Let it Be Said Here First: Emanuel Worst Choice for Chief of Staff.
As one who knew Rahm Emanuel well in what his future biographers may describe as his “early formative years,” let me register a firm dissent from the chorus of favorable opinion greeting his appointment as chief of staff in the Obama administration. The rousing approval has now grown as conventional wisdom and has taken on the character of a cliché…certifiable now that even Carol Marin-whose opinions are always second-hand– has climbed aboard. Yes Obama is a good choice because he is a realist, not an idealist. There evidently was a feeling in the supine, pro-Obama media, that with all his filmy, gauzy rhetoric, Obama would hire a dreamer in the post who would look at the most beatific of cases and run the operation into the ground: something like what happened in the Carter administration.
No, assuredly, Rahm Emanuel is neither idealist nor dreamer. But he carries inside him all the qualifications to be a real screw-up-because he is known for applying an iron fist…flying into rages…throwing around the “f” word four times in every sentence…in being vindictive and argumentative and not to suffer fools gladly. You must remember that the best chiefs of staff were not of this mien: the best being Jim Baker under Reagan, another being former Senator Howard Baker in the latter days of the Reagan term. The worst were the tough, adamant guys very much like Emanuel. Dwight Eisenhower placed as his chief of staff a resolute, “no-man,” former New Hampshire Governor Sherman Adams. Adams was a laconic but very-very cold and blunt New Englander.
He insisted on being called “Governor Adams.” Because he was curt and abrupt he damaged Ike’s relationships with the Congress greatly. A minor breach of etiquette, trivial enough now in retrospect, interrupted Adams’ service: the acceptance of a vicuna rug from an industrialist in New Hampshire, Bernard Goldfine. Everyone wondered how Ike who liked to compartmentalize the White House would get along without a gate-keeper. Answer: He did just fine. He hired Gen. Jerry Persons who had a sweet temperament. In fact, Ike got along, much better than when Adams was there. Adams also arrogated unto himself the aura that perhaps he was the power behind the throne.
Of course the worst chief of staff was H. R. (Bob) Haldeman, Nixon’s lackey who did what he was told, was very obedient and did not serve as a brake whatsoever on the rages of his boss. Another bull-of-the-woods was Haldeman’s seeming co-chief, John Ehrlichman. I had experience with both and can testify they did a great disservice to the president-and ultimately the presidency.
Not all chiefs of staff who share some…not all…of Emanuel’s temperament were disasters. One who was decidedly not very good but then no disaster either was the man we used to call “Mr. Warmth,” Sam Skinner, who for a time was the gatekeeper for George H. W. Bush. Don Rumsfeld who was Jerry Ford’s first chief of staff was tough and cold. He got rid of Henry Kissinger in the White House and had him concentrate on State…and also succeeded in convincing Ford to dump Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. But Rumsfeld was not a conspicuous success as chief of staff and shortly after he moved to secretary of defense. Dick Cheney was an excellent chief of staff because at that time he had a passion for anonymity, which is what the job entails. To say that Rahm does not have a passion for anonymity is obvious.
The best chiefs of staff are those who have a sweet disposition, try to be gentle, apply the proverbial iron fist in the velvet glove: definitely not Rahm Emanuel’s style.
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Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Chicago Daily Observer Editorial Board
On the plus side, the Fifth Congressional District will be getting a new Representative in Congress (possibly someone who is attentive to constituent services as opposed to an incumbent who feels entitled to his seat having bought and paid for it) and Emanuel’s ambitions of becoming Speaker of the House may be derailed.
On the minus side, Obama seems to have broken his promise to be a uniter rather than a divider by employing a thug as his chief of staff.
Whatever happened to the allegations of Rahm having dual citizenship? How does a US citizen “volunteer” to fight in a war with another country’s army whether that country is a US ally or not? I know of someone who has dual citizenship and when he applied for a job with a US govt institute he was told he would have to give up the foreign country citizenship.
Thanks for the articles on this site. They are very enlightening.
Too bad Fitzgerald hasn’t been appointed as a Special Prosecutor
Rahm Emanuel is not a dual citizen and he used that allegation to hammer former State Representative Nancy Kazak (although Kazak, herself, never made such a remark, a third person did, but Emanuel blamed his opponent) during the 2002 primary election. Emanuel claimed that the story was a form of anti-semitism. Emanuel replaced Blagojevich in Congress by winning the primary.
To further complicate matters, Emanuel fueled the dual citizenship story by his boasting. It is less exciting to explain that he lost a finger due to an infection which occurred after he cut his hand on meat slicing machine and neglected to treat the wound promptly, so Rahm made up several boastful stories about losing his finger while fighting with the Israeli Defense Force or fighting off a shark attack.
Mike Madigan?
“To further complicate matters, Emanuel fueled the dual citizenship story by his boasting. It is less exciting to explain that he lost a finger due to an infection which occurred after he cut his hand on meat slicing machine and neglected to treat the wound promptly, so Rahm made up several boastful stories about losing his finger while fighting with the Israeli Defense Force or fighting off a shark attack.”
FACTS: He was born in Chicago. No Israeli citizenship, dual or otherwise. Volunteered to do menial work servicing vehicles for the Israeli army during the Gulf War. Never a member or the Israeli army. Cut his finger working at Arby’s as a teenager and the cut became infected. The story is sometimes abbreviated to cutting his finger off, but it has never been suggested that he lost it fighting off sharks (though there are a lot of them in his line of work) or anyone else, unless you take JOKES made at a fundraiser roast of RE seriously, which apparently you do.
Nina Totenburg, thanks for checking in!
Never claimed the stories were true, but Rahm has been known to brag too often and stretch the truth. Emanuel has claimed to be “a lifelong Chicagoan” in writing, notwithstanding his attending New Trier High School which is in the far North suburbs.
From Wikipedia:
“Emanuel was a civilian volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, repairing truck brakes in one of Israel’s northern bases.[15][16] There are speculations that Emanuel during his stay in Israel was being trained by the Israeli intelligence agency the Mossad to become their next mole in the US Administration and its often mentioned online that he could have been the Israeli Mole in the Clinton administration reffered to as “Mega”
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