The New Yorker Methodically Slams Rahm's Whole Career

By Mae Rice in News on Dec 31, 2015 5:01PM

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Chicago writer Rick Perlstein has dissected Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s slow political rise and sudden plummet in The New Yorker. It’s a rigorous history, especially interesting for young people—like myself—who only know Rahm as the walnut-resembling mayor of Chicago.

Perlstein traces the roots of Rahm’s current scandal-plagued term back to his early days of fundraising for Bill Clinton, where he allegedly shouted choice words at donors such as: “Five thousand dollars is an insult! You’re a twenty-five-thousand-dollar person!”

Other key moments Perlstein dredges up: the harsh immigration policies Rahm pushed for in Washington; his efforts to scale back Obamacare to ensure it would win and “put points on the board”; the hidden fees built into the Ventra system, a pet project of Rahm’s; the Chicago public school system's behind-the-scenes kickback scheme.

It’s worth a read, though I have to say: I make fun of Rahm on the daily—to the point where I got one piece of polite hate mail about it!—but even to me, this feels like a chillingly unsympathetic reading. Perlstein closes with a dig at the political press, but this piece feels like the height of political press: spin a politician’s past as hard as you can, until it sounds like a linear narrative of why he’s currently unpopular. Nothing in the world is as straightforward as Perlstein makes Rahm’s fall appear.