Profiling Rahm Emanuel is sort of like making dinner with bacon: Even if you screw up, everyone will still enjoy themselves. And Ryan Lizza doesn't screw up. Key quote: "His task has been made no easier by Obama’s desire for bipartisanship, which Emanuel argues the press has misunderstood. 'The public wants bipartisanship,' he said. 'We just have to try. We don’t have to succeed.'" The key fact -- at least from a health care perspective -- is Emanuel's closeness with his brother Zeke Emanuel, who is Peter Orszag's health care deputy and increasingly one of the principal players in the health reform process. The Washington Post, meanwhile, is selling deputy chief of staff Jim Messina as Rahm Emanuel's Rahm Emanuel. Messina, says The Post, has become the administration's "Fixer." The guy who solves your political problems. He may end up solving a lot of them. Messina came to the Obama campaign from Max Baucus's office, where he served as chief of staff. Baucus, as chairman of the Finance Committee, has jurisdiction over health care, taxes, trade, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, and potentially even carbon pricing. Aside from Harry Reid and arguably Susan Collins, he's probably the most important senator to Obama's agenda. An easy relationship between the two men will prove crucial. Just ask Bill Clinton, whose enmity with finance chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan was the stuff of legend. Operatives from that time have argued to me that Clinton's greatest mistake in the 1994 health care reform came in 1993, when he took then-Finance Chair Lloyd Bentsen as Treasury Secretary and let Moynihan ascend to the post. Profiled in The Post, Messina goes out of his way to praise Baucus. "Max is like my father. I'm closer to Max than I am almost anyone," he says. Elsewhere, he describes their "father-son" relationship. Every two weeks, The Post reports, Baucus and Messina meet at Bistro Bis for wine and dinner. And it's already had impact: When Geithner's nomination began to founder, Messina was dispatched to explain the situation to Baucus. Geithner quickly received Baucus's full support. Indeed, either by accident or by design, the White House now employs the chiefs of staff for the two most jurisdictionally powerful congressmen. Deputy chief of staff Messina, of course, from Baucus's office. And director of legislative affairs Phil Schiliro, from Henry Waxman's office. The White House will not find itself scrambling some night to find either chairman's cell phone number. Related: Max Baucus: The Sleeper of the Senate.
