Rahm Emanuel …
For President?
He’d like you to keep an
open mind.
By Ashley Parker
October 30, 2025, 6 AM ET
The laws of political journalism dictate that
any profile of Rahm Emanuel—who is all but declaring a 2028 presidential
run—must crackle with Rahm Anecdotes that capture the propulsive, relentless
behavior of a man who’s slugged his way through the political Thunderdome for
four decades.
For example: the dead fish he sent to
a Democratic pollster he blamed for misjudging a House race, accompanied by a
note that read: “It’s been awful working with you. Love, Rahm.” Or the
celebratory dinner in Little Rock, Arkansas, after Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory,
when Emanuel repeatedly stabbed the table with a steak knife as
he named those who’d betrayed the campaign and decreed them, one after the
other, “Dead! Dead! Dead!” Or the nameplate on his desk in the White House,
when he was Barack Obama’s first chief of staff: Undersecretary for Go Fuck Yourself, a
gift from his two brothers—Zeke, a prominent bioethicist, and Ari, a
Hollywood superagent. (The nameplate was short-lived; Michelle Obama didn’t
like it.)
But this profile,
Emanuel informed me, will not be one of those profiles.
“One: Distinguish the caricature from
the character,” he told me, reading from a scrap of paper with a short list of
what I must understand about him. “I get all the caricature—I played into it or
whatever—but there’s principle behind it. I don’t just fight for the sport of
fight.”
I had arrived a few minutes early for
our 8 a.m. breakfast at the Park Hyatt in Washington, D.C., but Emanuel, who
hates being late, was already seated in his crisp white button-down and
dark-blue jeans. He’d begun his day at 5:30 a.m. with 50 minutes on the hotel’s
stationary bike, 20 minutes of weights, and now nearly seven minutes of
instructing me on how to properly do my job.
Over black coffee and Greek yogurt
with berries, he continued outlining what should be in my profile: He had
helped vanquish many a Republican—particularly as chair of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2006 midterms—but Republicans still
like him. As proof, he pulled up recent emails from two congressional
Republicans, both committee chairmen, praising his potential 2028 bid. He would
later show me another, from a Republican senator, complimenting his stint as
ambassador to Japan. (Emanuel seemed to think that these private niceties
forecast a broad appeal with voters.) He also noted that unaffiliated voters
can cast ballots in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, which could be the
first state to pass judgment in 2028.
Finally, Emanuel ran through the ways
in which he had been ahead of the rest of the country as mayor of Chicago, from
2011 to 2019. Under his leadership, he said, Chicago was among the first U.S.
cities to sue pharmaceutical companies over opioids. It was a pioneer in
universal prekindergarten and free community college. He made Chicago a top destination for
corporate relocation, and traveled to Europe and Asia to drum up foreign
investment in the city. And he devoted his second mayoral inaugural address, in
2015, to the plight of “lost and unconnected young men,” well before it became
the topic du jour.
Although Emanuel says that he will not
make a decision on running until next year, he is publicly and privately
gearing up for a presidential campaign. You may have seen and heard more of
Emanuel these past few months than you ever did when he was in elected or
appointed office. He was on Megyn Kelly’s show, where he broke with
progressives over transgender issues (“Can a man become a woman? … No.”). While
testifying before a House committee on China, Emanuel said that, as Joe Biden’s
ambassador to Japan, he strengthened ties among Tokyo, Washington, Manila, and
Seoul, as a bulwark against China. And he appeared on so many podcasts—hosted
by David Axelrod, Dana Bash, Hugh Hewitt, Hasan Minhaj, Gavin Newsom, Kara
Swisher, Bari Weiss—that I began to wonder if Spotify should just add a Rahm
Emanuel channel.
He’s clearly pitching himself to
America as a politically incorrect, tell-it-like-it-is fighter. And over the
course of several weeks this summer and early fall, he pitched himself to me as
someone who can muscle the American dream back into reality for the middle
class.
Having served all three living
Democratic presidents, Emanuel has been a key player in nearly every major
victory, defeat, negotiation, controversy, and innovation of the modern
Democratic Party. But as he gears up for one final act, Democrats will have to
ask themselves: Is Rahm Emanuel precisely what the party needs right now—as it
flounders through the Donald Trump era—or is he exactly whom the party wants to
leave behind?
He wound down his breakfast talking
points in typical Rahm fashion: pretending not to care while caring a great
deal. “I am a political animal, full stop. But I’m equally a policy animal,” he
told me. “I don’t give a fuck what else you say.”
Evan Jenkins for The
Atlantic
Emanuel speaking to voters
in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 27, 2025
The summer he was 17—shortly after he turned
down a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet in favor of Sarah Lawrence
College—Emanuel sliced open his finger working at an Arby’s in the northern
suburbs of Chicago. He was cleaning the metal meat-shaving machine, and cleaved
his right middle finger down to the bone. He bandaged it up and finished his
shift, unaware that a piece of meat was lodged under the skin, and then
proceeded to splash around in Lake Michigan with friends. The ensuing infection
left him hospitalized for weeks and near death twice, his older brother, Zeke,
told me.
At one point, doctors debated between
further antibiotic treatment, which had no guarantee of success, and
amputation, which was more likely to solve the problem. “He’s like, ‘Take it
off!’” Zeke said. “‘I want to live, and I’m not going to let the two knuckles
on my finger stop me.’” The story became part of the Rahm Emanuel shtick. There
was never any, “‘Woe is me, I can’t play racquet sports’ or whatever the fuck,”
Zeke said.
I spoke with nearly 50 of Emanuel’s
friends, allies, former colleagues, rivals, skeptics, haters, and fellow
Democratic operatives, some of whom requested anonymity not only to share their
candid views but also to avoid his infamous wrath. (One person remembered how,
after Emanuel’s first House primary race, he held a years-long grudge against
EMILY’s List for helping his female rival—despite the fact that this is the
exact purpose of EMILY’s List.) They all told me similar stories of his
relentless drive to survive and win, and how he helped shape our modern
politics.
In 1992, as Bill Clinton’s finance
director, Emanuel prioritized large donor events to raise money; the cash
helped Clinton survive the Gennifer Flowers scandal, which threatened to derail
his campaign early in the primaries. In the White House, Emanuel was part of
the team that pushed NAFTA and the 1994 crime bill through Congress; both
achievements would later haunt 21st-century Democrats. Hillary Clinton tried to
have him fired—she reportedly disdained his aggressive style of doing
business—but Emanuel refused to leave, and accepted a demotion instead.
“I said, ‘Come back to Chicago, man;
it’s over.’ He said, ‘No, I’m not going,’” Axelrod told me. “Because he cannot
fail. He won’t accept failure.” Emanuel clawed his way back to a senior-adviser
position. Mythmaking profiles followed, and they are time capsules of Emanuel’s
prescient sense of voter moods.
As one administration staffer put it
to The New Republic in 1997: “Rahm felt that Americans
believed too many people were coming into this country, too many foreigners, so
he wanted to show the administration returning people, deporting them, putting
up bigger fences, sending them back.”
Marianne Barcellona /
Getty
Emanuel outside the U.S.
Capitol in December 1992, as general manager of the Clinton Presidential
Inaugural Committee
In the Clinton White House, Emanuel
took on assignments that, in his words, “nobody wanted to touch.” He helped
Clinton implement Operation Gatekeeper, aimed at halting illegal immigration
near San Diego. He fielded 3 a.m. calls from Clinton as he whipped votes for
two major gun-control laws: the Brady Bill in 1993 (which passed just eight
days before NAFTA) and the assault-weapons ban in 1994. He negotiated the final
specifics of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which extended health
care to millions. He also helped hash out the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 with
a Republican-controlled Congress, and the first of Clinton’s two
increases of the federal minimum wage.
This was the Democratic Party of the
1990s: a heady run of accomplishment, through combat and compromise with a
pre-Trump GOP, even as Clinton was hounded by right-wing inquisitors. Emanuel
followed his first tour of the White House with a stint in investment banking.
Mergers and acquisitions, though, didn’t have the thrill of politics.
Emanuel was elected to the House in
2002, to represent the North Side of Chicago. As chair of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, he wrested the chamber from
Republican control for the first time in 12 years, and gave Democrats a 31-seat
majority.
He did so with a then-controversial
recruitment strategy: enlisting candidates (veterans, athletes, sheriffs) with
beliefs (pro-gun, anti-abortion) that fit their swing districts instead of
party purity tests. Critics claim that these ephemeral victories in purple
districts seeded longer-term defeat for the party; Emanuel says that his goal
was to deliver the speaker’s gavel to a Democrat, and that he enabled the
election of the first female speaker of the House.
Emanuel wants results, in other words.
And he can detonate when he doesn’t get them.
Multiple members of Emanuel’s 2006
DCCC team told me the same story: In June of that year, after Democrats lost a
special election in California, he called his team into his office and began
shouting. “We. Worked. Too. Hard. To. Lose. Races. Like. This,” he said,
crushing a water bottle in one hand and rattling a chair with the other. “You.
Worked. Too. Hard. To. Lose. Races. Like. This.” Someone laughed at Emanuel’s
tantrum, prompting him to declare, “If you don’t shut the fuck up, I am going
to kill every last motherfucking one of you.” (One of his nicknames is
“Rahmbo.”)
Brooks Kraft / Corbis /
Getty
Emanuel, with Senator
Chuck Schumer (D-NY), celebrates the seismic Democratic victory in the 2006
midterms.
Emanuel had hoped to become the first
Jewish speaker, but the incoming president Obama asked him to be his chief of
staff. “No fucking way,” Emanuel told him, hesitant to put his family through
another grueling tour of White House duty. But Obama was persistent in wanting
Emanuel’s expertise and temperament. “With an economic crisis to tackle and
what I suspected might be a limited window to get my agenda through a
Democratically controlled Congress, I was convinced that his pile-driver style
was exactly what I needed,” Obama wrote in his memoir A Promised Land.
Emanuel helped Obama prevent the
recession they’d inherited from slipping into a depression. The Obama
administration bailed out the auto industry, which Emanuel had urged it to do,
but let bankers off the hook, even as Emanuel privately advocated “Old Testament
justice.” And he was instrumental in whipping votes for and negotiating the
minutiae of the Affordable Care Act, once racing from his son’s bar mitzvah,
after the challah and wine, to the White House to tackle final concerns with
holdout Democrats. (“I told Obama, ‘You owe me. You promised it would not be
like this, and this is exactly what it is,’” Emanuel told me, still miffed
about the work-life imbalance.)
The health-care package changed the
American economy and millions of lives—and also became an eternal political
cudgel. Even the most recent government shutdown hinges, in part, on ACA
subsidies. GOP officials are making “a political mistake and a policy mistake,”
Emanuel told me. “It reinforces the brand that Republicans don’t care about
people.”
Emanuel’s most potent weapon—both for
himself and for his party—may be his sheer relentlessness, which he can
calibrate to be either scorched-earth or supple. As Biden’s ambassador to
Japan, he once asked to join a meeting between the president and the Japanese
prime minister. The National Security Council nixed Emanuel’s request; such
small, high-level meetings typically would not include an ambassador. Yet when
Biden and his aides showed up, there was Emanuel, waiting alongside the
Japanese delegation, which he had persuaded to bring him.
The question now is whether he can
sweet-talk—or bulldoze—his way into the room yet again.
Mark Wilson / Getty
Emanuel, as a congressman
from Illinois, in September 2008, after the House of Representatives rejected a
bailout package as the economy cratered
The case against Rahm Emanuel, according to
critics: He’s not progressive enough. His only ideology is winning. He’s more
of a tactician, less of a principal (though he’s long exuded main-character
energy). He’s too short (he claims 5 foot 8) or too old, at least for voters
who want to get away from septuagenarian presidents (he’ll be 69 on
Inauguration Day 2029). He has a problem with Black voters, stemming from his
mayorship (more on that in a bit). He’s too Jewish; his middle name is Israel,
though he has called Benjamin Netanyahu’s “collective punishment” of Gazans
morally and politically “bankrupt” and previously confronted the prime minister
over Israeli settlements (Haaretz reported that Netanyahu dubbed
Emanuel a “self-hating Jew,” though the prime minister has denied this).
The biggest knock against Emanuel may
be that he’s too enmeshed with the Democratic Party of the past to emerge as
its future. Emanuel is “a relic” who made Democrats cave to Big Pharma when
writing the Affordable Care Act, Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive
Change Campaign Committee, told me. Green’s group was among those Emanuel
called “fucking retarded” for considering running ads against conservative
Democrats who were reluctant to support the ACA. To Emanuel, the Democratic
Party has morphed from a big-tent results machine into a circular firing squad
of activists.
Emanuel is “the exact wrong answer” to
what the Democratic Party needs right now, because he prioritizes corporate
interests, says Cenk Uygur, a co-host of the progressive news program The
Young Turks. Uygur believes that Emanuel’s power stems from his friendly
relationships with the donor class and political reporters, who’ve been
ornamenting his reputation for decades. “In almost all the profiles, I read
about how charming Rahm Emanuel is,” Uygur told me, but “from our perspective,
all we see is a disastrous ogre, not this charming Shrek guy.”
Pete Souza / The White
House / Getty
As Barack Obama’s first
chief of staff, on June 25, 2009
Regarding his stance on transgender
rights, Parker Molloy wrote in The New Republic in
July that Emanuel is “picking on the people least able to defend themselves and
calling it pragmatism.” Emanuel told me that he’ll protect the most
vulnerable—as mayor, he ensured that Chicagoans could use the bathroom
consistent with their gender identity—while not focusing on trans issues.
“Sound is not always fury,” he often says, meaning the loudest voices do not
always amplify the foremost issues. Or, as he put it in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier
this month: “We’ve spent the past five years debating pronouns without noticing
that too many students can’t tell you what a pronoun is.”
Some progressives, especially in
Chicago, are unwilling to forget or forgive the central test of his mayorship.
In October 2014, weeks before Emanuel
kicked off his reelection campaign, a Black 17-year-old named Laquan McDonald
was shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer. Video of the shooting wasn’t
released until 13 months later. McDonald had not lunged at officers, as the
police-union spokesperson had claimed; he’d been shot in
the back while walking away. The incident ignited national outrage and
accusations of a cover-up by the Chicago Police Department and Emanuel, and
some former constituents are still angry. It remains a stain on Emanuel’s
legacy, and would be easy fodder for any 2028 opponent.
“He’s the mayor. He could have just
released it,” Tracy Siska, the executive director of the Chicago Justice
Project, told me. “The Chicago police had murdered a Black kid for no reason in
front of a bunch of cops, and no one did a damn thing.”
Emanuel has said that he needed to let
the official process play out. “If the mayor weighs in, you’re basically
compromising those investigations,” he told me, adding that his intervention
could have jeopardized the prosecution of the shooter, who was ultimately
convicted of second-degree murder.
Shortly after the video was released,
Emanuel delivered an emotional apology before the Chicago City Council, his
voice cracking as he accepted responsibility for the tragedy. He ultimately
pushed through several reforms, including body-worn cameras for all police and
a more timely video-release policy. He apologized to and earned the support of
Marvin Hunter, McDonald’s great-uncle and a Chicago pastor who served as the
family’s representative. The two regularly speak, and Hunter endorsed Emanuel
during his confirmation process to be ambassador.
Paul Beaty / AP
Emanuel speaks to the
press in December 2015, following the release of the police video of the murder
of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
“There is more to this individual than
the caricature that is presented in the public,” Hunter wrote to the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations in 2021. “I felt what is in his heart and I know
him to be a decent and honorable man who is willing to listen, eager to learn
and show a deep level of compassion.”
For as prickly as he can be, Emanuel
is skilled at smoothing things over. As mayor, he closed 50 underperforming
Chicago schools, in mainly Black and Latino neighborhoods. Janice Jackson, who
became the CEO of Chicago Public Schools after the closures, told me that the
schools needed to be closed—because of declining enrollment and budgetary
shortfalls—but communities reeled at the speed of the decision and the
brusqueness of the execution. Later in Emanuel’s tenure, when he was further
consolidating high schools, he did more community outreach, and with a more
empathetic tone. “Did I learn something? Yeah, of course I did,” he told me,
when I asked about the changed approach.
Emanuel points to data from Stanford
showing that Chicago-public-school students under his tenure appeared to be learning faster than
those in any other of the 100 largest school districts in the country. As
Jackson told me, “I have never met an elected official who cares more about
education.”
Emanuel does care. Even if he doesn’t
always seem caring. I felt this duality myself as I spent time
with him. One humid Tuesday evening in July, I wobbled up to CNN’s D.C. studio
on an electric scooter, with no helmet. Emanuel was early for our appointment,
as usual, and from the look on his face, I could tell that he was waiting with
a reprimand.
Evan Jenkins for The
Atlantic
Emanuel speaking to voters
in Iowa on September 27, 2025
“You have three kids,” Emanuel said, with a mix of
stern disappointment and genuine concern, pointing to my unprotected head.
“What are you doing?”
This was the paternal, less visible
side of Emanuel that I’d heard about: the steady husband who, when his kids
were younger, prioritized family dinners with his wife of 31 years, Amy Rule.
The devoted father of three who can choke up when talking about his family—he
said he speaks daily with each of his kids—and who regularly asks about
others’. The fervent believer in the promise of America, who prizes loyalty,
and inspires it, and sometimes ends phone calls—even tirades—with “I love you.”
“Distinguish the caricature from the
character,” Emanuel had told me. When I asked people who had worked for Emanuel
if they’d join his presidential campaign, several were open to the idea. And
when I asked people for their best Rahm stories, much of what I heard went
beyond dead-fish antics and fuck-yous.
Sarah Feinberg, who worked for Emanuel
at the DCCC and as a senior adviser in the Obama White House, was once mugged
at gunpoint. “Rahm literally checked on me constantly,” Feinberg told me. “He
had me call him every night when I got home—not to have a conversation, but so
he knew I was home.”
Emanuel is a boss who’ll call on
weekends and at all hours, but he’s also a boss who encourages work-life
balance. Michael Negron, Emanuel’s policy director when he was mayor, told me
that if Rahm called and heard his kids in the background, “he’d say, ‘Call me
when you’re free.’”
Rahm Emanuel: It’s time to hold
American elites accountable for their abuses
Shortly after Chicago was named host
of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, a local hospitality union reached a
contract impasse with a major hotel operator. Karen Kent, the president of the
union, called Emanuel, who happened to be at Camp David. He was ambassador to
Japan at the time but told her, simply, “I got it.” “Two days later,” Kent told
me, “those hotel guys called and settled.”
Emanuel said he’d urged the hotel
operator to consider the long term: The convention would bring a ton of
business to the city, and the hotel shouldn’t be left on the outside because of
short-term worries. “Figuring out what people needed and getting it for them, I
think, was always one of his talents,” Zeke Emanuel told me, explaining how
Rahm had honed certain skills as the middle child of three competitive
brothers.
A former aide had described Emanuel to
me as “very Tony Soprano–esque” in the way that his animus is often laced with
affection, and vice versa. The week after Rosh Hashanah, I received this text
from Emanuel: “First I start the new year with being nice to you. Will try.
Harder.” Emanuel asked whether I’d reached out to a couple of people he thought
I should speak with for this profile. Through an aide, he’d previously sent me
a list of a dozen people to call, from his mayoral days. “Speaker in Virginia
said never heard from ashley,” he texted. “True?” When I replied that the
people he was now asking about were not on his original list, he responded,
“Don’t attack the messenger,” and then sent me their contact info.
So I called Don Scott, the first Black
speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, who told me that Emanuel “helped me
navigate the political scene” in the state. Scott sees in Emanuel a thorny
sincerity that can’t be faked. “All these people are being coached on how to be
themselves and be real,” Scott said, “and Rahm came out of the womb using
a motherfucker here and a motherfucker there.”
At the end of our call, Scott and I
wondered if Emanuel would finally stop pestering us, now that we had connected.
But Emanuel was also querying people I’d already interviewed,
and then asking me if I was going to use what they’d said.
Emanuel’s desire for control
manifested even in the photo shoot for this article. Our photographer said in
an email that Emanuel had been generous with his time but “refused most of my
location choices,” “called me a ‘little prick’ when I suggested some posing
directions (multiple times) and told me he ‘knew where I lived in case he
didn’t like what was printed.’” Emanuel had done this in his avuncular,
shit-giving tone, which had made the photographer laugh but also complicated
his assignment.
Waiting with Emanuel in the CNN
greenroom before his TV hit, we ran into a reporter we both know, who—amused to
have stumbled upon a profile-in-process—began snapping photos of us on his
phone.
I joked with Emanuel that we could
keep the pictures for posterity, to remember the good times in the event that
this profile comes out, he hates it, and I’m forever dead to him. He responded
by switching to caricature. “You won’t fuck this up,” Emanuel said,
faux-menacing, jabbing four-and-a-half fingers at me, “because if you do, your
kids won’t have a mother anymore.”
Evan Jenkins for The
Atlantic
Emanuel at a homecoming
game at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 26
“Just who is the Rahm voter?” I
repeatedly asked people, and the answers were varied: moderates and centrists.
Progressives who care about winning the general election. Biden-Trump voters.
Washington insiders, yes, but also the working class. Or maybe there’s no
constituency that could make him a front-runner.
Emanuel, meanwhile, complained to me
that I was trying to pigeonhole him. “You’re trying to figure out what box I
fit,” he said, “and I don’t fit a box.”
Case in point: Emanuel chats with a
range of people who would make certain heads explode. The billionaire
Republican Ken Griffin, a Chicagoan, supported Emanuel when he ran for Congress
and mayor, and the two collaborated to revitalize the Chicago Lakefront Trail.
Last month, Emanuel met with the New York mayoral candidate
Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has provoked centrist
Democrats, to talk about how to staff a city administration and turn goals into
results. And over the summer, Emanuel met with a few billionaire tech titans:
Peter Thiel, whose fortune helped J. D. Vance win his Senate race, and the
venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, whom Emanuel has known
for years. Emanuel said that he’d asked Andreessen and Horowitz about improving
research funding at universities and in the defense industry.
A few weeks ago, I traveled with
Emanuel to the proving ground of Iowa, where his trip’s stated purpose—to
campaign and fundraise for Democrats—collided with its subtext: to test his own
prospects.
Rose Green, a Des Moines resident,
immediately recognized Emanuel at the September 26 homecoming game at Roosevelt
High School. “I heard him on a podcast a few months ago,” Green told me, “and I
said, ‘He’s sounding very presidential. He’s willing to say what he thinks, and
I like that right now.’” She asked Emanuel if he was going to run for
president, and he gave a version of his standard response: He’s still thinking
about it.
But he’s clearly acting the part. In
his 33 hours in Des Moines, Emanuel had coffee with a group of teachers, ate
Italian food with fellow politicians, and worked the homecoming crowd at
Roosevelt High, where one dad told me, “I’m a big fan of Obama, so if Obama
trusts him, that just gives me good vibes.” Emanuel also toured a business
incubator in a low-income neighborhood, ate two tacos ahogados at
a tiny Mexican restaurant, soapboxed at a fish fry hosted by State
Representative Sean Bagniewski, and befuddled at least one police officer who,
after shaking hands with Emanuel, turned to a colleague and asked, “Who’d he
say he was?”
Before Emanuel’s day of Iowa
campaigning on Saturday, he and I met for breakfast in the lobby of his hotel
(again, black coffee and yogurt with berries). Emanuel believes that Kamala
Harris lost mainly because she presented herself as a continuation of the Biden
administration rather than as a candidate of change, and that she erred by
focusing too much on threats to democracy. Yet since Emanuel and I had last
spoken, Charlie Kirk had been assassinated in front of thousands of college
students, and the Justice Department had begun prosecuting Trump’s perceived
enemies, such as former FBI Director James Comey. I asked: Did he now find the
issue more salient?
Evan Jenkins for The
Atlantic
Emanuel at a Mexican
restaurant in Des Moines
Emanuel deflected. “I think, by 2027,
the country is going to be: We’ve got to get past Trump. We’re
exhausted,” he told me. If voters want revenge via a Democratic version of
Trump, Emanuel added, then he’s not their guy. And over the past several
months, Emanuel has repeatedly argued that the 2028 election will not be a
referendum on Trump, and that Democrats will need to affirmatively stand for something.
Emanuel, in nearly all of his remarks, stands for education and affordability.
He talks about making homeownership more achievable by
giving first-time buyers a $24,000 tax credit or favorable interest rates. He
wants to rethink our nation’s education system, in part by nationalizing what
he did in Chicago, such as free community college for public-high-school
graduates with at least a B average. Before entering politics, Emanuel wanted
to be a teacher; when he was mayor, his staff would sometimes treat a bad mood
with an impromptu visit to a school, which always made him sunnier.
During Emanuel’s coffee with Iowa
educators, a teacher said that he would love to bring Chicago innovations—such
as requiring high-school seniors to have an official “day after” graduation
plan in order to get their diploma—to Des Moines.
Emanuel fist-bumped the teacher while
addressing a theoretical student: “You want to be a plumber? Great! You want to
be in the Air Force? Great! You want to go to Iowa Technical? Great! But,” he
said, “we’re not letting you go until we know what you’re doing.”
At the Iowa fish fry, Emanuel began
his remarks in a folksy style that struck me as slightly Clintonian, his voice
lapsing into a light twang for the first few minutes. At 65, Emanuel still
presents as impish: a bit fidgety, a bit smart-ass. His hair has been going
gray since the Clinton era, but his skin retains a glow. (The former aide told
me that Emanuel is a devotee of Kiehl’s face lotion: “He was very militant
about that.”)
Most Iowans I chatted with after they
met Emanuel seemed open to the idea of him as a candidate. They liked his
candor; one woman told me that she liked how he “cussed.” They liked his
diagnosis of—and prescriptions for—the Democratic Party: that it must focus on
delivering results instead of culture squabbles. Emanuel has a whole riff about
three 21st-century moments that shattered trust in government—the Iraq War, the
Great Recession, and the response to COVID—but one line that got heads nodding
in Iowa was far simpler: “The American dream is unaffordable, it’s
inaccessible, and we as Democrats—that’s unacceptable to us.”
Earlier this year, Emanuel returned to
an investment-banking firm as a senior adviser. Although not yet a candidate,
Emanuel has six people working with him on his nascent campaign, and he plans
to announce more early next year. In a hypothetical field for a primary season
that’s two years away, it’s impossible to forecast Emanuel’s chances. He could
bend his party’s trajectory once again, or maneuver his way into a Cabinet
position or even the vice presidency. Or he could flame out before a single
primary vote is cast.
All his life, failure has been
unimaginable, almost physically unbearable. But Emanuel says that he’s
different now. As he sees it, this would be his last political race, he’s
already had a full career, and nearly everyone thinks he’s a very long shot. So
he says he’s liberated himself to not care if he loses, and to have fun even if
he does. That seems unrealistic, but Emanuel has long practiced the art of
spin, and it’s possible that he’s successfully spun himself.
For now, he’s focused on influencing
his own party. Democrats, after all, are in their “Why the hell not?” era, and
part of Emanuel’s pitch is: Why the hell not me?
About the Author
Ashley Parker
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Ashley Parker is a staff writer at The
Atlantic.
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