Untold Story: Actually, Rahm Emanuel might be the perfect Democratic Party ambassador
A look at the former Chicago Mayor’s new Wall Street ties — and what it means to hold politicians accountable.
Originally posted in my new newsletter at Untold Story. Subscribe for The Gonzo Primary and finding a new way forward for political media in the U.S.
There was a brief and well-deserved pile-on of The Atlantic when they hired Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor, as a “journalist” recently. And while I’d love to continue the glib eye-rolling — and I will — I also want to weigh in a couple other bigger picture points that shouldn’t be lost here.
For reporters in Chicago who had spent the entirety of his administration being lied to and watching a cover-up of epic (and, yet unproven, potentially criminal) proportions when it came to the police shooting of teen Laquan McDonald in 2014, it must have come as something of a hydrogen bomb’s worth of irony and hypocrisy that The Atlantic was allowing this particular former politician a platform to rebrand himself as a truth-teller and savior of the Democratic Party.
After this mini-explosion, albeit atop mostly hyped up Twitter-fed rubble that certainly captured the shocked zeitgeist of the moment, most of us mere mortals might get defensive or seek to prove the haters wrong by penning a politically incisive analysis that proved our worth. Or maybe we’d do a full PR-reversal — owning past mistakes but vowing that to make a better country and Democratic Party we must face the institutional problems that bog our society down in entrenched partisan and class warfare and vowing to be part of the solution to plot a way out.
Nah…
Instead, Rahm announced with fanfare he was also accepting a job with a Wall Street investment bank.
Rahm now has two “journalism” jobs — for ABC and The Atlantic. And between promoting his brand he’ll be raking it in for investment bank Centerview Partners LLC.
(Also, imagine if I or any other journalist, even a columnist, did this? ‘I swear I’ll tell you the truth about the state of American political life and the economy while being employed by corporate interests seeking to influence elections.’)
So what’s up with the return to Wall Street via a new Chicago office? From the Wall Street Journal, quoting founding partner Blair Effron:
Mr. Effron said the former mayor will be expected to earn his keep. At least 30 Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in the greater Chicago area, and Mr. Emanuel’s administration lured many of them, including McDonald’s Corp. and Conagra Brands Inc., to relocate downtown. “This isn’t a ceremonial position,” Mr. Effron said.
What would Rahm’s value be to, say, McDonald’s, which has boatloads of highly-paid analysts and outside consultants to assess its business moves and potential mergers and acquisitions? Reading between the lines, he’ll get to dish on broader long-term strategic consequences, gamesmanship (PR strategy) and also, I would think, serve as a strategist for helping these corporations get things done in Chicago and around Illinois generally (Tax breaks? Sweetheart deals? Chicago or Illinois-backed financing options? Free meals at nicer restaurants than McDonald’s?).
Centerview isn’t a “bank” as you and I might think of what a bank does. In a 2008 story, when the firm was just getting going, the New York Times wrote that the small (by Wall Street standards) firm was largely relied on for advice rather than typical banking services.
‘’They’re not like bankers,’’ remarked Indra K. Nooyi, the chief executive of PepsiCo, in a flattering reference. She talks constantly to Mr. Effron, whom she has known for years, seeking his advice on big strategic decisions as well as day-to-day matters. ‘’He’s spent a lot of time with us,’’ she said. ‘’He knows our business.’’
And so now these corporations get to pay Rahm back — he got many of them sweet deals by using a program meant to help the poor in order to help the rich and now they get to funnel money to Centerview, who will complete the quid-pro-quo by funneling dollars to Rahm. He’ll throw a few F bombs in at fancy steak dinner meetings, and he’ll be the most authentic-as-fuck investment banker ever! It’s a sweet gig and a nice fit. The former mayor can dish about grand strategy without having to get too much into the details or sweat the outcome.
Before I dive a bit into Rahm’s tenure, let’s remember his past and start in politics. During his term in Congress, Rahm was the “mastermind” of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Journalist Ryan Grim, in his new book “We’ve Got People,” (now firmly on my list), has dismantled Rahm’s supposed success at the DCCC by crunching the data and figuring out that Rahm’s candidates lost, his strategy failed and the Democrats retook the House in 2006 for reasons other than Rahm’s leadership at the DCCC.
OK, but let’s just look at Chicago and try to be fair to ol’ Rahm here. I wanted to look back at his inaugural speech in 2011 when he was first elected mayor. How did he frame his term? What did he promise? What did he deliver?
His promises, in order:
- Schools. “ In shaping that future, our children, and their schools, must come first. Today, our school system only graduates half of our kids. And with one of the shortest school days and school years in the country, we even shortchange those who earn a diploma.”
Results: Rahm deserves kudos for Chicago’s improved graduation rate — it has gone from 57% in 2011 to 78% in 2018, below the national average but certainly improved. Still, Rahm’s record on education is deeply divisive because he closed a staggering 50 schools — mostly in African American neighborhoods, causing deep, lingering rifts and neighborhood instability. Researchers showed kids who were relocated from those schools did not have improved academic performance.
2. Violence. “Second, we must make our streets safer. Chicago has always had the build of a big city with the heart of a small town. But that heart is being broken as our children continue to be victims of violence. Some in their homes. Some on their porches. Some on their way to and from school.”
Results: This is Rahm’s biggest failure, with cataclysmic effects from which Chicago may never recover. As Los Angeles and New York have seen homicide declines, Chicago streets have stubbornly high homicide rates (although it is not America’s “Murder Capital” as the president has claimed.) That said, the number that Chicago should be most ashamed of is its homicide clearance rate — a shocking lack of justice or basic due diligence from law enforcement and one reason why many are fleeing its South and West side neighborhoods. Chicago police solve fewer than 1 in 20 shootings, according to the Tribune. Police love to say that everything is gang-affiliated — a throw away term that hopes that those who give the political donations view this as a sort of inconvenient, uncomfortable reality and that everyone who lives in a poor community is a criminal, so let’s not worry so much about solving murders. The Department of Justice didn’t have many kind words for CPD after Laquan McDonald was killed, and the mayor’s own task force on police reform said, in one of the more surprising sentences in any government report, “We arrived at this point in part because of racism.”
3. Finances. “Third, we must put the city of Chicago’s financial house in order, because we cannot do any of these things if we squander the resources they require.”
Results: Rahm has displayed some level of competence in this arena by, essentially, not lying 100% of the time and pushing through the biggest property tax hike in decades to try to deal with the city’s longstanding financial mismanagement. So, no, the city’s financial problems are obviously not all his fault.
But the city, eight years later, is in dire financial straits.
The city’s biggest issue is its municipal pensions shortfall, neglected for decades. From a March report from the Civic Federation:
“The City has to date released no detailed plan for how it will afford a projected doubling of its contributions to the pensions over the next five years.”
Not only could Rahm not deal with the city’s festering financial issues head-on, he didn’t bother to leave a plan in place for his successors to learn from his mistakes and understand why his administration failed to grapple with big problems.
4. Job creation. “Finally, we need to make Chicago the best place in America to start a business, create good jobs, and gain the knowledge and skills to fill the jobs of tomorrow. Chicago lost 200,000 residents during the last decade. No great city can thrive by shrinking. The best way to keep people from leaving is to attract the jobs that give them a good reason to stay. The jobs of tomorrow will go to those cities that produce the workforce of tomorrow.”
Results: Rahm created jobs — for those taking tech jobs from out of town. He deserves kudos for the continued development of downtown. But “Mayor 1 Percent” catered heavily to the downtown constituency and exacerbated the divide between downtown and Chicago’s neighborhoods that, even during boom years, never seem to benefit from prosperity downtown.
As political commentator Dick Simpson put it to the Tribune:
“[I]t is the tale of two cities,” said Simpson. “I think it will be remembered as a time when the Loop and the North Side did very well and the West and South sides went through severe crises.”
Meanwhile, Chicago remains one of the only big American cities where people are fleeing instead of flocking. Curtis Black at The Intercept has a wonderfully detailedaccount of Rahm’s mayoral failure.
I am not one of those (yet) who hates all politicians, or disdains all those who enter public life and tries to make a difference. We all have a collective responsibility to call out those who have failed if they are unwilling to do so themselves, especially if they want to continue to shape public discourse.
This is about the fact that if we don’t confront uncomfortable narratives and hypocrisy among both Republicans and Democrats, we’ll never get at root, core problems that actually ail society.
Let me end by pointing out something Rahm and I agree on. In his last Atlantic column, Rahm wrote:
Think of what’s happened over the past decade and a half. America endured a war sold on false premises, a bailout of bankers issuing entirely toxic debt, and a massive public effort to prop up auto executives who were building cars that weren’t selling.* Is it any wonder so many middle-class taxpayers resent the elites? The middle class has been forced to bail them out from their own mistakes time and time again — and yet the beneficiaries of that goodwill haven’t apologized, let alone taken responsibility. America’s middle class is Cinderella, and the nation’s elites are her evil stepsisters — only now it’s the stepsisters who get to marry the prince. It’s infuriating.
The article’s headline says it all: “It’s Time to Hold American Elites Accountable for Their Abuses.”
I couldn’t agree more.
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*Kind of an incredible swipe at his former boss, Obama, whose decision to bail out the automakers may have saved Detroit.
