Rahm Emanuel: A profile of Barack Obama's enforcer
Rahm Emanuel, who has been chosen by Barack Obama to be the White House chief of staff, is known by colleagues as "Rahmbo" - a nickname reflecting his reputation as one of the most ferociously combative figures in Washington.
http://tinyurl.com/5mdv8k (telegraph.UK)Mr Emanuel, who received training in ballet as a boy, has shown no lightness of step in his political career: would-be enemies are advised to heed the story of a pollster who wronged him and promptly received a large, decomposing fish in the post.
Reflecting on his own foul-mouthed, attack-dog style, Mr Emanuel has said: "I wake up some mornings hating me too." Commentators have suggested that Mr Obama, who ran a lofty campaign based on national unity and bipartisanship, has recognised the need to employ a tough enforcer to push through his policy programme.
Born in Chicago, Illinois on November 29, 1959, to a doctor and a hospital technician, Mr Emanuel was brought up in a household that combined black civil rights activism with devout Judaism. His religious devotion has endured: he recently secured a special waiver from his rabbi to work through Rosh Hashanah during negotiations over the $800 billion banking bail-out.
Mr Emanuel grew up with a sister and two brothers - one of whom, Ari, grew up to be a talent agent in Los Angeles and provided the inspiration for the character Ari Gold in the television series Entourage. He himself was the real-life spark for the character of Josh Lyman, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff in the West Wing.
As a teenager, while working part-time in a fast-food restaurant, Mr Emanuel severed the middle finger on his right hand in a meat-slicing machine. After he chose to go swimming in Lake Michigan rather than go to hospital for stitches, Mr Emanuel's wound became severely infected and, after he came close to death, the top of his finger was amputated.
While studying at a Jewish day school, Mr Emanuel trained in ballet, and was talented enough to be offered a scholarship to the world-renowned Joffrey Ballet company. However, he turned it down in favour of studying the dance style at Sarah Lawrence College, a liberal arts institution, from where he graduated in 1981.
While at Sarah Lawrence, Mr Emanuel joined the team for the congressional campaign of fellow Chicagoan David Robertson. Via a master's degree in speech and communication at Northwestern University in 1985, he went on to work for several other Democratic campaigns, culminating in a role as chief fundraiser in Richard Daley's successful campaign for Mayor of Chicago in 1989.
He took a break from politics during the 1991 Gulf War, volunteering as a mechanic on an army base in Israel. It was on his return that he joined the presidential primary campaign of Bill Clinton, then the Governor of Arkansas. It was to prove the move that launched his national political career.
Mr Emanuel became Mr Clinton's chief fundraiser, a role in which he gained a fearsome name for extracting exactly what he wanted from wealthy donors. He collected enough money for the campaign to ride out several potentially damaging scandals. The president later said of his money man: "I doubt we could have done it without him."
The intense, eventually successful campaign took a serious toll on him. Colleagues reported that amid a discussion over a celebratory dinner about which political figures had earned the new president's enmity, Mr Emanuel became so enraged that he grabbed a steak knife, stood up and began reciting a list of names, plunging the knife into the table and shouting "Dead! Dead! Dead!" after each one.
None the less, Mr Emanuel remained closely involved with Mr Clinton, and was made a senior White House advisor when the new administration began work in 1993. It was reported that when Tony Blair was preparing to appear in public alongside the president amid the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998, he told the prime minister: "This is important. Don't ---- it up."
In 1994, he married his partner Amy Rule, who converted to orthodox Judaism shortly before their wedding. The couple now have three children: Zachariah, 11, Ilana, 10 and Leah, 8.
Following the messy end to the Clinton presidency, Mr Emanuel went into investment banking, reportedly earning $8million (£5million) in his three years as managing director of Dresdner Kleinwort.
However, the temptation to return to politics proved too great. This time, Mr Emanuel ran for office himself, and was elected member of the House of Representatives for Illinois's fifth district in 2002.
Once in Congress, he made a swift return to the top of the Democratic establishment, and was named the Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee - which recruits candidates and raises funds - in 2005. He was praised for his role in orchestrating significant success for the party in the 2006 elections, in which it gained 30 seats in the House, securing control for the first time in 12 years.
Ray LaHood, a Republican Representative from Illinois, said at the time: "He legitimately can be called the golden boy of the Democratic Party today. He recruited the right candidates, found the money and funded them, and provided issues for them. Rahm did what no one else could do in seven cycles."
Now the fourth-highest ranking House Democrat, Mr Emanuel has been widely touted as a potential successor to Nancy Pelosi in the plum Capitol job of Speaker, and was reported to be "agonising" over his career dilemma after the offer from the president-elect. However, it seems an offer to sit in the driving seat of the Obama White House simply proved impossible to resist.
0 Have Your Say!:
Post a Comment