Dem Insiders Start Sniping at Emanuel
The FT reports:
Some time in the next few days, Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s chief of staff, looks almost certain to quit his job to pursue his dream of becoming mayor of Chicago.
Known as Rahmbo by friends and enemies alike and assigned the code name Black Hawk by the secret service, Mr Emanuel’s often capricious style of management has helped define Mr Obama’s rollercoaster ride in the White House during the past 20 months.
Mr Obama recently said Mr Emanuel would make an “excellent” mayor of Chicago. But if Democratic figures inside and outside the White House are to be believed, Mr Emanuel’s pugilistic approach may turn him into a scapegoat for much what has gone wrong, some of it fair, some not.
Mr Emanuel is the target of three types of criticism. First, he is said to be obsessed with the 24-hour news cycle, taking his eye off longer-term goals. “Rahm cannot keep his thoughts focused for more than 10 minutes,” said a former official. “If he spent as much time planning strategy as he does trying to win the news cycle then things might have gone differently.”
Second, detractors say that Mr Emanuel, who cut his teeth in the Clinton White House and formed the basis of the character Josh in the popular West Wing television series, misread the obstructionist mood of the Republican party on Capitol Hill. Time and again on the healthcare debate, cap-and-trade and the $787bn stimulus, Mr Emanuel led the White House negotiations with Republican legislators.
In almost every case Mr Emanuel recommended concessions to the Republicans that achieved no support when push came to vote. The one exception was over the 2009 stimulus bill, which pulled in three Republican votes in the Senate. The net result was to signal that the White House had few red lines.
“Rahm’s approach helped create the impression that the Obama White House had no principles – it was simply transactional,” says a close Democratic observer.
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