Rahm Emanuel, the US president’s chief of staff and the “piledriver” tasked with delivering the Obama administration’s agenda, is expected to resign this week to seek to become Chicago’s mayor.
The American press quoted White House sources as saying that Emanuel would quit on Friday under pressure from the president to make a decision about his future.
Obama is aware that speculation is creating instability at a time when the administration is focusing on November’s midterm elections, which are expected to result in heavy losses to the Republicans.
One of Obama’s senior advisers, Pete Rouse, is expected to fill the post temporarily until a fulltime replacement is found after the elections.
Politico reports that possible replacements include the CIA director, Leon Panetta — a former Congressman who served as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and is popular among Democrats — and the former Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle.
Emanuel (50) was initially hailed by Obama supporters as a hardball politician, known for his profanity, who would help the president get things done in Congress.
The New York Times last year characterised him as the most influential White House chief of staff in a generation.
“The president has a zen-like quality,” David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, told the newspaper. “Rahm is a piledriver.”
But Emanuel’s credibility among liberal Democrats has taken a battering over what was seen as a willingness to accommodate the president’s Republican opponents.
He crossed swords with the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, earlier this year after he urged the president to abandon plans for comprehensive healthcare reform and to take a more incremental approach.
Liberal activists ‘fucking retarded’
Obama’s chief of staff has also been blamed in part for what some Democrats see as his failure to press home the president’s political message as confidence in Obama has eroded following political attacks over healthcare, his handling of the economy and Wall Street regulation.
Emanuel has responded to criticism by calling liberal activists “fucking retarded” for planning to run TV ads attacking conservative Democrats who failed to back the health reforms.
On Tuesday told NBC that Emanuel needed to make a swift decision on whether to resign if he was to compete in February’s primary for Chicago mayor.
“I think that Rahm will have to make a decision quickly, because running for mayor of Chicago is a serious enterprise. And I know this is something he’s thinking about,” Obama said.
Obama said Emanuel would make “an excellent” mayor.
Emanuel had been expected to run after Chicago’s longstanding mayor, Richard Daley, said earlier this month that the would not seek re-election.
Emanuel grew up in Chicago and was chief fundraiser for Daley’s victorious first mayoral race in 1989.
He went on to become a Congressman and chairman of the Democratic caucus, making him the fourth ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives.
He left Congress to take up his White House post. – guardian.co.uk