'If Obama knows, Obama goes ...'

We're just seven days away from the big Olympics decision and the world is buzzing about whether President Obama will make a cameo. Recent reports say that he will, and Thom Serafin, President and CEO of Serafin & Associates, Inc. agrees.

“If Obama knows, Obama goes,” said Serafin on FOX-Chicago this morning.

Advance teams have been deployed to preserve the option. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has coyly remarked it is “absolutely” a possibility. All this leaves the president in perfect position to bring home the trophy.

“You’ve got to hand it to Lori Healey, she’s been running the 2016 bid and she’s got everybody going,” said Serafin, noting Governor Quinn, Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama to be among the members of Chicago’s star-studded bid delegation.

There was no shortage of topics to talk about in Illinois’ political world today, with a new Chicago Sun Times report saying that Rahm Emanuel wanted then-Governor Rod Blagojevich to appoint Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool as a placeholder in Congressional District seat.

Is this, as Claypool says, “insanity?”

Serafin suggests things may not be so black and white.

“We won’t know until the tapes come out,” said Serafin, noting that the law requires an election—not an appointment—and implying this was something the tactical Emanuel surely understood. However, Serafin also notes that federal courts reporter Natasha Korecki, who reported the story, is very good and "rarely wrong."

“Rahm knows he’s not going to be in the White House forever,” he said. “Everyone knows he wants to go back to the House of Representatives and he’d be a heck of a lot better Speaker than the current Speaker.”