begrudging acceptance of a status quo, politics as usual, system that we seem powerless to change.

Speech may be free, but it's really expensive to get heard.

And that's the way they want to keep it. So long as every aspiring candidate has to pay the piper, as a crooked fish trader once told me, (coincidentally raised in the whitefish business in Chicago) “money gets honey.”

Only when a pair as gross as Rod and Patty Blagojevich get exposed are we forced to face the reality that our political system is so corrupted by money and greed (for the former is powerless without the latter) that we have to admit things have gone beyond a few occasionally turning a trick. Illinois isn't even the most corrupt state in the union! This is becoming a Spitzeresque call girl network on a national scale.

It goes without saying, you can't get a hit if you're not in the game. This probably helps explain how a promising young lawyer could be smart enough to avoid working directly for a guy like “Tony” Rezco, yet still get involved in business transactions and political deals with an obvious crook.

But before we blow this whole thing off as just another generation of dirty Chicago politicians, why don't we take the latest outbreak as a signal that it's time to go after a disease that is reaching epidemic proportions. Frankly, it's a disease that's almost impossible to avoid if you engage in political intercourse.

There is one school of thought that believes you only will get the best if you pay the most. This is what drives the corporate CEO extravaganza. While we don't pay our elected leaders huge sums directly, we have come to accept with little qualm their private deals and self promotion. At the heart of most of our national problems you'll find these pork fetching side dealers. Really, they should put golden arches over the revolving doors at our state and national capitals. They're franchises for graft. You've got to kiss up to get in, and cash in to get out.

But there are plenty of very good people who invest their lives in meaningful work largely for the satisfaction of doing good, helping to make improvements, just doing the right thing. It's not about getting rich.

I would like to believe that an ostensibly good hearted man like Obama would realize that if he could change just one thing about our political system, it should be to make campaigning for office cheap. Notwithstanding what he was willing to do to get elected, I hope he understands he has thrown fuel on the fire, hardly helped to extinguish it.

Isn't there a way? If we must accept that money is speech, and we can't seem to limit campaign contributions and political spending, does that mean we can't make being heard so cheap that money doesn't matter? Must the well financed message always drown out real political debate? The time has come to mandate the media that uses our airways to share them with us. Time to give tax breaks to newspapers and require they open things up.

I believe if we changed some things, didn't require people to prostitute themselves to get elected, the best people would run. It ain't because they're after more money. They just don't want to pay the price.