The Chief's Chief

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Rahm Emanuel Chosen as Chief of Staff

The llinois Congressman has accepted the job as President-elect Barack Obama's chief of staff.

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Tom Korologos, a veteran Washington super-lobbyist, called Emanuel's choice a "brilliant move" by Obama but said it was strange that he performed his Hamlet act in public.

"It's a little bizarre, a little backwards," he said. "I guess they're learning. It's a glitch on the first day."

The holdup, according to what Emanuel told friends over the past weeks, was twofold: stepping off a possible track to become speaker of the House and concerns over what the endless demands of the job would do to his family. According to a Democratic aide familiar with the situation, moving the household to Washington would disrupt a long-standing agreement Emanuel and his wife, Amy Rule, have to raise their three children, 9, 10 and 11, in Chicago, where the couple, like Barack and Michelle Obama, have their closest friends.

John W. Rowe, chief executive of Exelon and a friend, said Emanuel recently called him while he was shopping at a bookstore and agonizing over the toll that a move back to the White House would take. "There will be a long periods when there won't be Saturday mornings at the bookstore with my kids," Rowe recalled him saying.

According to Ezekiel Emanuel, a noted Harvard oncologist, his little brother Rahm ultimately said yes because of a dictate handed down by their maternal grandfather: "He told us all, 'If you've been called up in life to take on big responsibility, you may not want to do it, but you drop everything and you do it.' My brother will turn himself into a pretzel to do his duty."

Emanuel's other brother is Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel, inspiration for the Ari Gold character on "Entourage." The three hyperachievers grew up in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette, the sons of a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who worked for the Israeli underground in his youth. His mother, the daughter of a union organizer, took the boys to civil rights marches in the 1960s, instilling an interest in politics that would eventually take her middle boy to the inner sanctums of the White House -- twice.

According to two previous inhabitants of the office next door to the Oval Office, Emanuel's key asset as chief of staff will be his well-established friendship with his new boss. That probably will be enough to compensate for the political brush fires sparked by Emanuel's flint-and-steel personality.

"The job is to tell the president what he needs to know, not necessarily what he wants to know," said Kenneth Duberstein, who served as Ronald Reagan's chief of staff. "Because of his relationship with the president-elect, Rahm will be able to deliver not just the good news but the tough news as well. He has the ability to be a reality therapist inside the White House."

Mack McLarty, Clinton's first chief of staff, who has known Emanuel since the "War Room" days of the 1992 presidential campaign, agreed.

"My sense is that they have a relationship that is authentic and that will give them an important level of trust," McLarty said. "Given that, I think the strength of his high-energy personality will serve him well."

McLarty said Emanuel will start the job with an advantage he didn't have: experience on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. "It will help enormously that he's worked in the White House before," McLarty said. "I hadn't done that. He's got both pieces."

But it's Emanuel's congressional Rolodex that may be most of use to the Obama administration. With Joe Biden's intimate lock on Senate relations, Emanuel's three terms in the House could prove invaluable. Despite the egos he bruised along the way, Democrats hail Emanuel as an electoral Moses. As chairman of the 2006 Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Emanuel delivered the party from 12 years in the minority wilderness.