THE NATION CITY

Why Mayors Are Now Running the World

By Rahm Emanuel

At what had promised to be the pinnacle of his career in Washington, Rahm Emanuel came to a realization: “A major shift was happening. The national government was in retreat and cities were emerging as the new power centers filling the void.” And so, in the autumn of 2010, he tendered his resignation as Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff, pulled up stakes and headed home to run for mayor of Chicago.

Nearly a decade on, Emanuel is more convinced than ever that the future of progressive politics lies beyond the Beltway. “We need to shift much of our focus away from Washington and direct it to places that really matter,” he urges in his spirited manifesto, “The Nation City.”

A presidential election year with Donald Trump on the ballot is an odd time to make this argument. And because it’s Emanuel, some readers will see the book as an effort to recover space for a style of business-friendly liberalism increasingly beleaguered on the national scene. (Both Michael Bloomberg and Pete Buttigieg feature prominently in “The Nation City.”) Still, marshaling a host of fascinating case studies and drawing on the work of the political theorist Benjamin Barber and others, Emanuel makes a strong case for the vitality of local governance in an age of dysfunction.

While national politicians cower in fear of donors, pressure groups and cable television coverage, mayors can act. As Emanuel recounts, at the same time that Congress was frustrating Obama’s desires for a national pre-K program, America’s mayors were getting started locally. When Washington acts cruelly, cities can try to blunt the impact — as Emanuel shows in a discussion of how cities have responded to the Trump administration’s immigration policy. And because they operate where people live, cities can open up fresh opportunities in everyday life — for instance, by putting new libraries in public housing complexes, as Emanuel did in Chicago.