Obama’s First Decision Has Capital Asking: Politics as Usual, or Fresh Start?
Alex Brandon/Associated Press
Rahm Emanuel with Barack Obama at Daley Center Plaza in Chicago in June.
By
JACKIE CALMES
Published: November 5, 2008
WASHINGTON — After President-elect
Barack Obama ran a nearly flawless 21-month campaign, Democrats are second-guessing one of his first and most important postelection decisions: Why is he asking Representative
Rahm Emanuel — “Rahmbo,” one of the capital’s most in-your-face partisan actors — to be his chief of staff?
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A second question has the political networks abuzz: Why would Mr. Emanuel, now on a ladder potentially to be speaker of the House someday, take the job?
For both men, who are close friends from Chicago, the answers capture their separate calculations as to how best to seize the historic moment. In the decisive election of the nation’s first African-American president, they see a mandate to push through actual change — as opposed to campaign slogans — in the nation’s domestic and foreign policies.
Mr. Emanuel, as a House Democratic leader, already is in a prime position to help Mr. Obama. But in the modern White House, the chief of staff is one of the most powerful posts in all of government, the gatekeeper to the president on every issue, and the person with the last word.
Mr. Obama first broached the idea with Mr. Emanuel weeks ago, say people familiar with their exchanges. "You’d have my back," he is said to have told Mr. Emanuel. Mr. Obama believes, and the skeptics acknowledge, that few people are better suited for the job on paper.
Mr. Emanuel, who turns 49 this month, knows the White House, having been a senior adviser to President
Bill Clinton. In a brief career as an investment banker after that, he made millions and became familiar with Wall Street; in the House, he helped negotiate the government
bailout of the financial system that the next president inherits.
And by all accounts, Mr. Emanuel knows Congress like few others; in his second term, in 2006, he engineered House Democrats’ victories to regain the majority. The Democrats in turn elected him as their caucus chairman; he was immediately viewed — not least by himself — as a prospective speaker. A centrist Democrat, Mr. Emanuel knows policies as well as politics, easily distills complex issues into a simple message and is renowned for always seeing several steps ahead in the legislative process.
But there’s the matter of his temperament — or, as Mr. Emanuel says, “I swear a lot.” He also yells a lot, and in his sentences his favorite expletive can serve as subject, verb or adjective when he is facing down either recalcitrant Democrats or Republican opponents. As the House Democrats’ campaign chairman for 2006, he swore at Hispanic and African-American House members, nearly all of whom had safe seats, to contribute more of their personal campaign finances to the party effort. Speaker
Nancy Pelosi intervened to smooth things over.
To many Democrats, including some who are close to both men, Mr. Obama’s choice of Mr. Emanuel to run the White House seems at odds with the atmosphere Mr. Obama enforced at his Chicago campaign headquarters. The motto there was “No drama with Obama,” in contrast with the backbiting and shakeups in rivals’ campaigns.
Some Democrats say former Senate Majority Leader
Tom Daschle, who is as laid-back as Mr. Emanuel is brusque, would be a better fit. Several have privately expressed or relayed reservations to Mr. Obama about Mr. Emanuel. To one Mr. Obama replied, “Rahm’s grown a lot.”
Mr. Emanuel’s supporters say his reputation for a big ego, over-the-line volatility and take-no-prisoners partisanship is overblown and out of date, rooted still in the Clinton years.
“He’s very self-aware,” said Marcia Hale, a longtime friend and colleague in the Clinton White House who has spoken with Mr. Emanuel about the pros and cons of switching jobs. ”He told me, ‘Look, I know who I am, and I know that I can push too hard, and I know what can happen if I do.’ "
At the start of the Clinton administration, Mr. Emanuel raised eyebrows when, as chairman of the 1993 inaugural committee, he rode in the parade in a car emblazoned with his name. Early on, he was blamed for alienating two Democratic senators, including Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, then the chairman of the committee that handled Mr. Clinton’s major initiatives. He was blamed as being the unnamed leaker quoted as saying the White House would “roll” the chairman.
In the first months, the first lady,
Hillary Clinton maneuvered to have Mr. Emanuel fired. Mr. Clinton’s chief of staff, Mack McLarty, instead demoted him from political director to the press office.
“To his great credit, he didn’t leave, he took a demotion, lost his office, moved into one of those tiny rooms in the press office and just went to work,” Ms. Hale said.
Mr. Emanuel ultimately regained rank as a counselor, with an office adjoining the Oval Office, and was credited with helping Mr. Clinton to pass crime, welfare and trade laws. He worked his way back into Mrs. Clinton’s good graces, as well.
Torn by his allegiances to her and his friendship with Mr. Obama, he remained neutral in the Democrats’ nomination battle.
House Republicans are said to hate Mr. Emanuel for his partisanship, and on Wednesday, the former Florida congressman Joe Scarborough said on his cable television show that Mr. Obama’s enlistment of Mr. Emanuel amounted to “politics as usual” when the president-elect had promised conciliation.
