His Kind of Town: Rahm Emanuel Ditches Obama for the Top Chicago Post

It's not quite entirely official yet, the formal announcement being scheduled for Friday the 30^th, but it's a pretty sure bet that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will resign from his post. The obvious reason for his doing so-stated or unstated-is that he wants to be the next mayor of Chicago.

For a number of years, running for mayor of Chicago was not a viable pursuit, unless your name happened to be Richard Daley. But recently, Daley announced that he was ready to retire from his sinecure and, as a result, would not be running for an 87^th term, or whatever the number is. Upon the breakage of that startling news, the possibilities became a lot stronger for Rahm Emanuel to realize his long-time ambition, to be mayor of Chicago.

We should not imagine he will be a shoo-in for the job. While Daley, first playing on the strength of his powerful father's name, then on his own popularity, was able to get almost all the city's Democrats behind him, Rahm Emanuel will face a more fractious situation, rent asunder, as it was between the two Daleys, by racial tensions.

His two most ambitious opponents are Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., who also prefers Daley's old job to the one he has, and Pastor James T. Meeks of the Salem Baptist Church-a very influential institution on Chicago's predominantly-black South Side. They are both sure to assail Rahm Emanuel as an outsider and a "carpetbagger," arriving from that none-too-popular town known as Washington, DC, to order the lives of native Chicagoans. That said, Emanuel still seems to have the best chance in the coming mayoral election.

The soon-to-be-former White House chief-of-staff does have some experience with elective office. Remember, he was a congressman from Illinois' 5^th District, from 2003 to 2007. He took over that office after another prominent retirement, that of some guy named Blagojevich, who thought he might like to be governor for a little while-littler than he thought, as it turned out.

It was while he was in Congress that Rahm Emanuel worked very effectively for the takeover of the House from the Republicans in 2006. Clearly, the man knows how to scrap, and that must have caught Senator Obama's eye. The fact that they both hailed from Illinois did not hurt the Congressman's chances for a big White House appointment either.

President Obama's choice to succeed Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff seems to be Pete Rouse, a veteran aide in the Senate, who seems to have done his work so effectively, he was informally called "the 101^st Senator." He left that institution in 2004, when his boss, Tom Daschle, was rudely and surprisingly tossed out of his seat. Since then, he has been serving as a personal advisor to Mr. Obama, first as a senator, then as a candidate and now, as the president.

If Mr. Obama does appoint Pete Rouse to the position, it will represent somewhat of a departure from tradition, in that Rouse seems to be a generally conciliatory person, rather than a "tough guy." While Emanuel often looks hungry and angry, Rouse looks calm, roly-poly and completely in-control. We shall see if he changes that position or if the position changes him.

Last Christmas, I found myself in a conversation with one of my brother's in-laws. He is not a frothing-at-the-mouth right-winger, by any means, but he is a good deal more conservative than I, which is not to say we don't have an entirely cordial relationship. At one point, he asked me what I thought of Rahm Emanuel.

"I think he's a weasel," I replied, because, when you add it all up, that's what I think.

"I think he's a thug!" the gentleman countered.

Well, come to think of it, we both may have been right. I told him he was probably not wrong, but if he imagined Rahm Emanuel's predecessor, Karl Rove, was any better, he was greatly mistaken. Then it occurred to me, you probably had to be both of those things to be a successful White House chief of staff. It is not a job for the fainthearted.

And, for all I know, maybe it helps to be both of those things if you imagine you are going to run the city of Chicago.

Sources

the washingtonpost.com

whorunsgov.com

Wikipedia