The basic logic behind Barack Obama’s first major decision as president-elect, his selection of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, makes sense.
Emanuel is a sharp and aggressive strategic thinker with an instinctive grasp of the finer points of backroom dealing and deep knowledge of who’s who and what’s what in the world of Washington. He can also be brutally frank and will have no reservations about providing candid assessments and challenging Obama’s thinking during any decision-making process. The idea, in short, is that Emanuel is a no-nonsense guy knows how to get things done in Washington – a pretty good combination for a chief of staff.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean Obama is making a wise choice. In vesting Emanuel with such authority – he’ll essentially run the White House and serve as the gatekeeper to the president – he is also assuming some very significant risks.
First, Emanuel’s hyper-aggression tends to create needless divisions and to turn would-be allies into sworn enemies.
A well-known anecdote from late 1992 is again making the rounds this week, one that has Emanuel, a top fund-raiser for Bill Clinton, basking in victory with fellow campaign aides by jabbing a steak knife into a table and boastfully pledging revenge against anyone who’d been insufficiently supportive during the campaign. But he was serious, too. Emanuel’s bellicose style quickly won him a demotion in the Clinton White House, although by the close of Clinton’s second term he’d worked his way back into the president’s inner circle.
