By DIRK JOHNSON


CHICAGO - For Jeff Makowski, a 47-year-old house painter, it had been fun lately to boast to out-of-town friends about Chicago as the home of President-elect Barack Obama.

Now the phone calls are coming the other way, and they are often sarcastic.

“We’re a national laughingstock,” said Mr.Makowski, who drank a beer with a work friend recently after finishing up on a North Side condominium.“They call up and say, ‘What’s going on in Illinois- How can you elect these people-’ ”

Last month, Chicago erected huge banners along Michigan Avenue bearing the image of its hometown hero, Mr.Obama, and“our city just beamed,”as Peggy Smith, a 53-year-old nurse, put it.

To Mr.Makowski and others, the election of Mr.Obama had shown the world that Chicago had produced a brilliant politician, a president with the historic purpose of Lincoln and the style of a Kennedy.

But it was a short-lived burst of civic pride that sparkled on election night like never before. The arrest on December 9 of Governor Rod R.Blagojevich has resurrected the corrupt image of politics in this city and state. The state’s previous governor, George Ryan, is in prison on corruption charges, only the latest of a string of Illinois executives to go to jail in the last century.

“In Chicago, we had just gotten past the old stereotypes,” Mr.Makowski said.“But now we’re back to the jokes. You go anywhere and you hear that‘Oh, you guys are from Chicago’ business. And then they just laugh at you.”

His pal, Dan Frohling, 42, took a drink of his beer and shook his head.“It’s a blemish for us,”he said.“It’s depressing.”

For Bruce Hansfurther, a 51-yearold lawyer, it is difficult to be surprised anymore.“In my lifetime, I’ve had nine governors - three went to prison and another one might be on his way,”he said.“My 22-year-old son reminded the family yesterday that he was the only one of us who didn’t vote for Blagojevich. He wrote in his grandmother’s name.”

Even the young in Illinois grow skeptical. Jimmy Ray, 22, said he thought it was probably good for Chicago to endure some bad news about political corruption, especially given the wild sense of euphoria here about Mr.Obama’s election.

“He’s being expected to ride in on a white horse, end hunger, stop war and deforestation, and maybe cure cancer along the way,”said Mr.Ray, himself an enthusiastic Obama supporter.“The expectations are so ludicrously high. It sets him up for failure. So this Blagojevich thing is maybe good for us, a cold slap in the face. It’s a dose of realism for us.”

Patricia Sams, a 55-year-old medical assistant, stood at the edge of Grant Park, where Mr.Obama electrified this city with his election-night speech, and longed for the good old days of six weeks ago.

“We were all so elated,” Ms.Sams said.“Black people and white people and Asian people all hugging, just like it should be.”

She said the latest news about Mr.Blagojevich, who faces charges that he tried to use his power to appoint the successor to Mr.Obama in the Senate for his personal gain,“is obviously embarrassing”for the state. But she cautioned against judging the governor before all the facts come in, and said he should not be assumed to be guilty“just because he’s from Illinois.”

Kathy Burns, a tourist , said she could sense the sagging spirits among Chicagoans.“I’m from Louisiana,”Ms.Burns said of a state that has known more than its share of political corruption,“so I can relate.”

As a measure of the pride in this city’s connection to Mr.Obama, The Chicago Sun-Times newspaper printed extras of its November 5 issue, the one whose front page declared,“Mr.President.”

In contrast, the front page on December 10 carried the word “Shame.”

Despite the disappointment about the corruption case involving Mr.Blagojevich, virtually all of the more than a dozen Chicagoans interviewed said it would not dampen the spirit of the Obama victory. One woman could be heard explaining to a visitor, with evident pride, “This is Presidential City, dude.”

Ms.Smith, the nurse, said she hoped it was going to be helpful to have a local man as president.

Then she spoke like an Illinois voter.“Let’s hope he doesn’t forget about Illinois when he’s in the White House,” she said.“Think of all the perks.”