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Barack's Enforcer
Emanuel made his first notable mark in politics as chief fundraiser for Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago in his reelection campaign of 1989, the credential that got him the post of finance director for candidate Bill Clinton in his 1992 campaign. He was so abrasive early in Clinton‘s administration as political director that his foul mouth was credited with Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama’s defection from the Democrats to the Republicans, so enraged was he by Emanuel’s arrogance and contempt. The president sought to dismiss him, but he simply refused to go and decamped to an office he occupied in the Old Executive Office Building right beside the White House. He crept back by running the operation with Bill Daley, the Chicago mayor’s brother, that won congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In Clinton’s second term, Emanuel was deputy chief of staff, leaving to make his fortune.
Elected in 2002, Congressman Emanuel is to the right of Pelosi on a host of issues. He is also to the right of his new boss on foreign policy, trade and criminal justice issues. Emanuel enthusiastically supported the invasion in Iraq and will make no apologies for it. He has contempt for Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean as weak and feckless. His House colleagues chose him to chair the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2006 midterm campaign. He served as its chief fundraiser and selector of candidates, campaigned tirelessly, lost 14 pounds from his already slight frame, and won the Democrats back control of the House for the first time in 12 years. Since 2007, he has been chairman of the majority Democratic caucus in the House, the fourth highest position in the chamber. If he chose to wait, he might have become Speaker. But he is never one to sit patiently. As he considers Obama’s offer, the prospect of raw power at the right hand of the Democratic president with the largest popular mandate in 44 years and two majorities in the Congress may be too much to resist.
Obama’s decision to make Emanuel his chief of staff reveals the president-elect’s determination to pass his priority legislation as fast as possible. Obama will call the shots and Emanuel, if he accepts the job, will fire them. Speaker Pelosi, whose national popularity ratings in the now departing 110th Congress were lower than Bush’s abysmal standing, will find that her former top lieutenant will be giving, not receiving orders.
Will Emanuel be content to sit on the sidelines and simply enforce President Obama’s policy without trying to influence it? Of course not. He will be where he has always been and wanted to be—in the heat of the kitchen, not only enduring the high temperatures but raising them. His friends rightly say he is experienced and effective. His critics, with equal rightness, say he is hyper-partisan, arrogant, mean, relentless, bullying, and an spoiled brat determined to get his own way. All of which only explains why Barack Obama picked him for the job.
Above all, Emanuel should be expected to be passionately loyal to his friend and fellow Chicagoan who has just fulfilled his deepest wish—to be a player at the epicenter of the action.
Martin Sieff is defense industry editor of United Press International and UPI‘s former chief political correspondent. He was State Department correspondent for The Washington Times and has received three Pulitzer Prize nominations for international reporting.
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AndreainNY
As was always the case, one must look at Obama's actions not his words. Emanuel's behavior was so negative during the bailout negotiations. He's nothing more than an attack dog.
TheBlindHog
The choice resonates. An attack dog is exactly what Obama needs to keep a giddy Democratic congress in check and on point as he pushes through his agenda and negotiates the minefield that is the economic meltdown.Thank goodness THIS pit bull comes with a pedigree
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n--Y--dsmntlrchirper84
A perfect choice! Kind Barack needs an ass-kicker (good cop, bad cop) to get the job done. Love Rahm! And he's a stone fox (not that that's relevant, but if we're going to have to see his face in the paper, it's nice that it's a good one).
njnoecker
Obama's choice of Emanuel signals that a President Obama will promote his platform in an aggressive, competent, and rigorously partisan fashion. Which is exactly what you should do when you have a mandate like the one given by the voters on November 6th. Let the games begin.
sifta7
The decision has its pluses and minuses. Getting a hard-knuckles negotiator is great. Getting someone who is going to manipulate the policy to their own ends is not necessarily great. He got it virulently wrong on the war and the 50-state strategy, and was too proud to admit it. I'm hoping that the aloof Obama can keep him in check, though.
gatorlynn
As an dual citizen watching this from Canada I have been watching the election with the same excitement as when I lived in the US.
I am so thrilled to read about the bright, eloquent and tough people Obama is choosing to help him live up to his promise.
Inanna
Obama's no shrinking violet himself--he can handle Emanuel. Great choice, President-elect Obama!
sakura
Can't wait to see what these two guys will do
ARG2008
Friends and enemies agree that the key to Emanuel's success is his legendary intensity. There's the story about the time he sent a rotting fish to a pollster who had angered him....And there's the story of how, the night after Clinton was elected, Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" and plunging the knife into the table after every name. "When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape," one campaign veteran recalls. "It was like something out of The Godfather. But that's Rahm for you."
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/8091986/the_enforcer/
MediaFreak
This is going to be very interesting indeed.
drfadhel
hope that doesn't mean a continuation of the disastrous neocon foreign policies of GW Bush, this would be a real shame, because the world had enough of these belligerent war mongering neocons
AlexinKC
The appointment of Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff is reminiscent of Justice Arthur Goldberg resigning his JFK-appointed seat on the Supreme Court in 1965 to serve as LBJ's lapdog as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Ambassadors, like the White House staff, serve at the pleasure of the President.
Justice Goldberg, 57 years old at the time, may have hoped eventually to get re-appointed to the Court so he acquiesced to the request of a very persuasive president with a then overwhelming electoral mandate. His surprising resignation from the Court to serve in the executive branch demonstrated how a politically astute president can de-fang a potentially contentious powerful force in another branch of government without a head-to-head confrontation.
Could it be that Obama took his cue from LBJ, one of the 20th century's most cunning political tacticians?While LBJ may have needed liberal justices on the Supreme Court to prevent interference with his Great Society programs, he could not long abide an analogous potential check to the unconstitutional extension of executive power that a war conducted solely by executive fiat requires.
President Obama will need a cooperative Congress to implement his very progressive agenda. Emanuel, a strong, independent congressional leader with a rapidly growing power base of his own, would never again be as compliant as now with the wishes of the president-elect. There will never be a better time than now for Obama, basking in the glow of his wildly popular mandate, to co-opt the legislative arm of our government by neutralizing what would likely be a most obstreperous check to his executive power.Welcome to the White House, Mr. Emanuel. Too bad about the power you had to give up to get there. Nice move, Mr. President.
Catch22
I think this was a good pick for Obama, and being that I voted for McCain it's moves like these that build my confidence in our new president. I think the choice of a tough insider that knows the DC machine is great, plus I despise Pelosi and Emanuel's distance from her is thrilling.
Garibaldini
Another Sunbeam for the Unitary Executive. The Neo Cons have brought us such wonderful things and it will be refreshing to have brawny Chicago Democrat Neocons instead of the mincing variety from the decrepit center of Empire.
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