David Brooks Thanks Rahm Emanuel For All The Phone Calls

David Brooks today takes up the cause of one of the White House's central strategic figures, Rahm Emanuel, and he wants you to know that Emanuel is really an awesome guy!

Seems like it was only three days ago that New York Times columnist David Brooks was penning an alternate history of the Obama administration, one that avoided so many of the strategies that Brooks felt in hindsight were mistakes. In his imagining, the president's team rejected a "New Deal" approach to governing, avoided "the big government versus small government debate" and banished the notion of a "recovery summer" from their minds... and like magic, this helped the Democrats win re-election in 2010. Of course, the path that the Obama team took was less to Brooks's liking.

But rather than dwell on all that, Brooks today takes up the cause of one of the White House's central strategic figures, Rahm Emanuel, and he wants you to know that Emanuel is really an awesome guy!

How awesome? Really, really awesome! Brooks says Emanuel is "an urban cowboy" and a "warmhearted Machiavellian," who is "completely in touch with his affections and aversions," and "speaks the language of loyalty and commitment" in the "patois of Chicago," having never forsaken "the earthy freneticism of his Augie March upbringing." Most of all, however, "Rahm is unique. Flawed like all of us, he is a full human being, rich and fertile from the inside out."

Aye, truly, Rahm Emanuel is a womb, straight up bursting with fecundity. But he's also someone who played a role in shaping the strategy that Brooks spent last Friday rewriting into an alternate history. And today, Brooks makes mention of Emanuel's "big mistakes," such as trying "to use the financial crisis as an opportunity to do everything at once." So how is it that Rahm rates this sort of "florid" (a word Brooks finds to be so nice he uses it twice!) send off? OH, WELL, THAT'S EASY:

I began interviewing Emanuel when he was in the House, while he was building the Democratic majority. Then when he moved to the Obama White House, I was one of the many people on his long, long call list. He'd call a few times a week. The calls lasted from 45 seconds to two minutes, enough time for him to tout some speech or policy initiative, answer a question and then be off.

Every conversation, short or long, was a headlong rush.

So, the takeaway for you, Jonathan Franzen, is that things might have worked out a lot better for you if you had just agreed to give David Brooks more access.

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