Obama's Cheney
By Dennis Byrne
Obama's Cheney
tags: Emanuel Rahm
Obama’s Cheney
In the time it took to grab a quick night’s sleep, Barack Obama trashed his dream of ushering a new Era of Good Feelings by offering the White House chief of staff job to Rahm (the hatchet) Emanuel.
Emanuel is the abrasive, vindictive and partisan Democratic congressman from Chicago’s North Side whose willingness to crush the opposition is legendary. Several news organizations this morning are reporting that Obama has offered the top job in his administration to Emanuel, but he hasn’t yet decided to accept. If true, at this point only Emanuel can save Obama from Emanuel by turning down the job. Whether he will depends on which way his powerful ego steers him: To the second most powerful man in the White House, or eventually to his coveted job as Speaker of the House.
Even Jane Hamsher warns in the far left The Nation magazine that Emanuel’s appointment would be a “sharp slap in the face,” and a serious threat to an Obama administration’s ability to craft a workable majority for a truly progressive agenda in Congress. Hamsher has policy difficulties with Emanuel, noting his support of NAFTA—the North American free trade agreement that is the bane of the far left, and which Obama has indicated that he wants to re-open (much to the amazement and anger of America’s closest neighbors).
Hamsher has reason to be worried. For folks like Hamsher, Emanuel is “one of them”—the greedy corporate types who have ruined our economy, if not the country. Emanuel earned millions—some say $18 million—between his stint in the Clinton White House as a senior advisor and his election too the House—working at the Chicago investment banking firm of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Chicago. That should be enough to earn the wrath of the Democratic left, but so far that hasn’t seemed to have bothered the party’s true believers. If they expect Emanuel to forget his pals in the Chicago financial, futures and commodities businesses, they, indeed, are blinded by the light.
But more threatened is Obama’s promise of a new age of non-partisanship, good will and the various other new dawnings that his election is supposed to bring. As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he not only demonstrated his amazing and admired fundraising and organizational talents, but he also demonstrated a degree of partisanship and ruthlessness that some might describe as savage. While Obama and his adherents were praising the candidate’s calm, thoughtful and gracious style of campaigning, the DCCC was on the air with aggressive and nasty attack ads against Republican opponents. It is inconceivable that Emanuel is the best surrogate for a President Obama who wants to govern by consensus and good will.
Emanuel has been known for “doing whatever it takes” to win. Winning is all, nuts to everything else. The real question, the morning after an energized nation awoke to a new and promising president-elect, is whether Obama is blind to the poison he would bring into the white house. Or, worse, does he know, and that’s just fine with him?
http://cdobs.com/archive/our-columns/obamas-cheney,2019/
By Dennis Byrne
Obama's Cheney
tags: Emanuel Rahm
Obama’s Cheney
In the time it took to grab a quick night’s sleep, Barack Obama trashed his dream of ushering a new Era of Good Feelings by offering the White House chief of staff job to Rahm (the hatchet) Emanuel.
Emanuel is the abrasive, vindictive and partisan Democratic congressman from Chicago’s North Side whose willingness to crush the opposition is legendary. Several news organizations this morning are reporting that Obama has offered the top job in his administration to Emanuel, but he hasn’t yet decided to accept. If true, at this point only Emanuel can save Obama from Emanuel by turning down the job. Whether he will depends on which way his powerful ego steers him: To the second most powerful man in the White House, or eventually to his coveted job as Speaker of the House.
Even Jane Hamsher warns in the far left The Nation magazine that Emanuel’s appointment would be a “sharp slap in the face,” and a serious threat to an Obama administration’s ability to craft a workable majority for a truly progressive agenda in Congress. Hamsher has policy difficulties with Emanuel, noting his support of NAFTA—the North American free trade agreement that is the bane of the far left, and which Obama has indicated that he wants to re-open (much to the amazement and anger of America’s closest neighbors).
Hamsher has reason to be worried. For folks like Hamsher, Emanuel is “one of them”—the greedy corporate types who have ruined our economy, if not the country. Emanuel earned millions—some say $18 million—between his stint in the Clinton White House as a senior advisor and his election too the House—working at the Chicago investment banking firm of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Chicago. That should be enough to earn the wrath of the Democratic left, but so far that hasn’t seemed to have bothered the party’s true believers. If they expect Emanuel to forget his pals in the Chicago financial, futures and commodities businesses, they, indeed, are blinded by the light.
But more threatened is Obama’s promise of a new age of non-partisanship, good will and the various other new dawnings that his election is supposed to bring. As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he not only demonstrated his amazing and admired fundraising and organizational talents, but he also demonstrated a degree of partisanship and ruthlessness that some might describe as savage. While Obama and his adherents were praising the candidate’s calm, thoughtful and gracious style of campaigning, the DCCC was on the air with aggressive and nasty attack ads against Republican opponents. It is inconceivable that Emanuel is the best surrogate for a President Obama who wants to govern by consensus and good will.
Emanuel has been known for “doing whatever it takes” to win. Winning is all, nuts to everything else. The real question, the morning after an energized nation awoke to a new and promising president-elect, is whether Obama is blind to the poison he would bring into the white house. Or, worse, does he know, and that’s just fine with him?
http://cdobs.com/archive/our-columns/obamas-cheney,2019/