"Obama sends powerful signal"

Politico:

President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) as his White House chief of staff is the latest demonstration of a quality Obama showed repeatedly over the course of his campaign: He’s willing to do what it takes to win.

If his goal had been to create a cordial bipartisan tone in Washington — much less a calm, profanity-free West Wing — Obama would have looked elsewhere.

The selection of Emanuel, one of the Democratic Party’s most effective operatives over the past two decades, was a powerful signal of Obama’s determination to be effective under the existing rules of the Washington game.

“He’s from the Lombardi wing of the party — he’s a guy who wants to win at any cost and will do whatever it takes,” said John Lapp, a former top Emanuel aide at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Lapp called Emanuel “the best possible pick — a perfectionist and fighter who loves the president[-elect] like a brother.”

If so, he’s a sibling who long ago showed he knows how to talk back in the family. As a longtime aide to Bill Clinton, Emanuel was known for his willingness to talk bluntly to colleagues from the president on down.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton and then-White House chief of staff Mack McLarty unsuccessfully tried to ease him out of the West Wing during Clinton’s turbulent first year in 1993, Emanuel skillfully fought for his position. He told McLarty that he was not leaving unless Bill Clinton told him to his face, knowing that the conflict-averse president would not do it.

Emanuel stayed put, showing survival skills that have rarely wavered in the 15 years since.

Although Emanuel is undeniably a partisan fighter, his selection is not an ideological statement. The Chicago Democrat does not share the reflexively liberal views of many of his House colleagues. In the Clinton years, he helped pass the North American Free Trade Agreement and pushed for anti-crime and other centrist measures.

Emanuel is a composite of three distinct models of chief of staff: the personal confidant, the prominent public figure and the Washington operative.

Like McLarty, Emanuel is a close friend of the president-elect, from his hometown of Chicago. Like later Clinton chief Leon Panetta and President Bush’s first chief Andrew Card, he’s a well-known figure with an independent stature and reputation. And like Clinton chief John Podesta and current Bush chief Josh Bolten, he has the soul of an inside-Washington operator.

The choice of Emanuel is also a deliberate departure from the culture of Obama’s cool, Chicago-based campaign, a willingness to fully embrace the new Washington milieu Obama spent two years deriding.
Obama’s campaign was deliberately low-key and hermetically sealed from leaks. The Emanuel era arrived with a jolt before Election Day, when word leaked that he’d been offered the job. Then word leaked that he was “agonizing.” Then he agonized about moving his children to Washington in front of television cameras on a Chicago street. Then word leaked that he took the job.

“If it was from [the campaign], it was the first leak they’ve had in two years. That was obviously from him,” said a senior Democratic congressional aide, who added, “He’s strategic enough in his leaking — I don’t think that would be a problem" when he is in the White House.

Indeed, the unusual leaks from Obama’s expanding camp are part of one of Emanuel’s greatest assets: He talks to everyone. Emanuel knows more than most in Washington about what’s happening in both parties and in the media, because he’s in constant touch with all sides.

“It’s more how wired in he is than that he tries to leak things all the time,” said another Democratic aide.
Just because he knows reporters does not mean he is always chummy. In the Clinton White House, he hung up mid-sentence with a reporter, sputtering, “I can’t put up with this idiocy.”

Republicans immediately attacked Emanuel as a partisan and as a contrast to Obama’s pledge of a “new politics.”

“Barack Obama’s first decision as president-elect undermines his promise to ‘heal the divides.’ Rahm Emanuel is a partisan insider who played a lead role in breaking Washington,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant, and House Republican leader John A. Boehner called the choice “ironic.”

But Emanuel’s will to win, and his years in the ultimate partisan job of leading the Democrats’ House campaigns, masks good relations with members of both parties and a pragmatism that steers him well clear of liberal ideology.

“I see Rahm closer to the center, from a policy standpoint, than many of the Democratic Party,” Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.), the retiring ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee, told Politico. “He has good instincts when it comes to resolving policy disputes and finding common ground in policy disputes, and that’s going to come in handy as chief of staff.”

McCrery noted that Emanuel spent time in the private sector, making millions as an investment banker before his run for Congress.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a McCain confidant, praised the pick in a statement. “He can be a tough partisan but also understands the need to work together,” he said.

Emanuel’s arrival will brings a cultural shift to Obama’s circle. The Illinois senator’s campaign staffers took as their motto “no drama” and projected the candidate’s own cool. Emanuel is dramatic, impatient and profane, willing to speak truth to power in the crudest terms and the most difficult moments, as in the heat of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

"You got it backwards," Emanuel, who is Jewish, reportedly told Clinton at the time. "You messed around with a Jewish girl, and now you're paying a goyish lawyer.”

“Obama has made an assessment, and Obama’s no fool — Obama really does know himself,” said former Clinton aide Harold Ickes. “He clearly has concluded that Rahm is the kind of temperament and person that would serve his interests best in this White House.”

And Emanuel is unlikely to be shy in Obama’s circle. In fact, he and Obama share political roots in Chicago, and they share a political brain in the form of adviser David Axelrod. Emanuel’s former DCCC press secretary, Bill Burton, is Obama’s national press secretary. Obama’s communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, is married to Emanuel’s top press aide, Sarah Feinberg. He’s close to Obama’s Senate chief of staff, Pete Rouse, and to his campaign chief of staff, David Plouffe.

“During my time in the Clinton White House, two of the most powerful words you could utter were ‘Rahm says,’” speechwriter Jeff Shesol said on Politico’s Arena page. “His selection makes clear, once again, that Barack Obama refuses to buy into the false dichotomy, the phony binary choice, of Old Hands vs. New Blood. He will have both.”

Other Democrats also welcomed the pick.

“He is the perfect choice. He knows the Hill, he knows substance, he knows politics, and most importantly, he can get the job done,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Emanuel’s equally driven Senate counterpart in 2006 and sometimes his rival.

Indeed, many said they were more surprised that Emanuel had taken the job than that Obama had offered it. He gives up a congressional career and a shot, someday, to be speaker of the House for a job that rarely lasts as long as a presidency.

“He’s giving up a huge amount. But I don’t think anyone will worry, ‘Is Rahm going to be OK?’” said Lapp, the former DCCC executive director. “I pity the Democrats or Republicans who get in his way.”

Howie P.S.: Back in the 20th century when I was working on a congressional campaign, Mr. Emanuel came to visit us and I picked him up at Boeing Field, where he deplaned from his private aircraft. We spent the evening with his boss, a congressman who headed the DCCC at that time, on Capitol Hill (the one in Seattle). He left me with an indelible impression that this article conveys quite well. He's not the ideal club companion, but he does get his work done at the office.

Barack Obama