How Toasted Is Rahm?

A few months ago I started to hear that Nancy Pelosi was dining out on her enmity toward Rahm Emanuel, saying her goals for the year included, together with the health-care bill, his head.

That's significant rancor--even for Washington (theirs goes back a long time). And even greater ambitiousness--on a level quite impressive even for Washington--to want to take down the guy second only to the president himself.

It's a putsch that now seems in obvious progress. One indication is that there is suddenly a dignified, if implausible, rationale for why Rahm might want to leave: Because he's frustrated, because he's temperamentally unsuited to the job (he's a screamer), or because he's decided to run for mayor of Chicago.

The White House, of course, if it has to sacrifice Rahm, will try to make it a particular circumstance, a personality issue--a bit of minor tinkering with the players. But I think it will be widely understood as the singular indication of the keen disappointments of the president's first year on the part of a large number of democrats (powerful ones).

For them, this White House is so much more about strategy and management than salesmanship--and they do love salesmanship (everybody does). This White House is so...top down. Certainly the White House has tried to manage Congress from above, without a base within--without soulmates (left, right, or center). Its view has been, in a sense, anti-Pelosi--or anti-numbskull. Just move, force, discipline these cretins. (Rahm knows how dumb they are and how idiotically intractable they can be.)

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