I have forced myself to read the late flood of profiles, stories and columns about Rahm Emanuel and I can confidently pronounce: they are all deadly dull. Do not read them! While they offer some insight into the workings of the Obama presidency, they're simply not interesting. They reveal more about the media than our current political predicament.
It apparently started in February when Dana Milbank penned a Rahm-boosting column. Then over the past week we got another pro-Rahm piece from the Washington Post, which self-consciously regurgitated the opinions of Emanuel defenders into an "emerging narrative" that we shouldn't blame him for the White House's political problems. And in recent days we got longer, more ambitious profiles from Noam Scheiber of The New Republic and Peter Baker of The New York Times. (If there are others, I don't want to hear about them.)
Having read all of this, here's the takeaway: Rahm Emanuel is loyal to Obama and a team player. He takes direction from the president and doesn't freelance. He sometimes argues for more "pragmatic" positioning on issues, going for incremental wins at the expense of the dicier long ball. Sometimes Obama follows this advice, sometimes he doesn't. (And on health care reform, Obama appears to have done both.) He swears a lot. He is all business. He is also 50 years old. And thin.
"At 50, Emanuel has the lean, taut look of a lifelong swimmer, with broad shoulders and distractingly prominent quadriceps." - Scheiber"At 50, he has the coiled energy of aides half his age, still as wiry thin as he was during his improbable days as a ballet dancer." - Baker
I don't think this is the fault of the journalists. The material they're working with just isn't that great. Emanuel is certainly obnoxious, mean, relentless and personally ambitious. But he doesn't seem especially hubristic. It's more the methodology. There is an expectation that personalities can explain politics and policies. And that's okay as far as it goes. When you're talking the president and his top aide, personalities and proclivities toward pragmatism or boldness matter.
During the Clinton presidency there was so much improvisation and political tacking that those factors were very important. Heck, the Clinton presidency ultimately became all about the First Couple's respective personalities and bizarre doings inside the West Wing.
But circumstances changed during the Bush presidency. The ingrained media focus on personalities and individual action (Bush the guy folks wanted to have a beer with, Rove the evil genius, etc.) mostly missed what was really going on -- the systematic politicization of previously-insulated customs and institutions (war and the Justice Department, for example) at the expense of basic competence.
Now, the political system has become progressively more dysfunctional and the economy is in terrible shape. Those two factors are of overriding importance in shaping a presidency trying to both unwind Bush's mistakes and embark on an ambitious domestic policy agenda. So if you're looking for where Obama has gone wrong (if, in fact, his presidency is going down the tubes - an assumption that is driving a lot of these stories, that I don't find convincing), you need to start with the fundamentals and ask, could any president so easily overcome the combination of GOP intransigence and 10 percent unemployment (and a trivia-obsessed news cycle) and the great popular discontent that goes along with those things? Perhaps the presidency itself just isn't a strong enough institution to, as the media expects it, be the ultimate master and arbiter of national politics.
Everybody has an opinion on this. Certainly, Obama is attempting to be a centrist president during a time when no political center exists in American politics. But Rahm Emanuel is at best a bit player in that drama. Lord knows, if Jane Hamsher were chief of staff, maybe things would be different. But Rahm's distracting quadriceps don't have much to do with any of it.
This post first appeared on my True/Slant blog.
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So which is it? The Chief of Staff makes a difference, or he/she doesn't?
ZING!
He claims to be such a tough guy, so good at getting votes. I think he's just good at getting favorable press for himself. Exactly what has he ever supported or done to help the working people of this country? Nothing.
I think we care because all we hear about is the guy's nasty personality. That he is making enemies, not friends. That he almost singularly controls how Obama pushes for his agenda. That the "administration" we elected is really just 2 or 3 people, even smaller than the Bush white house.
If you remember the TV show "The West Wing," it was an idealized version of how the Presidency should operate: smart, careful, bureaucratic, and engaged. It's not a leap to suggest it was based on the Clinton white house, and Democractic administrations of the past.
Is the Obama administration anything like "The West Wing?"
Thanks for the guidance.
the whole of government is corrupt and disingenuous !
I am fed up with fed and there gambling problem and the strong arming of American citizens !
Dept of Justice has no credibility
Congress feasts on bribes and tells out right lies
pentagon can,t account for 2.3 trillion dollars of tax payer monies yet troops are sent off to war with out proper equipment !
Judges are caught sending our children to private prisons for profit so there judicial pants pockets are lined with green paper !! in return for there great service !!
schools continue to dumb down our children by teaching them illusion ,s of America ! home of the brave land of the free ! B. S.
Banks are bailed out while families are sacrificed into poverty and once there to be treated as used toilet paper !
we have no law that can,t be rewritten to suit our criminal doing ,s eh don,t worry A T& T ,Verizon & the others
in fact it was my 68 year old Mother who pointed it out to me !! and she is right in her observations between three generations and now well in to the forth regarding education !
I use a small experiment simple question ? what ship did Columbus sail to America on !
you will be surprised with how many young people between the ages of 19 to 30 answer The Mayflower it varies three in a row might get it right and then 4 will get it wrong !!
education needs fresh Air !! over haul good pamphlet Called Great Education moves !
petty much tells the story !!
Habius Corpus smothered
Constitution ( Just A G*D Damm piece of paper) supreme law of the land ? only in our collective delusional dreams I have had it !!!! with the lying stealing cheating defrauding kickback rig a vote give the poor a bone double speak ! I have absolutely no confidence ! in this the last the one that came before or the one before that and on and on before all these administrations It,s freaking sad is all
just freaking sad !