Indirectly, I had to discover that Rod Blagojevich, Illinois’s Senate-seat-selling governor, has been quoting Rudyard Kipling’s If. Yes, that’s the same If that inspired me to write my book. What gall that man has.

At least he stopped just short of the two lines that form the core idea of the book: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/and treat those two impostors just the same.” Odd. I would think that he must be hoping that his Disaster somehow reveals itself to be an impostor.

According to William Kristol’s account in today’s New York Times, Blagojevich on Friday, after pledging that he will fight, fight, fight:

quoted the opening lines of Rudyard Kipling’s “If.”

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating …

But Blagojevich carefully cut off his recitation before the stanza’s last line: “And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.”

Well, I suppose the poem is public property. Go ahead, Rod. I’ll share.