AMERICA:The White House chief of staff takes a no-holds-barred approach to politics, but his management skills are being questioned
HE’S BEEN called a bulldog, the Democrats’ political assassin. Rahm “Rahmbo” Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is the dark side of Barack Obama: a wheeling, dealing, expletive- spewing enforcer whose job it is to contradict the president’s most idealistic impulses.
In recent weeks, Emanuel has been caught in the crossfire between Washington pundits. If the Democrats fail to pass healthcare legislation, Emanuel may find himself in an ejectable hot seat.
When Obama appointed Emanuel, the House Republican leader John Boehner said he had “mellowed” since his days as a campaigner for then presidential candidate Bill Clinton. Emanuel earned the nickname of Rahm Dead-fish for sending a dead fish through the post to a Democratic pollster he considered a turncoat. (In Mafia symbolism, “sleeping with the fishes” means you’re marked for murder.) Emanuel will never live down the fish story, or the one about how he stabbed a dinner table with a knife as he uttered the names of Clinton enemies, punctuating each stab with the word “dead”. Both tales resurfaced in the present flurry of coverage.
Perhaps Emanuel’s character was best defined by Obama at a fundraiser in 2005: “Rahm is a little intense, he’s strong, he’s aggressive, he’s emotional, he’s moody. Thank God he is one of a kind.” Certainly no other chief of staff has trained as a ballet dancer, has a brother who’s a Hollywood agent, and popped back to his hometown of Chicago between stints at the Clinton White House and in Congress to pick up $18 million in investment banking.
Nowhere but in America would the son of an Israeli immigrant who fought with the Irgun, the Jewish extremists who attacked the British in mandate Palestine, become gatekeeper to a president whose father was a Muslim.
And nowhere but in America would Emanuel’s strong Israeli connections be so little remarked upon. Emanuel spent childhood holidays in Israeli summer camps and volunteered to work as a mechanic for the Israeli army during the 1991 Gulf War. Much later, he introduced Obama to the pro-Israel lobby group Aipac. When Emanuel was appointed chief of staff, the Israeli newspaper Maariv called him “Our man in the White House”.
Emanuel’s loyalty to Israel created zero controversy. But after Democrats lost the Senate seat that Ted Kennedy held for half a century to the Republican neophyte Scott Brown in January, there were calls for his head.
Emanuel does not have “the management skills and discipline to run the White House”, Leslie Gelb wrote in the Daily Beast. The Financial Times reported that Emanuel had “alienated many of Mr Obama’s closest outside supporters” and Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation said Emanuel was part of the “Core Chicago Team Sinking Obama Presidency”.
Obama’s brief career as a senator left him relatively innocent of Washington ways. Emanuel mastered the capital’s machinery. As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he engineered the Democrats’ victory in 2006.
During that period he nurtured friendships with journalists. In a New York Times magazine cover story to be published tomorrow, correspondent Peter Baker quotes the editor of a major newspaper saying every reporter covering Washington submitted expense claims for meals with Emanuel.
Journalists have been Emanuel’s loyal advocates through what the Washington Post calls “the civil war of the Chicago consiglieri”. Publicly, the White House staff portrayed as Emanuel’s rivals – David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and Valerie Jarrett – all praise him. Axelrod told Baker of the Times that Emanuel was “a heat-seeking missile” but added, “I love him like a brother”. Post columnist Dana Milbank has been Emanuel’s most ardent supporter. “Obama’s first year fell apart in large part because he didn’t follow his chief of staff’s advice on crucial matters,” Milbank wrote. “Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming [a one-term president like] Jimmy Carter.” Obama ignored Emanuel’s advice on three issues that became enormous headaches, Milbank wrote. Having lived through the failure of healthcare reform during the Clinton administration, Emanuel urged Obama to adopt a modest, incremental approach to the problem. Emanuel also argued against closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay – a pledge which Obama has been unable to keep because of Republican opposition – and said Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, the self-declared mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, should not be tried by a civil court in New York.
In a subsequent article, Milbank argued that Obama should learn to bully staff and opponents more, like the British prime minister Gordon Brown. The battle erupted into trench warfare in the columns of the Washington Post, where another columnist, David Broder, took shots at Milbank and other Rahmophiles.
The president has reportedly expressed displeasure at the wrinkles in the “no drama Obama” image of his administration. Emanuel is said to have apologised and is lying low, hoping the storm will pass, and that he’ll some day succeed the Irish-American Daley dynasty at town hall in Chicago.
