Obama picks Rahm Emanuel as his enforcer
RAHM EMANUEL | As 'bad cop' chief of staff, longtime political insider knows how to get tough jobs done
When William Daley was looking for someone to manage his brother's 1989 race for mayor of Chicago, a brash Rahm Emanuel pitched himself for the job.
"I said no," Daley said, going on to select David Wilhelm as campaign manager, who went on to manage Bill Clinton's 1992 White House bid. Instead, Daley offered Emanuel a post as finance chairman for the mayoral campaign, and Emanuel turned him down.
(AP)
PHOTO GALLERY
Rahm replacements
Chief of staff: Rahm Emanuel -- congressman from Chicago's North Side
Deputy chief of staff: Pete Rouse -- head of Obama's Senate staff
Senior adviser: David Axelrod -- campaign strategist, worked for Mayor Daley
Press secretary: Robert Gibbs -- campaign communications chief
Transition chief: John Podesta -- chief of staff under President Clinton and native of Jefferson Park on Northwest Side
Transition team: Pete Rouse and Valerie Jarrett -- CEO of Chicago's Habitat Co., personal friend of Obama's
Transition advisory board: Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, former Clinton administration officials Carol Browner, Federico Pena and Bill Daley -- Mayor Daley's brother
Source: Lynn Sweet, AP, Bloomberg News
"I said, 'OK, thanks,'" Daley recalled. But Emanuel changed his mind, joined the Daley team and started down a road that Thursday led to President-elect Barack Obama tapping him to be his White House chief of staff, Obama's first appointment.
With Emanuel, Obama gets an enforcer, a bad cop who loves the f-word, with a unique resume no one else in the United States can match: the No. 4 leader in the House; veteran of seven years in the White House during the Clinton administration; a supreme media and political strategist who knows process and policy. He's also a close friend of Obama and David Axelrod, the mastermind who helped propel Obama from a state Senate seat in Chicago to the White House in four years.
"No one I know is better at getting things done than Rahm Emanuel," Obama said in a statement.
"He's unbelievably loyal and tough," said Daley, who is part of Obama's transition team and close to Emanuel and Axelrod.
If Obama is reserved Mr. Cool, Emanuel is emotive Mr. Hot.
On this point, Emanuel, who accidentally lost the tip of a finger as a 17-year-old working at an Arby's, made this joke on himself at the April 2007 Gridiron dinner. "Of all the fingers to lose! I could not express myself for months. I had to learn to talk with my left hand."
The decision by Emanuel, re-elected Tuesday to his fourth House term, to step down to become chief of staff came with some agony: He was on a path in the House that could have made him speaker someday.
He also relishes the lifestyle he has carved out for himself. He commutes to Washington, leaving his wife, Amy, and three young children at their Ravenswood home.
In a statement, Emanuel said he was leaving a job "I love" because "I want to do everything I can to help deliver the change America needs."
Rahm Israel Emanuel, who turns 49 on Nov. 29, was born on Chicago's Far North Side, with his family moving to Wilmette when he was a youngster. He is a graduate of New Trier West High School, with an undergraduate degree from Sarah Lawrence and a master's in communication from Northwestern University. He is a ballet dancer and a swimmer.
Emanuel's Israeli father, Benjamin, is a pediatrician, and his mother, Marsha is a social worker. Emanuel is an observant Jew who did not, contrary to some of the mythology that has grown around him, serve in the Israeli army. Rather, Emanuel in 1991 volunteered for a few weeks in a program run by the Israeli army where civilians could help the Israel Defense Force with support work on an army base.
He is one in a trio of superachieving brothers: Ari is a Hollywood superagent, the chief at Endeavor, and Ezekiel, a breast oncologist, is the chairman of the department of bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. An adopted sister, Shoshana is rarely mentioned.
Through his Wilhelm connection, in 1991, Emanuel joined the Clinton campaign as a fund-raiser, rewarded with the White House political director post. He flamed out in a few months, to be resurrected and end up as a senior adviser to Clinton.
After seven years in Washington, Emanuel moved to Ravenswood, making millions of dollars as an investment banker in a few deals, and making more money when tapped by Clinton for a plum spot on the Freddie Mac board.
With Mayor Daley's backing, Emanuel won a House seat in 2002, quickly rising -- he has a seat on the Ways and Means Committee -- in no small part because of his ability to raise political money. In 2004, Emanuel was tapped by then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to chair the Democratic House political operation, where he was the architect of the plan that resulted in the Democrats taking back the House in 2006.
Supposedly Emanuel was the model for Josh Lyman on the "The West Wing." Now he'll be Leo McGarry, Lyman's boss.