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Obama’s Chief of Staff
November 6, 2008 5:49 pm Obama's Staff, Rahm EmanuelRep. Rahm Emanuel has accepted Barack Obama’s offer to be White House chief of staff, Obama said Thursday.
The Office of the Chief of Staff oversees and coordinates activities and communication among various departments of the administration
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————-FOLLOW UP- who is Rahm—–
Nov 9, 2006 from The Washington Post
“I said before the election that if the Democrats win the House, the lion’s share of the credit should go to [Rahm Emanuel],” says Rep. Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican. “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.”
Alternately, Emanuel has been described as a shark, a pit bull, a barracuda and a host of unprintable names — by Democrats!
“Rahm Emanuel is a very ambitious person,” Rep. Charles Rangel (D- N.Y.) said yesterday, glowing in his own reelection and the possibility that he will be named chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. “There’s no question that with the election, he’s picked up a lot of political clout. But he’s also lost some friends along the way. He curses a lot. He’s blunt.”
Jan 21, 2007 The Washington Post
Rep. Rahm Emanuel considers Sen. Barack Obama a close friend. The Illinois Democrats had dinner just last week. They are both from Chicago and socialize together with their wives. But Emanuel got his big break in national politics from Bill Clinton and worked for him in the White House. And now his worst-case scenario has come true - - both Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are running for president and want his support.
Emanuel declared on television early last year that he was supporting Clinton, but that was before Obama expressed interest in running. Now he is officially neutral. And both sides are lobbying him to take a top campaign post. “I’m going to call Rahm and talk the issue through with him and see what he thinks,” said Mickey Kantor, who chaired Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992 and is now backing Hillary Clinton.
Obama has been calling, too. He had dinner with Emanuel on Thursday, which the congressman called a longstanding personal engagement. Asked where Emanuel will come down in the 2008 race, Obama recently told the Chicago Tribune: “Rahm knows the right thing to do.”
Jan 2007 The Washington Post
Nobody understands the new Washington power dynamic better than [Rahm Emanuel], who helped create it. As chief strategist and fundraiser for the Democrats’ recapture of the House, he understood before most others that the nation was angry with [Bush] and his party. Now, with Bush binding himself even more firmly to an unpopular war, Emanuel wants to use that rising anger to make the Democrats the nation’s true governing party.
With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Emanuel plans to use Bush’s Iraq speech to pose what amounts to a vote of “no confidence” in Bush’s leadership — framing the new strategy as a congressional motion and voting it up or down. Emanuel is certain that Bush’s strategy will be voted down and that a sizable number of Republicans will join the Democrats in rejecting the military escalation. Rather than try to restrict funds for the troops (which he sees as a political blunder that would delight Republicans), Emanuel instead favors a proposal by Rep. John Murtha to set strict standards for readiness - - which would make it hard to finance the troop surge in Iraq without beefing up the military as a whole. The idea is to position the Democrats as friends of the military, even as they denounce Bush’s Iraq policy.
The secret for the Democrats, says Emanuel, is to remain the party of reform and change. The country is angry, and it will only get more so as the problems in Iraq deepen. Don’t look to Emanuel’s Democrats for solutions on Iraq. It’s Bush’s war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP power, the Democrats are waiting to pick up the pieces.
