Hutch had his Starsky. Murtagh had his Riggs. Bush had his Cheney. Obama needs a bad cop.

His choice of Rahm Emanuel for Chief of Staff has been a somewhat controversial first step for the incoming administration. Republicans have pounced on Emanuel's reputation as a fierce partisan, decrying the hollowness of Obama's appeal to new politics and bipartisanship. Some progressives, for their part, decry Emanuel's ties to Blue Dogs and recruitment of centrists candidates in conservative districts, a decision which has simultaneously expanded the Democratic caucus and shifted it rightward.

Neither criticism really says what it means to say. Emanuel is, indeed, a fierce partisan, but he also spent years in a chastened Clinton White House working with a newly-ascendant Republican Congress, confident and combative, to move legislation forward. Emanuel has groomed middle-of-the-road Democrats and provided them with the inroads to influence that will ease their re-election, but his own politics are further to the left than most of them. He's no Blue Dog.

What both criticisms really reveal is Emanuel's pragmatic political realism and his determination to win.

Politics ain't beanbag. All those hard-nosed Democrats who feared a teddy bear administration would try to cuddle its partisan enemies and find itself brutally de-fluffed have less reason to worry. Bipartisanship really isn't about airy rhetoric and putting aside the politics of yesterday. The rhetoric has its place in appealing to the masses -- in tandem with Obama's huge grassroots organization, still in place -- to apply pressure from the bottom. But the real work of bipartisanship occurs around conference tables in meeting rooms with stale donuts and cold coffee in paper cups. The real work of bipartisanship is a sometimes ugly game of horse-trading and political pressure and trickery. The real work of bipartisanship needs a guy who knows the corridors of power, knows everybody's secrets. Bipartisanship demands a bad cop, not a good cop.

Sausages and legislation, indeed.

So this appointment doesn't necessarily entail a shift to the center. Then again, maybe it does. That remains to be seen. What it certainly shows is a determination to pass legislation as quickly and competently as possible. Previous Democratic administrations spent the first half of their first term flailing, and Obama's team will inevitably make its share of missteps, too. But if they want to minimize mistakes and and maximize legislative effectiveness, Rahm Emanuel is their guy. Whatever his own colorful personality, he still fits into the larger narrative of a no drama Obama.

Speaking of missteps: Some have suggested that announcing Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff before anybody else and within 48 hours of winning the Presidency was a mistake. Whatever Emanuel's merits his controversial selection is a wobbly first step that might bind Obama's hands from tapping equally-controversial Larry Summers for Treasury. As Noam Scheiber puts it:

It's not just that, if Obama picked Summers, he'd suddenly have two people in very senior positions who don't quite fit his "no drama" mantra. It's that he'd have two people who don't quite fit the "no drama" mold as two of his first appointments. Worse, he'd have two people whose mere announcements (to say nothing of they're actual tenures) stirred up more than a little drama--Rahm because of his public anguishing and Summers because of the lefty mau-mauing he's already inspiring. . . . [Y]ou only want so many bad, appointment-related, news cycles out of the gate.

I think that's wrong. If any President gets a honeymoon in his first hundred days -- and for Obama it might be his first two hundred -- the intensity of press adulation in the first 48 hours is even more staggering. Obama has a huge free pass from the press right now which makes it exactly the time to make controversial choices. Scheiber is right that there's a critical mass of divisive appointments beyond which a negative narrative will stick. But I think it would take more than Emanuel and Summers.

The reaction on the left to Obama's choice of Emanuel -- and mere consideration of Summers -- reminds me of the concern trolling in the week or two in June after Obama sealed the nomination. Many in the progressive blogosphere thought their nominee was betraying the cause of liberalism by abandoning campaign finance reform and not taking a strong stand against FISA. Some were convinced it would bring about Obama's downfall at the polls in November.

Right.

So don't listen to anybody who tries to tell you that the very act of selecting Rahm Emanuel -- or, should he so decide, Larry Summers -- is going to hobble Obama's administration. Hell, Obama doesn't even have an administration yet. Seriously, guys: chill.


Thanks for reading. If you found this post valuable I'd hugely appreciate it if you'd click 'recommend'! I'd also love to hear your thoughts in the comments below -- see you there.