Chicago congressman Rahm Emanuel, a Clinton White House veteran and confidant of President-elect Barack Obama, looks to be the choice to become the next White House Chief of Staff. Emanuel is a noted political infighter, with a pugnacious personality and a first rate political mind. He is considered to be a pragmatist who can move the political ball, and is not afraid to spill some political blood along the way. The White House will be a more interesting place with Rahm Emanuel as the gatekeeper.
Obama has also designated a transition chief, tapping Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta to run the transfer of power. From the Washington Post:
The “Obama-Biden Transition Project” will be overseen by former White House chief of staff John D. Podesta; Obama friend and senior campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett; and Pete Rouse, Obama’s former Senate chief of staff and top campaign aide, officials said today. It will occupy offices in Washington and in a federal building in Chicago.
The transition co-chairs will work with an advisory board stacked with Clinton veterans and Obama and Joe Biden allies and confidants. On the list: former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner; Obama friend and former Commerce Secretary William Daley, University of California-Berkeley law school dean Christopher Edley; Obama law school friends and advisers Michael Froman and Julius Genachowski; former Gore domestic policy adviser Donald Gips; Governor Janet Napolitano; former transportation secretary Federico Peña; Obama national security adviser Susan Rice and Sonal Shah of Google.org.
Mark Gitenstein and Ted Kaufman, old friends to Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., will serve as co-chairs of his transition team.
Later today, the Obama team will launch http://www.change.gov, a transition news Web site.
The Obama team showed enormous discipline during the campaign, and I would expect the same ruthless efficiency during this transition. With Rahm in charge you can count on it. Governor Dean’s tenure at the DNC may also prove to be short lived with Emanuel in power.
Bill Manzi.com 
Any truth to the rumor that your own Chief of Staff was on the short list???
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Your Honor,
Wasn’t Emanuel involved with Fannie May?
Jules
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Your Honor,
I believe we have found the first Broken Promise. I will call it Obama-1L
He said it was time to do away with the old beltway politics and to supplant the old boys with fresh young minds from outside. Looks like he’s going back to the same old cronies.
One down and he hasn’t even started his presidency. He and Deval should make a nice fit.
Good news your honor. As I write this, a news report shows the honoring of the president elect by naming a mountain on a Caribbean Island in his honor; Mount Obama. It used to be called Foggy Peak.
Appropriately Foggy Peak has changed to that of the new occupant of Foggy Bottom.
The fun begins.
Jules
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