If You Only Read One Thing Today...

Make It This Article
from June 15, 1997 by Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times magazine, about Rahm Emanuel.

Written before Bill Clinton's scandal broke...

Intellectually, Shoshana developed normally - like her brothers, she graduated from New Trier, one of the most competitive high schools in the country - but she needed four operations and years of physical therapy to give her 85 percent use of her left side. She had a difficult adolescence, and today Marsha Emanuel, at the age of 63, is raising Shoshana's two illegitimate children. (None of the Emanuels will talk about Shoshana in detail, and she declined to be interviewed for this article.) 

The conversation the brothers continue to have about Shoshana is also, of course, a conversation about themselves. Were Zeke, Rahm and Ari simply successful products of Jewish middle-class parents who valued education and hammered them with expectations? How much of their drive came from their immigrant father? Certainly each Emanuel brother derives a large part of his identity that of the others.

No one else, it seemed, mattered as much. ''The pressure is that you were judged by the family,'' Ari says.

''Our family never cared about the kid down the block.'' 

The Emanuel brothers got together not long ago in Washington for the bris of Rahm's first child, Zacharia. ''He's fabulous,'' Rahm says. 

''He looks cute,'' Zeke agrees. ''We don't think Rahm's the father, though.'' 

So goes a pre-bris interview with the three over tea at the Four Seasons Hotel that regresses into giggles, insults and much nervous jiggling of legs. At one point, all three brothers, apparently unkowningly, are jiggling in unison; at another point, Zeke and Rahm leap up to give each other a high five. ''Our wives say we go right back to when we were 16, 14 and 13,'' offers Rahm, feeling this needs to be pointed out. ''Every spouse not only marries her partner, she gets the other two shmegegges with us.'' 

The brothers are close friends - they talk almost daily - but when together they fall into the roles assigned within the family: Zeke the brain, Rahm the politician, Ari the jock. 

''Ari can carry on a conversation!'' Rahm says at one point, noticing that his younger brother is talking with me about Los Angeles. ''What an accomplishment! A complete sentence!'' 

Ari retaliates when the conversation turns to money. ''I.Q. brings down - I'm not going to go into it,'' Ari says impishly. 

''Income?'' shouts Zeke. ''Is that what you were going to say? I.Q. and income are correlated?'' 

''They should be!'' counters Ari, who says he made between $1 million and $2 million last year. 

''Inversely, that's the thing,'' says Zeke. 

''This is all off the record,'' says Rahm. 

The conversation moves to how wonderful their wives are. Ari is married to Sarah Addington and Rahm to Amy Rule, both now stay-at-home mothers of young children. Zeke is married to Dr. Linda Emanuel, the vice president of ethical standards for the American Medical Association. They have three children and live in Chicago; Zeke commutes to both Washington and Boston. 

''I'm going to tell you something, O.K.?'' Ari says. ''So I walk in yesterday -.'' 

''My wife-,'' Zeke interrupts.

''Shut up!'' says Ari. 

Growing up, Zeke and Ari were at each other's throats, with Rahm acting as mediator. ''Rahmie was the calmest,'' says his mother, aware of how strange this sounds given his reputation as a barracuda. 

''I was the classic middle child,'' Rahm says, talking in his White House office one morning. It is a peaceful Tuesday, with not a crisis in sight, although you would never know it from Rahm's body language. He is lean, handsome, wired. 

Earlier, the President had wandered through the door connecting the Oval Office to Rahm's little digs. 

''Where is he?'' the President asked. Rahm was in an adjoining office talking to his secretary, but at Clinton's words he sprang up and disappeared into the President's dining room like a rabbit. 

He returned to sit on the edge of his seat, his face inches from the television, mouthing the words along with Clinton as the President announced, before live cameras in the Oval Office, a ban on the use of Federal money for cloning humans. 

''This is discovery that carried burden as well as benefits,'' Clinton and Rahm said in unison. 

Rahm, the senior adviser to the President for policy and strategy, recently broadened his scope to serve as Clinton's political strategist in the budget talks. ''It's the biggest role he's had in his new job,'' says Erskine Bowles, the White House chief of staff. 

Rahm's portfolio does not include defense of Whitewater or the 1996 fund-raising scandals, although he is part of the White House team that says it is pushing for campaign finance reform. He has not been questioned about his role as Clinton's fund-raiser in 1992 - a different era, when Clinton did not have a Lincoln Bedroom to offer - but is evasive when asked how he defends the Clinton campaign fund-raising practices in 1996. ''The 1996 election was not about fund-raising,'' Rahm begins, portentously. ''The 1996 election was about two different visions for this country. ...'' 

I ask again about fund-raising. 

''Fund-raising for the last hundred years - go back and read the Lincoln books - is an unseemly business,'' he says. Does he think the 1996 Clinton campaign went too far? 

''I'm not going to pass judgement on the 1996 fund-raising!'' he finally says, yelling. ''O.K.? It's a broken system. There's no prettiness in 1996.''

Twenty years later, he hasn't aged well.