O come, O come, (Rahm) Emanuel

Like a lot of political junkies, I’ve been thinking a fair bit about our new president’s first big hire: Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. There are some things to be said about the fact that they botched the announcement, but leave that aside and consider Rep. Emanuel himself; his selection deeply concerns some conservatives but reassures others, including the folks at the Wall Street Journal—and has also provoked considerable consternation among some on the Left.For my own part, I have three thoughts on this pick. First, this means that you can take all that high-toned high-minded “new politics”/”post-partisan”/”new kind of politician”/”hope and change”/”heal the country” talk and throw it out the window. That was for the campaign, and it served its purpose; now it’s time to get real, and that’s going to look very different.Two, on balance, I think that’s a good thing, because Barack Obama is entering a very different world than the world of his campaign, and what worked then isn’t going to work now. I’ve believed for a while that the Democratic congressional leadership, the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, have seen him not as the leader of their party but as someone they would be able to use as a figurehead for their own agenda, and that they would pull him hard to the left; of course, I’ve also believed that he would be perfectly comfortable going along with that. Rep. Emanuel is one of the nastiest partisans in Washington, but he’s also, on his record, a centrist, and hawkish for a Democrat; his selection is the first indication that Barack Obama may in fact want to govern from the center-left, rather than from the leftist positions that won him the primaries. Just as important, his appointment may well be a sign that Sen. Obama picked up on the same signs in his party that I thought I saw, and a signal that he has no intention of letting the likes of Speaker Pelosi dominate his administration—a shot across their bows to let them know that he is the president and he intends to be the president. As the WSJ put it,

As for Mr. Emanuel’s famously sharp elbows, they are as likely to be wielded against his fellow Democrats as against Republicans. With Democrats now so dominant, the fiercest fights—and the ones that really matter—will take place among Democratic factions in the White House and Capitol Hill. Mr. Emanuel can help Mr. Obama understand when he needs to ignore the pleas of the left and govern from the center.

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line echoed this when he wrote,

The ascension to the presidency of a given politician doesn’t repeal the rules of politics, one of which is that a president needs someone fierce and ruthless by his side. Whatever Obama decides to try and accomplish, he will require a key aide who answers to this description. . . .I suspect, moreover, that it is Democratic heads Emanuel will be knocking. Republican heads don’t count for much on Capitol Hill these days, and the Obama administration won’t be in much of a position to knock them, in any case.

I maintained, and maintain, that Sen. Obama has showed neither the instincts, nor the ability, nor the experience, nor quite frankly the willingness to upset people necessary to fight free of the left wing of his party and chart his own course; Rep. Emanuel gives him all of the above.And three, I agree with Jennifer Rubin:

It is quite remarkable that, even now, we are still reading the tea leaves and guessing which Obama will be taking office. The high-minded one? The Chicago pol? The ultra-liberal? The moderate? We’ll all stay tuned as, bit by bit, everyone learns who it was we just elected.