Now, for a little Sunday flavor, Rahm Emanuel. 밬ndersecretary for Go Fuck Yourself"

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Sun Feb-22-09 11:55 AM
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Now, for a little Sunday flavor, Rahm Emanuel. 밬ndersecretary for Go Fuck Yourself"

Edited on Sun Feb-22-09 12:23 PM by Pirate Smile

The Gatekeeper
Rahm Emanuel on the job.

by Ryan Lizza

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밫hey have never worked the legislative process,� Emanuel said of critics like the Times columnist Paul Krugman, who argued that Obama뭩 concessions to Senate Republicans뾦n particular, the tax cuts, which will do little to stimulate the economy뾭roduced a package that wasn뭪 large enough to respond to the magnitude of the recession. 밐ow many bills has he passed?�

Emanuel has heard such complaints before. As a senior aide in the Clinton White House, he successfully fought a Republican Congress to pass the State Children뭩 Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), which now provides health care for seven million kids. 밒 worked children뭩 health care,� he said. 밣resident Clinton had pediatric care, eye, and dental, inside Medicaid. The Republicans had pediatric care, no eye and dental, outside of Medicaid. The deal Chris Jennings, Bruce Reed, and Rahm Emanuel cut for President Clinton was eye, dental, and pediatric, but the Republican way뾬utside of Medicaid. At that time, I was eviscerated by the left.� He slammed his fist on the desk, his voice rising. 밒 had sold out! Today, who are the greatest defenders of kids� health care? The very people that opposed it when it passed,� Emanuel said. 밄ack then, you뭗 have thought I was a whore! How could we do this outside of Medicaid? They warned that it had to be in Medicaid뾫ot that they gave a rat뭩 ass that the kid had eye or dental care. But, for getting it outside of Medicaid, we got kids� eye and dental care. O.K.? That was the swap. Now, my view is that Krugman as an economist is not wrong. But in the art of the possible, of the deal, he is wrong. He couldn뭪 get his legislation.�

The stimulus bill was essentially held hostage to the whims of Collins, Snowe, and Specter, but if Al Franken, the apparent winner of the disputed Minnesota Senate race, had been seated in Washington, and if Ted Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer, had been regularly available to vote, the White House would have needed only one Republican to pass the measure. 밡o disrespect to Paul Krugman,� Emanuel went on, 밷ut has he figured out how to seat the Minnesota senator?� (Franken뭩 victory is the subject of an ongoing court challenge by his opponent, Norm Coleman, which the national Republican Party has been happy to help finance.) 밯rite a fucking column on how to seat the son of a bitch. I would be fascinated with that column. O.K.?� Emanuel stood up theatrically and gestured toward his seat with open palms. 밃nytime they want, they can have it,� he said of those who are critical of his legislative strategies. 밒 give them my chair.�

His task has been made no easier by Obama뭩 desire for bipartisanship, which Emanuel argues the press has misunderstood. 밫he public wants bipartisanship,� he said. 밯e just have to try. We don뭪 have to succeed.� Still, he insisted, they have been succeeding. All Obama뭩 other major accomplishments to date뾵inning approval for three hundred and fifty billion dollars in additional funding for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, expanding S-CHIP, signing an executive order to shutter the detention camp at Guant�namo Bay and a memorandum to increase the fuel efficiency of cars뾵ere supported by at least some Republicans. The G.O.P., Emanuel said, decided that opposing the stimulus 뱖as definitional, and I will make an argument to you, both on political and economic grounds: they will lose. I don뭪 think the onus is on us. We tried. The story is they failed.�

When Emanuel said this, I noticed that over his left shoulder, on the credenza behind him, was an official-looking name plate, which he said was a birthday present from his two brothers. It read, 밬ndersecretary for Go Fuck Yourself.�

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David Axelrod is one of Emanuel뭩 best friends. (When Emanuel got married, to Amy Rule, Axelrod signed the ketubah, the traditional Jewish marriage contract.) The two men met in 1982, when Emanuel was a spokesman for a Naderite group called the Illinois Public Action Council and Axelrod was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Emanuel뭩 organization had just helped elect Lane Evans as the first Democratic representative from western Illinois in many years, and Emanuel was eager to get Axelrod to write about it. 밐e was just relentless,� Axelrod told me recently. 밨ahm chased me down to the recovery room after my second child was born. He says, 멬hat is it, a boy or a girl?� I said, 멗t뭩 a boy.� He said, 멝azel tov,� and then a little pause. Then he says, 멬hen do you think you뭠l be back at work?� �

Emanuel and Axelrod crossed paths again in 1984, when Axelrod left journalism to run Paul Simon뭩 Illinois Senate campaign and Emanuel worked as a junior fund-raiser and field organizer for Simon. By 1988, Emanuel was a top staffer at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or D.C.C.C. (the same organization that he ran as a congressman seventeen years later). 밒 did campaigns in �86 and �88 for him and with him,� Axelrod said. 밒ncluding the famous dead-fish race.�
More than any other story about Emanuel뭩 tactics뾞nd there are lots of them뾲he tale of the 밺ead-fish race� came to define his public persona as a Democratic operative. He and Axelrod were working for David Swarts, a Democratic official from Erie County, New York, running an underfunded campaign for a congressional seat long held by Republicans. 밯e were rolling the dice on the race, just spending the money we had as it came in to try and get these numbers up,� Axelrod said. Their plan was to take a poll at the end of the contest which they hoped would show a competitive race and then use the results to help raise last-minute funds and overtake their opponent.

밫he poll came back a week or two before the end, and it said we were down by seventeen,� Axelrod said. 밃nd that was it.� According to Axelrod, Swarts뭩 campaign manager later studied the poll뭩 findings and concluded that the pollster had botched the analysis: the survey showed that Swarts was just five or six points behind. (The pollster says that the error was actually minor and quickly caught.) Axelrod added, 밐ad we gotten that correct poll then, we would have put our foot to the pedal. But it was too late. So Rahm, being as invested as he was in the thing, expressed himself as only Rahm can.� After the election, Emanuel and his colleagues hired a Massachusetts company called Enough Is Enough, which specialized in 밹reative revenge,� to send the pollster a box with a dead fish inside. Emanuel laughed mischievously when I asked him about the prank. 밯e had our choice of animals,� he said.

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Obama settled on Emanuel as early as last August. 밒t was months before the election when Barack said to me, 멮ou know, Rahm would make a great chief of staff,� � Axelrod said. 밐e spent six years in the White House, knows this place inside and out, spent four or five years in Congress, and became a leader in a short period of time. He really understands the legislative process, he뭩 a friend who the President has known for a long time from Chicago, and whose loyalty is beyond question, and who thinks like a Chicagoan.�

Emanuel did not want the job. A few months before Election Day, Obama sent him an e-mail, with a warning: 밐eads up, I뭢 coming for you.� Emanuel was a key negotiator in moving the TARP legislation through Congress, in October. After the bill cleared Congress, Obama, who supported it, sent Emanuel another e-mail. 밒 told you we made a great team,� he said. Emanuel wrote back, 밒 look forward to being your floor leader in the House.�

While Obama was wooing Rahm, Rahm뭩 older brother, Ezekiel, an oncologist and a bioethicist, served as a sounding board. 밒 probably spent half an hour every day being screamed at on the telephone by him,� he said. � 멗 don뭪 want to do this. Why do I have to do this? Tell me I don뭪 have to do this.� All of which said to me he knew he had to do it.� (Ezekiel told me that the rivalry among himself, Rahm, and their third brother, Ariel, a Hollywood agent who is the basis for the Ari Gold character on HBO뭩 밇ntourage,� was so intense that they had to pursue careers in different cities. 밯e couldn뭪 possibly be within a thousand miles of each other, because the force fields just wouldn뭪 let it happen,� Ezekiel said. Rahm is now his boss; he works at the White House as an adviser to the budget director on health policy.)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/02/090302fa_fact_lizza