For Emanuel, One Title but Lots of Jobs

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For a Member who is best known for his intensity and for, as one colleague put it, running around “with his hair on fire,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) isn’t above using corny humor to get his point across.

Like during an appearance last week at the Brookings Institution when Emanuel opened a speech with a pun: “My mother always warned me that one day I may end up in an institution. I don’t think this is exactly what she had in mind.”

Or at a recent Caucus meeting, when Emanuel briefly morphed into a late-night television host: “I don’t know if anyone saw this, but President Bush is now comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln didn’t have a plan for Iraq, either.”

“Quips are a part of his style,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who acknowledged that the humor can “ease the tension” that Emanuel’s sometimes-abrasive personality can cause. “That’s part of the way he disarms people. ... It makes him more approachable.”

In his transition from the campaign trail into his newest role running the Democratic Caucus in the 110th Congress, Emanuel is described by Democratic colleagues and aides as no less intense — all jokes aside — than he was during his two-year turn at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and no less confined to a single role in the leadership structure.

“He’s still going at 85,000 feet with his hair on fire,” Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) said of Emanuel. She later added: “What Rahm brings is this 21st-century, technology-age, go-go attitude.”

The Illinois lawmaker, now in his third term, snagged his current title under an agreement brokered after November’s elections by now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The arrangement grants him broader responsibilities as Caucus chairman than his predecessors in the post held, and avoided a potentially brutal intraparty fight as Emanuel deferred a run for Majority Whip, the post now held by Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.).

Emanuel characterizes the Caucus job as “a different level of politics” than that of the DCCC chairmanship, where he won significant credit for the Democrats’ November victories that gave them control of the House for the first time in 12 years.

“It’s totally different,” Emanuel said in a brief Friday interview, adding, “Caucus chairman is about governing with an eye towards politics nonetheless.”

While Emanuel’s post still encompasses its traditional role of bringing lawmakers together — “It doesn’t fall only to me, but the Caucus is the one body ... where everybody can at least have a say in how the party approaches issues and manages issues,” he said — he has tacked on duties including policy, strategy, communications and even rapid response to Republican attacks.

Focus on Freshmen

Numerous Democratic lawmakers, some of whom requested anonymity, said those responsibilities and Emanuel’s reach in the leadership structure are best exemplified in his focus on the party’s 40-some freshmen, many of whom Emanuel recruited and helped to elect.

“There aren’t many days on the House floor when Rahm doesn’t stop and ask me how everything is going in the district,” acknowledged Rep. Christopher Murphy (D-Conn.), a freshman lawmaker who defeated incumbent Rep. Nancy Johnson (R).

“He seems to have almost daily contact with the freshman Members about how our district operations are going,” Murphy added, “and it’s not necessarily in a political context, it’s more from the point of building our constituent services operation.”