The Enforcer, Chief of Staff

The Daily Beast:

The selection of Emanuel signals that he apparently wants to operate with ideological moderation, speed and skull-cracking political toughness.

“Rahm Emanuel is a preternatural political force, a man of extraordinary intelligence, skill and toughness who has learned about politics and policy on the streets of Chicago and at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. A fascinating choice for Obama as White House Chief of Staff,” Thomas E. Mann, the W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, told The Daily Beast Wednesday.

Among other things, Obama’s pick of Rahm Israel Emanuel, whose father is of Israeli origin, gives the lie to an endless wild myths that political enemies have tirelessly spread during the campaign that he was supposed to be a closest America-hater and no doubt anti-Semite because of his Kenyan background and boyhood in Indonesia. Emanuel, nicknamed “Rahmbo” by his colleagues, is a quasi neo-con hawk on foreign policy, tough champion of the war on terror,and advocate of crackdowns on crime. Obama was accused of being a “socialist” and hater of big business, but Emanuel was managing director in the Chicago office of a major global investment bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, where he made millions.

Rolling Stone back in 2005:

Friends and enemies agree that the key to Emanuel’s success is his legendary intensity. There’s the story about the time he sent a rotting fish to a pollster who had angered him. There’s the story about how his right middle finger was blown off by a Syrian tank when he was in the Israeli army.

And there’s the story of how, the night after Clinton was elected, Emanuel was so angry at the president’s enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" and plunging the knife into the table after every name. "When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape," one campaign veteran recalls. "It was like something out of The Godfather. But that’s Rahm for you."

Of the three stories, only the second is a myth — Emanuel lost the finger to a meat slicer as a teenager and never served in the Israeli army. But it’s a measure of his considerable reputation as the enforcer in Clinton’s White House that so many people believe it to be true. You don’t earn the nickname "Rahmbo" being timid.

An NROite is less impressed:

Obama’s apparent selection of Rahm Emanuel for White House chief of staff is an extremely disconcerting (if not wholly surprising) first indication on the “which Obama will we get” question. It suggests both that he wants to be ruthless and partisan and that he does not have a clear sense of how the White House works.

Emanuel was by all accounts a very effective White House staffer in the Clinton administration, and he has certainly been an effective member of the House of Representatives. He is smart and tough. But he has been, in both positions, a vicious graceless partisan: narrow, hectic, unremittingly aggressive, vulgar, and impatient. Those who have worked for and with him come away impressed but not inspired, and generally not loyal.

The White House chief of staff is not a chief strategist or a chief advocate. He is a manager of people and of process. Above all else, he sets the tone internally, and shapes the president’s decision process and the feel of the upper tiers of the administration. Obama is especially in need of someone who will lead him to decisions, because he appears to be intensely averse to making difficult choices—which is the essence of what the president does. His inclination is to step back and conceptualize the choice out of existence, looking reasonable but doing nothing. To overcome this, he will need a chief of staff with a sense of the gravity of the choices the president faces, and one capable of moving the staff to decision, keeping big egos satisfied and calm, and resisting the pressure to be purely reactive to momentary distractions. None of this spells Rahm Emanuel. There is definitely a place for a Rahm Emanuel type of brilliant ruthless shark in a White House staff, but not in the Chief’s office. Not a good first sign.

TPM:

The number one quality in a chief of staff is a recognition that it's not about him -- a quality Rahm "Hamlet" Emanuel isn't exhibiting. He is expressing some serious reluctance about whether he'll accept the position of White House chief of staff: "I do know something about the White House and I have children now. I have a family." The tradeoff for Emanuel is that if he leaves the House of Representatives, he would be effectively giving up on his long-term goal of becoming Speaker.

UPDATE: Rahmbo accepts. Ambers ponders what it means, saying "his management style breeds loyalty," contra the NROite above.

The RNC isn't pleased, but then what realistic pick would have pleased them?

M.J. soothes the netroots.

Sullivan sees good cop, bad cop.

Michael Weiss: Change You Can Motherfucking Believe In.

TNR: Only choice, not just right choice

Megan quirks brow at superficially plausible-yet-contradictory narratives.

WSJ: Glass half-full analysis

More TNR: rounds up foreign reactions (big surprise: Palestinians aren't stoked)

Bill Bennett: Not an inexperienced idealogue

Culture11 thread:

rickm: All evidence suggests that an Obama administration will be a significant improvement from one of the worst Presidents ever.

Joe Carter: All evidence? You mean like putting Rahm Emanuel as the Chief of Staff? Even the Obama-fawning Andrew Sulivan says, “Whenever I’ve come across him, he has seemed like a massive, world class, meshuggena asshole.”

libarbarian: If the crew doesn’t think the XO is an asshole then he’s not doing his job.

Yglesias disagrees with Megan. I think he's right.

Politico: ex-Reagan and Clinton chiefs of staff praise the pick. Sounds good to me.