"

Ballet Rahmbert

The gossip surrounding the president’s chief of staff is getting out of hand

Mar 11th 2010 | WASHINGTON, DC | From The Economist print edition

“LET me tell you a story about Rahm Emanuel. I was a congressman in my first eight weeks, and I was in the congressional gym, and I went down and I worked out and I went into the showers. I’m sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird and here comes Rahm Emanuel not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn’t going to vote for the president’s budget. Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?”

[SNIP]

In hard times, friends fall out. And Mr Emanuel, who worked in the Clinton White House, has never been as close to the president as David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett and the rest of the Chicago coterie who campaigned with Mr Obama. Mr Emanuel’s enemies blame him for trimming the president’s ambitions. His defenders say it is a pity Mr Obama did not heed his chief of staff’s warnings against overreach. As to the inevitable question of whether Mr Emanuel will manage to keep his job, you read the answer here first: if health reform survives, so will he.( Emphasis added)

"