Slamming Doors in the White House

(The Atlantic) – This has been a week of inside vision into the role of Rahm Emanuel, the charismatic chief of staff, in the Obama White House. Does the president listen to him? Does the president need him? Why did Emanuel take the job? All are questions being asked, most prominently at (and in reaction to) The Washington Post, via Dana Milbank’s column and Jason Horowitz’s longer piece.

Today, we get another rich, long, voyeuristic look into Emanuel’s time at the White House from The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber, and, with it, some take-away facts about the chief of staff’s tenure: Emanuel didn’t get to pick all of his own personnel when he took the job; he favored Larry Summers for Treasury secretary; he wanted to preserve the White House’s alliances with health industry players …