Letter from Washington: The Gatekeeper: Rahm Emanuel on the job (Lizza | NYer)

[struggle4progress]

by Ryan Lizza
March 2, 2009

... In Granma, .. Fidel Castro wrote ... “Obama, Emanuel and all of the brilliant politicians and economists who have come together would not suffice to solve the growing problems of U.S. capitalist society” ... Emanuel, for his part, seemed indifferent .., In a few hours, he would be leaving for a ski trip with his family to Park City, Utah, and he was anxious to get out of the White House and start the weekend. Asked about Castro’s article, he said, “Well, you know, ever since I stopped sending him my holiday card he’s been ticked off ...

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. “No disrespect to Paul Krugman,” Emanuel went on, “but has he figured out how to seat the Minnesota senator?” (Franken’s 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.) “Write 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. “Anytime they want, they can have it,” he said of those who are critical of his legislative strategies. “I give them my chair.”

His task has been made no easier by Obama’s desire for bipartisanship, which Emanuel argues the press has misunderstood. “The public wants bipartisanship,” he said. “We just have to try. We don’t have to succeed.” Still, he insisted, they have been succeeding. All Obama’s other major accomplishments to date—winning 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 Guantánamo Bay and a memorandum to increase the fuel efficiency of cars—were supported by at least some Republicans. The G.O.P., Emanuel said, decided that opposing the stimulus “was definitional, and I will make an argument to you, both on political and economic grounds: they will lose. I don’t 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, “Undersecretary for Go Fuck Yourself” ...

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/02/090302fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all