In Washington, where big personalities create even bigger legends, Democrat Rahm Emanuel has achieved mythic status.
Posted on 12/28/2008 1:35:55 AM PST by Syncro
12/28/08
In Washington, where big personalities create even bigger legends, Democrat Rahm Emanuel has achieved mythic status.
He throws cells phones. He once sent a dead fish to a pollster who displeased him. At a dinner to celebrate Bill Clinton’s 1992 election, Emanuel repeatedly stabbed the table with a steak knife, shouting the names of his political enemies. Journalists have trouble quoting him, because his routine utterances are replete with profanity.
“Rahm is a little intense,” Barack Obama once said.
As even Emanuel concedes, “I wake up some mornings hating me, too.”
Emanuel’s political intensity has a darker side. His numerous contacts with disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s office to push various candidates for Obama’s open Senate seat put him inside the lines of an unseemly political scandal.
The Obama transition team last week cleared itself of wrongdoing in the matter, but it’s unlikely that its report is the last word on the federal government’s wide-ranging public corruption investigation.
“Part of his portfolio is dealmaking, being sure people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson said of Emanuel. “The assumption is that Obama’s team will stay clean in this, but if there’s a stumble, it will be in Rahm’s shop.”
For now, Emanuel’s combative style helps make him the perfect man for his new job: chief of staff to President-elect Obama.
Emanuel, 49, will play the enforcer role of controlling access and information through the Oval Office door. He will need to have an intuitive sense of what the new president wants and needs, while staying oblivious to the hurt feelings of people he turns away.
“The chief of staff is the ‘no’ person, and he is the one who takes the blame for the president,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor at Towson University and an expert on presidential transition.
It will be especially tricky playing gatekeeper for Obama, of whom so much is expected and so much will be asked.
“You have to know who the president wants in the room,” Kumar said.
A former Clinton administration senior adviser and fourth-ranking Democratic leader in the House, Emanuel has been a political operator on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
“I have loved the time I spent in the House, both the successes and the setbacks,” Emanuel said recently.
Of his House colleagues, Emanuel added, “They have taught me invaluable lessons — even a few lessons in humility, believe it or not.”
A three-term congressman and skilled fundraiser and partisan, Emanuel was 2006 chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and helped his party win a majority in the House.
In addition to serving as in-house gatekeeper, the White House chief of staff is often the president’s point man with Cabinet members and lawmakers.
Some critics, notably Republican House leaders, criticized Obama’s choice of Emanuel for the job, saying Emanuel’s history of partisan politics is out of step with Obama’s promises to work across the aisle.
Rep. Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican who served with Emanuel on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, said Republican “nerves may be too raw” for Emanuel to be an effective surrogate for Obama with the GOP caucus.
But with a stronger Democratic majority preparing to test the limits of their power on the House side, Emanuel’s leadership experience and role in helping many of them get elected could serve Obama’s interest in governing from the center, Brady said.
“Rahm is possibly the only person over there who can keep House Democrats between the lines,” Brady said. “You could see it on the House floor when they were crafting legislation, he was the one moving the conference back to the center.”
Influence like that could bode well for the incoming president’s ambitious policy agenda, notably a massive public works program aimed at creating jobs and improving the economy through a federal government spending program.
Obama also is expected to push a universal health care initiative, which was one of Emanuel’s priorities when he worked in the Clinton White House.
“No one I know is better at getting things done,” Obama said of Emanuel.
In the Clinton administration, Emanuel earned the nickname “Rahmbo” for his aggressive style. He is said to be the model for the character Josh Lyman on “The West Wing.”
Translating his force of personality into velvet-fist efficiency in the real West Wing will be a key challenge for Emanuel, whose dossier now includes hiring, firing, and deciding whether Obama should get his information in bullet points or executive summary.
“One thing Rahm has going for him is a sense that the president really supports him,” said Stephen Hess, a political scholar at the Brookings Institution whose latest book, “What Do We Do Now,” is a road map for presidential transitions.
“His temperament is an issue, but of course everybody is trying to be generous,” Hess said. “Nobody in Washington is willing to slam somebody who is going to be that powerful.”
Even so, Emanuel may find the message discipline of the Obama administration a tough adjustment after his freewheeling days in Congress and the Clinton administration.
In her 2007 book about the Clintons, “For Love of Politics,” Sally Bedell Smith describes an incident in which an unnamed Clinton administration official colorfully denigrates then-Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, at the time one of Washington’s most powerful Democrats, after Moynihan criticized Clinton’s transition.
“Big deal,” a ‘top administration official’ told Time magazine, adding, “he’s not one of us … he couldn’t obstruct us even if he wanted to. The gridlock is broken. It’s all Democratic now. We’ll roll right over him if we have to.”
Emanuel called the senator’s office after the story appeared, promising to fire whoever gave the quote to Time. A horrified Clinton echoed the promise, saying “We know it was someone who didn’t know us.”
But as the late senator’s personal papers showed, Emanuel’s promise was disingenuous, to say the least. At a dinner with the Time reporter, Moynihan was told that the “big deal” quote came from none other than Emanuel.
During much of the current presidential transition, Emanuel, who like Obama still lives in Chicago, has been keeping a low profile.
Declaring that “now is a time for unity,” he made a round of conciliatory, closed-door chats with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.
“We would like and welcome their ideas, on a host of fronts, be that in the area of education, health care, taxes, energy policy, national security,” Emanuel said. “Give us those ideas, as we are formulating what we’re going to do in the Obama administration.”
Emanuel is close friends with Obama and with David Axelrod, the campaign’s chief strategist and incoming White House senior adviser. The trio is expected to comprise the new administration’s central axis of power.
Before accepting the chief of staff job, Emanuel expressed reservations about how the demands of the new administration would affect his wife and three children. In taking the job, he also gave up a long-cherished dream of becoming speaker of the House.
“I know what a privilege it is to serve in the White House, and am humbled by the responsibility we owe the American people,” Emanuel said in accepting Obama’s offer. “I’m leaving a job I love to join your White House for one simple reason: Like the record amount of voters who cast their ballot over the last month, I want to do everything I can to help deliver the change America needs.”
http://jordanmaxwell.com/articles/quotes/images/Goebbels-portrait.jpg
Looks more like Goebbels to me
“This guy is evil, furtive, secretive, sneaky, clandestine, concealed, covert, hidden and stealthy, not to mention fraudulent. “
He is also extremely creepy.
Wish we had a guy like him on our side.
Why the sweet looking picture?
Girly men unite in DC in 09.
Do the names Machiavelli or Rasputin ring a bell?
Barry is Rahm’s prison b-otch. Barry is just a figurehead, anyway.
I feel pretty, oh so pretty...
He looks like a creep and apparently acts like a creep. Amazing how no one in the establishment cares who Obama’s friends are.
A few points:
1) Obama actually authorized Emanuel to talk to Blagojevichabout selecting his successor in the Senate.
2) In November Rham suggested that Valerie Jarrett would be an acceptable candidate.
3) Emanuel had four conversations with Blagojevich's chief of staff John Harris. Who also tried to benefit from helping with this corrupt scheme.
4) He was authorized by Obama to suggest others for the job: Dan Hynes, Tammy Duyckworth, Jan Schakowsky and of course race baiter/poverty pimp Jesse Jackson's son Jesse Jackson Jr. This took four conversations
5) Quoting the report they "discussed the merits of potential candidates and the strategic benefits each would bring to the Senate seat."
I recall that when Obama was first asked about this scandal, he was quoted as saying that "we"...then he changed it to "I"...had no contact with Blagojevich about this.
Good parse 'cause he apparently didn't contact Blagojevich, he has his lackey Capo do it.
One of the greatest dissapointments in Emanuel's life is that can only give us the finger with one hand.
Half the middle finger of his right hand has been amputated from an infection he got while working at Arby's when he was a teenager.
OK, that was mean.
I'm sorry.
Rahm Emanuel: First Jewish Speaker of the House?
Politico examines the ambitions of Democratic powerbroker Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who is considered a possible Senate successor to Barack Obama in the event that the Illinois Democrat is elected president in November.
But Emanuel insists that he’s not interested in Obama’s Senate seat , which, Politico notes, begs the question, “What does Rahm really want, and what is his timetable for getting there?”
Politico reports that “before he was even elected to his first term as the congressman from the North Side of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel was telling friends that he had one goal in life: to become the first Jewish speaker of the House.”
Insiders apparently think that Emanuel’s dream is a real possibility. Politico’s John Bresnahan writes:
…the private consensus among Democratic members, even among those who count themselves as critics, is that Emanuel is on the path to the speaker’s chair. Emanuel will have to do some fence-mending to get there, especially with some black and Hispanic Democrats he has offended over the years. But that obstacle is not seen as insurmountable for someone who, as chairman of the DCCC, gets the lion’s share of the credit for ending the GOP’s control of the House after 12 years.
“The whole question is one of time,” said one Democrat close to the current leadership team, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Does Rahm want to put in the time to be speaker? Will he hang in there long enough? He is young enough to wait, but will he? His age [48] is a dual-edged thing. It gives him time to wait, but does he want to put in six or eight or even 10 years or more? I don’t know.”
Pelosi is 68. Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland is 69. Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina turns 68 next week. If Pelosi serves another four to six years as speaker — the traditional tenure for the hugely demanding job — the two men next in line will be in their 70s by the time she steps down.
Incidentally, there would be a certain irony if Emanuel winds up getting Obama’s Senate seat: Emanuel was one of the few Illinois pols who didn’t jump on the Obama bandwagon during the primaries. He found himself in the sticky situation of choosing between the Clintons — who had given him his big break with a prominent White House post — and his home-state senator. His response? He hid under his desk.
According to the Cook County Assessor’s website, the Chicago home of four-term Democrat Congressman and likely new White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, doesn’t exist...there seems to be no public record of Emanuel ever paying property taxes on this home.
on 11/07/2008 This post removed due to Cook County Government Intimidation
According to the Cook County Assessor’s website, the Chicago home of four-term Democrat Congressman and likely new White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, doesn’t exist. While the address of 4228 North Hermitage is listed as Emanuel’s residence on the Illinois State Board of Elections’ website, there seems to be no public record of Emanuel ever paying property taxes on this home.
The Cook County Assessor’s and Cook County Treasurer’s online records indicate Emanuel’s Chicago neighbors pay between $3,500 and $7,000 annually. However, Illinois Review has been unable to locate any evidence that the former Clinton advisor and investment banker is paying his fair share of Cook County’s notoriously high tax burden.
Why wouldn’t 4228 North Hermitage property owners Rahm Emanuel and wife Amy Rule pay property taxes?
One reason may be because Emanuel and Rule declared their 4228 North Hermitage home as the office location for their personal non-profit foundation called the “Rahm Emanuel and Amy Rule Charitable Foundation”. As the non-profit’s headquarters, their home could be exempt from paying property taxes.
http://www.rallycongress.com/constitutional-qualification/1244
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