In the event Emanuel’s time at Obama’s elbow was a disaster from the start. It was the supposedly savvy Emanuel who allowed Obama to blow his first year on a health reform bill that pleased no one. (Emanuel later made haste to stab his boss in the back by confiding to journalists that he had urged Obama to postpone health reform past the first year.) He helped construct a poorly designed stimulus bill and surrendered to Republicans in Congress who demanded the tax cuts which further disfigured it. From Emanuel come no strong words to Obama to urge him to act resolutely to save millions of Americans from losing their homes, and to bring the arrogant bankers on Wall Street to their knees.
In the end, the buck has to stop with Obama. But Emanuel was a lead weight tied to the ankle of a president already wallowing in the timid sell-outs that finally caused him to face the polite and therefore all the more devastating reproof of a middle-aged, middle-class black woman, Velma Hart, in a town-meting in a Washington DC suburb a couple of weeks ago. Hart said, " I'm exhausted from defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now."
Emanuel’s political calls in the elections were terrible, from the Massachusetts race for Ted Kennedy’s seat, which elevated the Tea Party from curiosity to powerbroker, to the handling of the Illinois and Pennsylvania senate races.The portrait of Emanuel in Woodward’s new book is anything but flattering, particularly in the treatment of national security advisor Jones. After Emanuel’s announcement that he was quitting the listing ship, one could conjecture that perhaps Cliton’s bail-out man, David Gergen, might get the call yet again, or maybe they'd haul Panetta in from CIA as replacement. But the job has gone to Rahm's number two, a relative unknown and it looks as though there's going to be a power vacuum with a lot of scrambling, perhaps for the exits, after the election.
What is it about these paste-board Svengalis, that prompts the press to close its eyes to their manifest incompetence?
