Rahm's Kind of Town

Rahm Emanuel left the white house to run a broke, violence-plagued city, and he's having the time of his life

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Photograph by Mark Seliger for TIME

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But at the same time, he has taken on some very large issues, the kind Presidents give speeches about: education reform, job creation, unsafe streets. Revealing the stripes of a pragmatic, pro-business New Democrat, the mayor lengthened the school day for Chicago's elementary and high school students, reorganized the city's enormous system of community colleges to emphasize job-skills training and established an infrastructure trust to allow private investment in public-works projects. All of these are popular ideas among some Democratic policy mavens, but no other mayor has taken them so far, so fast. In addition to his showdowns with the teachers and the janitors, Emanuel has clashed with constituencies ranging from professors at the community colleges to Cubs fans perched on the rooftops outside Wrigley Field.

"It's not a strategy the old Rahm would have advised a candidate to follow," he acknowledges. So why?

One clue might be found in a book that Emanuel co-wrote with the influential New Democrat Bruce Reed, now Vice President Joe Biden's chief of staff. The authors divided political life into two warring camps--not conservatives and liberals, but hacks and wonks. Emanuel represented the hacks: pols who play hardball to win elections but yawn at policy. On the fifth floor of city hall, however, the mayor has gotten in touch with his inner wonk.

"I am a wonk desperate to get out of a hack's body" is how he puts it during a recent interview in his large, wood-paneled office. Tastefully decorated with pieces borrowed from the Art Institute of Chicago, the space is a reminder that this particular hack was educated at artsy Sarah Lawrence College and won a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet.

The lessons learned from two very different Presidents are also on display. The mayor seems to have picked up some of Obama's cool composure, and he still keeps a close eye on the White House he used to run. He gives the Administration high marks for its reaction to the rat-a-tat of recent crises. "Congress has a job to do with oversight," he says of the hearings on Benghazi, the IRS scandal and possible overreaching by a leak-chasing Justice Department. "But if your oversight becomes overly political, the public gets turned off. Not that this White House needs saving, but that's where the Republicans are saving the White House."

Emanuel also evokes Clinton in the way he rattles off statistics and peppers conversations with arcane details. And, like Clinton, he knows how to schmooze to get what he wants. "He's a more open mayor than I'm used to," Alderman Walter Burnett Jr. tells me. "He'll call up and say, 'Hey, Alderman, this is Rahm.' Rahm?!" After the Daley years, it's hard to imagine a first-name mayor.

At his best, his wonk and hack tendencies blend into a 21st century version of the classic urban boss. (Emanuel did once work for the younger Daley.) One example: determined to steer Chicago's leading universities into partnerships with local high schools, he summoned their presidents to his office one by one. "Each of those college presidents has construction projects they want to complete," he explains. "I just told them if they would help me, I'd have someone walk their plans through the permit process." They all assented, though he didn't have to say what might happen to those permits should they refuse.

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