Blago College Bud Saw Some of This Coming

Rod Blagojevich’s media blitz during his impeachment trial puzzled many, but not his best college bud. “Rod wanted to be Barack, and has been driven to distraction by the press’s fawning over him,” Bill Powell tells Men’s Journal. He recalls college-age Blago, a youthful prankster who—even then—had a passion for his hair, and for outfoxing others.

"Rod loved to wind people up. Not in malicious ways but in juvenile, faintly subversive ways that were often funny in the moment. He and his friends used to try to get crank calls past screeners on talk-radio shows, and they succeeded more often than not." Powell also recalls that Blagojevich's admiration of two men were evident even back then: Elvis and Nixon. (More Rod Blagojevich stories.)