Rahm Emanuel is different than the average fanatically driven candidate. | REUTERS Rahm's rules for victory

There are plenty of people — in Washington, in Illinois, Democratic activists around the country — who had a very precise picture in mind of what they hoped the morning after the first round of voting in the Chicago mayor’s race would be like.

Their vision was of Rahm Emanuel — his comeuppance come round at last — wiping egg off his face, paying the price for a lifetime of sharp words and sharp elbows with a rude defeat in his own hometown.


These bitter fantasies, as have been obvious in polls for weeks now, won’t be coming to life. Indeed, the first round of voting in Chicago will be the last, as Emanuel soared past the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff election. Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but Emanuel’s career remains as hot as ever.

The man who was a precociously powerful Capitol Hill operative in his early twenties, a senior White House aide to Bill Clinton in his early thirties, and a multimillionaire, a congressman, and chief of staff to President Barack Obama in his forties, will spend his fifties running one of the nation’s top cities. It’s an arc that easily qualifies Emanuel as one of the most successful careerists of his generation.

It raises the question: Why him? Even Emanuel’s detractors would concede that he is smart and ambitious. But there are lots of smart and ambitious pols, many of whom don’t disguise their intelligence behind a blizzard of malapropisms that colleagues once dubbed “Rahmbonics.” He once accused opponents of delaying action in the fiscal crisis by trying to “kick it down the can,” and boasted about his plan to “slam shut the revolving door” between drugs and crime.

A decade and a half of Emanuel observations suggest some answers about how Emanuel is different than the average fanatically driven, would-gladly-slit-your-throat-if-you-get-in-my-way candidate when it comes to climbing the greasy pole of politics. Here are seven Rahm rules:

Moxie

Even most hyper-ambitious people have a natural deference to authority and custom that can be an impediment to career advancement. Emanuel, born with brass ones, is missing that gene. A vivid example came early in Bill Clinton’s first term, when Emanuel gained a powerful foe in first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who came to see the White House political director as emblematic of unruly young aides for whom certitude outpaced judgment. White House chief of staff Mack McLarty approached Emanuel with a not-so-subtle suggestion: The Clintons think you might be more effective if you moved out of the West Wing to a new job at the Democratic National Committee. But, having been shown the door, Emanuel refused to walk through it.

Emanuel said he had earned the right to discuss his future directly with Clinton and would only leave if the president personally told him — knowing that the confrontation-averse Clinton would probably not have the nerve. Instead of being fired, Emanuel was given another post in the West Wing from which he slowly maneuvered his way back to influence.

The same instinct played out a decade later. In just his second term in Congress, Emanuel began to angle to be chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Nancy Pelosi, according to Democrats familiar with the intramural jostling, let it be known she had at least two preferred candidates — it was simply too early for Emanuel, and he had rubbed too many people the wrong way over the years. Once again declining to take the hint, Emanuel kept pushing and maneuvered himself into the job.

Money

All politicians worry about money. But most do so defensively, regarding the whole matter as a high-pressure hassle. Emanuel, by contrast, early in his career realized that mastering the intersection of money and politics was a way to make himself indispensable. During Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, Emanuel was chief fundraiser, becoming friends with a wide network of wealthy and influential people like Hollywood film and record producer David Geffen. That winter, the draft and the Gennifer Flowers controversies threatened to sink Clinton’s campaign. Emanuel’s network kept cash flowing and gave Clinton time to right himself and prove that he was still viable.

Later, in Congress, Emanuel’s fundraising as DCCC chairman guaranteed him influence among nearly three dozen freshman lawmakers elected to Congress in 2006, when Democrats regained the House majority after a 12-year drought. Nor has Emanuel neglected his own finances. His contacts in Chicago and financial networks nationally helped him reap a fortune of about $17 million during a brief tenure as an investment banker after the Clinton White House — a wad that gave him the financial independence to run for Congress in 2002.

Message

Many politicians, even ones who spend their lives in the spotlight, remain intimidated by the media and confused about how to master it. Because he started his career as a Washington operative, rather than, say, a Chicago school board member, Emanuel is comfortably at home with the press corps in Washington and Chicago and has had plenty of experience — especially during his days as a senior adviser to Clinton — using reporters to drive a narrative. He knows and is in contact with dozens of journalists, from beat reporters to columnists. He was a regular source to the late New York Times columnist William Safire, and current Times columnist David Brooks has also revealed that he is in constant contact with Emanuel.

This is another big reason he raced ahead of much more senior colleagues during his six years in the House. He was fluent in a skill — driving a message — that many of them simply lacked. Along the way, this media savvy has helped Emanuel fashion an aura around himself. His ballet dancer’s wiry frame, his vendettas (such as the oft-repeated story about him sending a dead fish in the 1980s to a Democratic pollster with whom he was feuding), his ostentatiously foul mouth. They are all staples of media profiles over the years that created a Rahm mythology that makes him seem a vastly more intriguing and more fearsome figure than the typical political hack, even though most of them also drop the occasional F-bomb.



Mania

Some of the Emanuel reputation as a fanatic may be exaggerated. But some of it, friends say, is real. In a city of exceptionally driven and disciplined people, he is simply more driven and disciplined. He is hitting the pool or the gym at 5 a.m. before hitting the office. Each spare moment between meetings or in the car is a window to make a phone call. Most people after high-pressure White House jobs insist on a down cycle — a sinecure at a think tank, a cushy cable television gig or book project. After both his Clinton and Obama White House tours, Emanuel raced without breaking stride into equally intense projects.

Paul Begala, a longtime friend, recalled that Emanuel described his energy as “unrelentless” (by which Emanuel apparently meant “unrelenting”). After he left the Obama White House and hit the Chicago campaign trail last year, Begala recalled, “it was the happiest I heard him in years.”

Moderation

Emanuel landed in hot water early last year when The Wall Street Journal reported that he told a meeting of liberal activists their strategy of attacking conservative Democrats who didn’t toe the line on health care was “F-ing retarded.”

Many on the left despise Emanuel, and their disdain is not simply a misunderstanding. While a believer in progressive government — he argued for years that welfare reform was not simply good politics but also humane policy — Emanuel has long believed that liberal crusades and liberal naivete often hurt Democrats.

He has drawn the ire of such activists as Michael Moore and Jane Hamsher. Ari Berman of the Nation called him “a major political liability” for the Democrats. When he left the West Wing, a group called the Progressive Campaign Change Committee circulated a petition saying, “I will not support Rahm Emanuel in any future election for Congress, mayor of Chicago, governor, or other office. He sold us out on the [health care] public option and is a weak Democrat who caves instead of fighting conservatives and corporate power.” Yet Emanuel’s commanding victory Tuesday shows that his more flexible ideological profile gives him more staying power than his critics. Emanuel remains ascendant while Howard Dean, with whom he feuded while DCCC chairman, is in eclipse.

Begala, who often is more eager for partisan showdowns than Emanuel, said with admiration, “He swims effortlessly back and forth between principle and pragmatism.”

Malice

Here’s another part of the myth that even friends say may be exaggerated but isn’t exactly fictitious: Emanuel is indeed ruthless to people who he decides are enemies or are just plain stupid.

After the 1992 election, Emanuel sat with his campaign friends for dinner at Doe’s in Little Rock as he ticked off names of people who were in for payback now that the Clintonites were in power. “Dead!” he shouted, as he ticked off names and slammed his knife into the table.

More recently, one close Emanuel associate recalled that he was unpopular as Obama chief of staff with several colleagues who felt, presumably with some justification, that he did not respect them and left them marginalized.

Once, during the Clinton years, he ended an interview with a reporter mid-sentence. “I can’t handle this idiocy,” he said, hanging up.

Mensch

No one would want to over-emphasize this last point. But it would be a mistake to underestimate it in understanding Emanuel’s rise: For every person who has suffered his lash or resents his rise, there are others who consider themselves part of a tight corps of Emanuel loyalists in Washington and Chicago.

Emanuel is waltzing into the mayor’s office — despite the opposition of many liberals and protests of carpetbagging from some rivals — in part because of his deep roots with outgoing Mayor Richard Daley. His successor as chief of staff, William Daley, is another close friend.

In Washington, Bruce Reed, once a top adviser to Clinton and now the chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, is a close friend and the co-author of a book with Emanuel. At the book party, Reed joked that “I taught Rahm about policy, and he taught me how to be an asshole.”

Begala is part of a group of friends — including political commentator James Carville, former Clinton aide and journalist George Stephanopoulos, and pollster Stan Greenberg — with whom Emanuel has had almost daily early-morning calls to trade gossip and political intelligence.

Emanuel recently sent Begala a gift from his native city — one of Chicago’s famous Eli’s cheesecakes. Begala put it in the freezer and pulled it out Tuesday night, eating cheesecake to celebrate as the election returns came in.