Gov. Blagojevich explains himself remotely to Barbara Walters' head during Monday's bizarre media tour. (Associated Press Wirephoto)

It’s hard to decide which of soon-to-be-former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s images of himself we like best. Is it Rod the Martyr for the People, à la Gandhi, Nelson Mandela or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

Or it the Rod the Capra Hero, the idealistic guy in a Frank Capra movie who takes on powerful interests on behalf of the common folks?

Or is it Rod the Celeb, the affable doofus dishing with Whoopi, Joy and Sherri on “The View” (Monday: Rod Blagojevich! Tuesday: Liza Minelli! Wednesday: Liam Neeson!), protesting, “I’m an innocent man” as the hosts clucked sympathetically.

So many Rods, so little time. It’s entirely possible that by week’s end, Mr. Blagojevich will have been convicted on impeachment charges in the Illinois Senate and tossed out of office. Mr. Blagojevich admitted as much during his magical media tour on Monday, telling “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” “The View,” Larry King and, for all we know, Rachael Ray, that “The fix is in.”

Why would a man whose impeachment trial began Monday spend the day on the New York talk show circuit? One hesitates to try to think along with Mr. Blagojevich, who marches to his own very strange drummer. But he appears to have accepted that conviction and removal from office are inevitable. That means he’s preparing for criminal proceedings by creating his own version of reality, hoping that it permeates the federal jury pool in the northern district of Illinois.

If that’s the case, he’s not doing a very good job. The image that persists is U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald from last Dec. 9, laying out his criminal complaint against Mr. Blagojevich. On Monday, Mr. Blagojevich dodged questions from ABC’s Diane Sawyer and “The View’s” Barbara Walters and NBC’s Amy Robach, who asked him to explain his own words captured by FBI wiretaps.

Mr. Blagojevich said that words like, “I’ve got this thing [the right to appoint a U.S. senator] and it’s (expletive) golden, and I’m just not giving it up for (expletive) nothing. I’m not gonna do it” were merely “snippets of conversation taken completely out of context.”

In the gospel according to Rod, he’s being railroaded by “politicians who want me to quit for their own interests,” because he’s been fighting for the poor and downtrodden people of Illinois, bringing them health care benefits and free public transit rides and cancer screenings and fighting off tax increases and filibustering against the corrupt Taylor machine that wants to build the Willet Creek Dam on the Boy Rangers camp site. . . .

No, wait. The dam thing was Jimmy Stewart in Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

Mr. Blagojevich spent a lot of time on Monday misleading people about the Illinois Senate’s refusal to allow him to put on evidence in the impeachment trial, neglecting to mention that impeachment is about fitness to serve, not criminal charges. If he’d wanted to call witnesses, he should have mentioned it weeks ago when the Senate was drawing up rules for the trial. He couldn’t be bothered.

As he’s done his whole career, which now has about five days to run, Mr. Blagojevich is playing to the grandstands. If he’d bother to look up, he’d see that the people in the grandstands have their thumbs pointed down.