It's easy to be cynical about the political drama playing out in Illinois, to say that Gov. Rod Blagojevich is in trouble only because he seems to have peddled influence outside the confines of a campaign. With Blagojevich, however, there are two important public issues: filling the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama, and having a government totally focused on the crises at hand.

The surest way to do that and avoid any taint of corruption (at least more than the usual) is to impeach Blagojevich. Nothing else will produce a fair result as speedily.

Blagojevich has shown extreme reluctance to resign his office in the face of corruption charges from U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. In that he is right, because he has not been tried for any crime, let alone convicted. But in reality, Blagojevich cannot appoint anyone to the Senate, although he still has that power. No appointment would be credible, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,

D-Nev., has has said no Blagojevich appointee would be admitted.

The state Supreme Court challenge to Blagojevich's competence by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan seems a stretch, and a special election would be unwise. Estimates reported in news articles have set the cost of that at $35 million to $50 million. Republicans are, of course, trumpeting the need for democracy because they want an opportunity to recover from their November drubbing, and Democrats have squashed the idea. But there's a more compelling reason to reject an election. In this economy, those millions would be better used to help ordinary people stranded by the fiscal tides. Spending money on an election for someone to serve the remaining two years of Obama's term would be simply irresponsible.

Quick federal action on Blagojevich's case is also unlikely. Some legal analysts have noted that Fitzgerald - who said he indicted quickly to prevent the sale of a Senate seat - bypassed the usual grand jury process, and thus may not have as solid a case as it first appeared. Combined with Blagojevich's hiring of a tough defense attorney and the intrinsic delays of high-profile cases, the probability is that any resolution in federal court will take years. Thus, we're down to impeachment as the quickest way to settle the matter.

Illinois legislative leaders have declared they will be deliberate, and that is as it should be, because justice is necessary and this is a very gray area. Politics is impure by nature, because passing any bill requires trades of this for that, and so the line of misconduct is drawn in shifting sand. But the Illinois Legislature still needs to act as quickly as possible. As we have seen in the cases of Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, clouds of scandal impede governing, and when there's a real storm and all hands are needed to keep the ship afloat, we should spend as little time as possible trying to decide who didn't clean the decks.