Besieged Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich certainly isn’t worried about overstaying his welcome.  He appeared around the television dial yesterday as he visited show after show with his hair and smirks and denials of wrongdoing, ending the day on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show for what might have been the best interview with him to date.

He was physically squirming during that interview, and hemmed and hawed answers to indelicate questions.  For the serious empath, watching him had to be uncomfortable to the point of bleeding from one’s eyeballs.  For the rest of us, though, it was a joke not worth the retelling.

What’s his thinking?  Taint the jury pool by showing his face all over the place?  Just filling time while he still has a job?  Auditioning for his next gig?

As was speculated some time ago on these pages (see our column from December 16, “Blagojevich Braggadocio Might Not Be Enough to Convict”), U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald may not have the legal goods on Wretched Rod.  He’s gone quiet since his initial press conference, and he may have given an undue impression of the legal case against the Governor.

Fitzgerald may simply have wanted to influence in a positive way the decision Blagojevich was due to make in the filling of the vacant Illinois senate seat with the election of President Barack Obama.  By “outing” the Governor and shining that prosecutorial spot light on him, Fitzgerald may have thought it enough to clean up what he was seeing as a flawed process.

Being a moron is not a crime, else jails be filled even more to overflowing than they already are in this country.  He’s at least guilty of that intellectual shortcoming.  If Fitzgerald had the goods, though, we’d have been given a bigger whiff of it by now.  Just because he was able to obtain a conviction in the “Scooter” Libby trial doesn’t necessarily mean the same strength of case this time around.

It may very well be that Blagojevich’s lawyers have sized up the case as being weak at best.  Now he has lost his first counsel, Ed Genson, but not before a few billable hours of research and review.  So, the governor simply may be feeling cocky at the moment and has decided to showcase his hair on national television and every talk show who will have him.  Daring the Illinois legislature to vote to convict in its impeachment proceedings, and taunting Fitzgerald and what may be a very weak case.

Bad language and ungentlemanly behavior does not make a case worthy of prosecution.  It must be acknowledged that he may not have broken any laws, other than one of propriety.  If he’s feeling confident in that regard, it would go a long way toward explaining his most recent tactics.

Then again, it may be no more complicated than the guy is just a jerk and doesn’t have anything else to do.