I wouldn’t say I have a love/hate relationship with Rahm Emanuel. It’s more like admire/dislike. I think, for example, that he was one of the most effective and successful DCCC chairman in history. He worked his butt off, he recruited a strong field of candidates that could win, and he delivered the speaker’s gavel to Nancy Pelosi. For that, he deserves tremendous praise. At the same time, he made a lot of decisions as chairman that I didn’t like, including recruiting non-progressive candidates, wasting money on his pet candidates, and weighing in in primary battles against anti-war candidates. The end result was a mixed bag. The Democrats took over with a healthy majority that Chairman Van Hollen built upon. But six out of the ten poorest performing Democrats were recruited by Rahm.

I’m more sympathetic to Emanuel when it comes to style points. I kind of like his gangster attitude. I like that he creates fear in his opponents. Take this scene from Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker profile:

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.”

I can only imagine what the Fundies will say about a chief of staff with that name plate displayed prominently in his White House office. Doesn’t that defile the dignity of the office every bit as much as bathroom fellatio? And the things he says!!

Asked about [Fidel] Castro’s [critical] article, [Rahm] said, “Well, you know, ever since I stopped sending him my holiday card he’s been ticked off. I don’t know what to think about it. Do you know what I’m thinking about? I’m going to finally get to see my kids after a month. So that’s all I give a fuck about.”

Or…

“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.?”

I’m sure it’s nothing personal, Sen. Franken. Strictly business.

I don’t agree with everything Emanuel does or says, but I like the way he goes about it. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I think it will be effective in the long run. On that score, I’m undecided.

One thing I’m happy about is that Rahm makes his presence known. I never knew what Andy Card was doing or what he believed. He was a ghost. I thought he was this fairly moderate Republican and expected him to have a good influence on the Bush administration. But it turned out that he never put his fingerprints on anything and it was impossible to tell whether he agreed with Cheney or was just scared to stick up to him. At least with Rahm, we’ll know where he stands. And if we don’t like it, we know we can go fuck ourselves. But that’s okay, because he can go fuck himself, too. That kind of transactional politics is something progressives fight against, but at least it is something we can understand.