Though Emanuel was about to leave Congress, this new paradigm would be a defining factor of his tenure in the Obama White House and even more directly in Chicago’s City Hall.
Photo by Pete Souza, White House.
Rahm Emanuel with President Obama in the Oval Office, which he would leave to run for Chicago Mayor.
5
The Obama White House
Chicago erupted in all-out celebration on November 4, 2008. As the results of the presidential election came in and Obama made his stirring acceptance speech in Grant Park, the downtown streets were packed with people wearing campaign T-shirts, smiling broadly, and giving high fives to complete strangers.
In a city famous for segregation and racial tension, there was a notable coming together of people from different races. For several days after the election, the feeling lingered that a cloud of positivity and camaraderie had settled over Chicago, that past wrongs and slights had been forgotten as the city prepared to move forward under its new mantle as the hometown of the most popular man in the world.
Two days after the election Obama made his first announcement about his cabinet: his chief of staff would be “my good friend, Congressman Rahm Emanuel.”1 It was well known in Chicago circles that Emanuel and Obama had never been close.2 But the president-elect likely thought Emanuel’s skills and personality could be just what he needed for the challenges that lay ahead.
“No one I know is better at getting things done than Rahm Emanuel,” said Obama. “In just six years in Congress, he has risen to leadership, helping to craft myriad important pieces of legislation and guide them to passage. In between, Rahm spent several years in the private sector, where he worked on large and complicated financial transactions. That experience, combined with his service on the committees on Ways and Means and Banking, have given Rahm deep insights into the challenging economic issues that will be front and center for our administration.”3
Emanuel said that he was “humbled by the responsibility” Obama had given him and quoted Abraham Lincoln: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.”4
But many people who had been elated by Obama’s election were skeptical of and disappointed in his choice of a right-hand man. “The selection rankled many in the greater Obama orbit,” wrote Peter Baker in the New York Times Magazine. “For all the work they put in electing an apostle of hope to clean up Washington, now they were handing over the keys to a crass, cynical operator? Even if it was a sensible decision, what message did it send?”5
On the world stage, Israeli and Palestinian leaders speculated about what the choice meant for the Middle East. Emanuel kept a low profile on this front, but his father created a headache for his son with his own speculation about what Rahm’s role in the White House would mean for Israel.
“Obviously he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House,” Benjamin Emanuel told the Israeli daily Ma’ariv. Emanuel apologized for his father’s remarks and offered to meet with Arab American leaders in the future. 6
Emanuel had been offered the chief of staff job several weeks earlier and had reportedly “agonized” over whether to take it. He enjoyed his role in Congress and aspired to be the first Jewish Speaker of the House, and with kids ages nine, ten, and eleven, he was reluctant to move his family again from Chicago to Washington.7
In his book Obama’s Wars, veteran reporter Bob Woodward described Emanuel’s internal dilemma: “Emanuel, who was known for his bluster, confided to associates that the driving force in his life was fear of failure. It was as if he knew his entire career was a dangerous high-wire act and he was being forced to take the wire to new heights, requiring that he move faster and not look down. Despite his misgivings, he finally said yes.”8
Obama’s decision for chief of staff had reportedly come down to Emanuel versus Obama’s good friend Tom Daschle.9 The former Senate majority leader from South Dakota was later nominated for secretary of health and human services—until questions over his failure to pay taxes and his lobbying-related work forced him to withdraw.10 Obama had known Emanuel for years, and Emanuel’s famous pugnacious style was an interesting contrast to Obama’s measured, calm, even remote demeanor. Emanuel’s profane, sarcastic outbursts and tight smirk were quite different from Obama’s beneficent smile and lofty proclamations about hope and dreams.
At a 2005 fundraiser in Chicago, Obama had riffed on Emanuel’s dancing background, saying he had adapted Machiavelli’s The Prince as a dance “with a lot of kicks below the waist.”11
It’s entirely likely that Obama sought out this approach as a complement to his own style; he probably sensed what a hard road lay ahead and figured someone like “Rahmbo” was just what he needed to muscle through sweeping changes.
But as it turned out, Emanuel may have been a big reason Obama did not successfully pass or forcefully advocate for key things he had promised or proposed during the campaign: namely, a climate bill that put a price on carbon emissions, comprehensive immigration reform, and sweeping health-care reform with a “public option.”
“The paradox of the current situation for Obama and Emanuel has not been lost on Washington,” wrote Peter Baker in March 2010. “A visionary outsider who is relatively inexperienced and perhaps even a tad naïve about the ways of Washington captures the White House and, eager to get things done, hires the ultimate get-it-done insider to run his operation. . . . But if picking the leading practitioner of the dark arts of the capital was a Faustian bargain for Obama in the name of getting things done, why haven’t things got done?”12
The Stimulus and the Bailouts
President Obama and his chief of staff did get off to a quick start. Within his first month in office, Obama signed three major bills. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act addressed pay discrimination against women.13 A week later Obama signed a significant expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.14 And on February 17 he signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), a landmark stimulus bill meant to create jobs by funding infrastructure projects, energy efficiency, broadband expansion, and numerous other undertakings, especially “shovel-ready” tasks.15
Many progressives criticized the stimulus for being too small and including too many tax cuts, while conservatives attacked it as wasteful and unsuccessful. For years to come, pundits would debate how much good the stimulus did and how it could have been better.16 The Congressional Budget Office estimated the stimulus created or saved between half a million and 3.3 million jobs. There had been heated debate among Obama’s economic team over how big to make the stimulus. Emanuel consistently took the more conservative side of this debate, and won. When Christina Romer, chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, argued for a larger package—to the tune of $1 trillion—Emanuel reportedly said, “What are you smoking?”17
Emanuel also was at Obama’s side for the bailout of the auto industry, a move credited with saving it from collapse and preventing the mass outsourcing of jobs.18 During the negotiations, according to a book by former administration “car czar” Steve Rattner, Emanuel responded flippantly regarding concerns of the United Automobile Workers, the labor union representing the tens of thousands of workers who risked losing their jobs: “Fuck the UAW.”19 Interviewed after the book came out, UAW president Bob King said he was not offended. “I appreciate the Obama administration,”