The news that Rahm Emanuel would be White House chief of staff sent me back to look at a review I wrote last year in The Washington Monthly of a quickie book about Emanuel's leadership of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the takeover of 2006. Much of the book was about his profane tirades and funny anecdotes, like Rahm recruiting potential candidates who were worried about losing time with their families by calling them constantly with reassurances that he was at his son's school play or his daughter's soccer game.
But I came away impressed with Emanuel in ways that went beyond the profanity and the intensity:
When a promising candidate in Ohio botched his ballot petitions and was forced to run as a write-in candidate in the primary, this Emanuel, while furious at the need to spend money in an unnecessary primary, says, “I think he needs some issues,” to center him and get his mind off his screw-up. And that is what makes Emanuel a little different from, say, former Democratic National Committee chair Terry MacAuliffe: he understands that politics has to be about something, and more than just a vague statement of values. ... Emanuel was among the first Democrats to appreciate the need for fundamental tax reform, and he appears from this book to be among the most aggressive in pushing for the Democrats to have a more coherent policy agenda than they had in previous cycles.
In his appreciation of policy, he resembles Bush adviser Karl Rove, except that Rove’s view of the relationship between policy and politics is direct -- policy employed as an instrument of political tactics -- whereas Emanuel’s is far more nuanced, seeing policy as a kind of moral center to the experience of politics.
And I concluded by making my own judgment of Rahm's 2006 achievement that was different from that of the author, Naftali Bendavid, treating him as a kind of transitional figure from Clinton-era to Obama-era politics:
Here's my take on the perspective missing from The Thumpin': The rules of politics are changing rapidly. There’s an appetite for clear statements of position, whether on the war or economic inequality, and more room to bring in new voters and new ideas. Rahm Emanuel, the finest practitioner of politics under the old rules -- the Clinton rules -- started to understand this. He understood that he had to “open up the map,” for example, and bring robust challenges in more districts than previous DCCC chairs. On his own, Emanuel got halfway there. Pushed by circumstances -- by being on the road and listening; by candidates like Harry Mitchell in Arizona, who emerged on his own and then got Emanuel’s attention; by the need to compromise with Howard Dean’s fifty-state strategy; and by liberal bloggers, who did get Emanuel’s ear -- he went even further, resisting the pull back in the old, narrowing direction from Clinton-era operatives such as James Carville. Could he have gone even further, and recognized that a plain-speaking liberal could make as strong a candidate in 2006 as an admiral? Yes, but to point that out is not to diminish the extraordinary accomplishment, and how much Rahm Emanuel adapted to a rapidly changing political world.
Read the whole thing here.
--Mark Schmitt
