Rahm Emanuel to be Obama’s Chief of Staff?
Saturday, November 1st, 2008According to an AP report, Congressman Rahm Emanuel has been asked to serve as Obama’s Chief of Staff.
Well, that should add a touch of class and bipartisanship to the White House.
Then again, knowing Emanuel and Obama, this may just be a last minute attempt to distract from Obama’s ties to PLO activist Rashid Khalid.
Who is Rahm Emanuel? Did a bit of a search and found this article from 2006 in the Chicago Tribune (long article, these are snipped excerpts):
In a world where congressmen refer to each other as “my distinguished colleague,” Emanuel, 46, is sometimes unable to get through a single sentence without several obscenities. His politics are centrist, but his style is extremist. The top of his right middle finger was severed when he was a teenager, adding to his aura of toughness–especially when he extends that middle finger, which he does with some regularity.
Emanuel’s thin, unimposing frame still hints at the teen and college years devoted to ballet; his voice sometimes screeches, and his words can get jumbled in public speeches. But his political style–honed in Chicago and on the presidential campaign trail with Clinton–isn’t gentle or uncertain. His reputation as a political street fighter inspires respect and more than a little fear.
The gravitational center of Democratic antagonism toward Emanuel was the Congressional Black Caucus. Many of the caucus’ 43 members complained that Emanuel had not hired enough African-American staffers. …. Emanuel was privately contemptuous of such complaints. He saw the Black Caucus as one more party faction, like conservative Democrats, that would rather complain than work. Asked about the number of black staffers at the DCCC–two African-Americans were on his senior staff of about 10 people–he waved his hand dismissively. “You know that every [DCCC] chairman has faced the same criticism?” he said. “OK. So I don’t give a [expletive],” he added, literally spitting.
Then he began ranting about his conservative party colleagues. “They hate me too, because I’m arrogant and pushy with them. … Because they’ve never, ever WORKED! NOBODY! NONE OF ‘EM!”
Political consultant David Axelrod remembers Emanuel as a young Chicago political operative. “The first word that comes to mind is chutzpah,” Axelrod said. “He redefined the term.”
Anyone getting the impression Obama is planning to run the White House in the style of down and dirty Chicago politics? Chief of Staff sets the tone and Emanuel would bring Chicago to DC. Ready for that America? Oh right, forgot… Obama is above all that political stuff. He’s a unifier.
When Clinton did win, Emanuel became his White House political director. But this time, his confrontational style failed him, as he clashed with other staffers and was quickly demoted to “director of special projects.” The humiliation tempered his sharpest edges.
As Chief of Staff, Emanuel would have much more power in an Obama White House and would be hard to reign in.
In a few minutes, in front of the cameras, he would strike a conciliatory note about his opponents, and in the days that followed he would stress how both parties needed to work together for what was best for the country.
But at that moment, Emanuel would not, could not censor his glee, or restrain his distaste for the defeated Republicans.
For weeks they had been boasting that their program for turning out voters in the campaign’s final 72 hours would swamp all his work. The voters had made those statements look ridiculous.
“I’ll tell you this,” Emanuel shouted out to his staff. “The Republicans may have the 72-hour program. But they have not seen the 22-month program!
“Since my kids are gone, I can say it: They can go —- themselves!”
Ah yes… he’ll bring some real class to the White House.
