WurfWhile

Today Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel gave a speech at the Brookings Institute. Two things stand out in it for me. The first is the shear volume of Bush Administration disasters and misdeeds. Obviously part of the Bush Administration/Karl Rove strategy is to attack everywhere to overwhelm their opponents, who lack the broad resources to respond on all fronts - or even to know where to start. Nonetheless, every time you read a decent overview of how the Bush Administration is destroying America, it can’t fail to impress (you end up remembering things that had left the forefront of your mind due to the human brain’s limited capacity for storage - and President Bush’s nearly unlimited ability to produce harm). Congressman Rahm Emanuel provides a good list. The second is Emanuel’s thesis that partisanship, not effectiveness, is the overriding concern of the Bush Administration and has caused this disaster. It is not an original argument - but it’s nice to hear discussion of good government practices and alternatives from someone coming from the conservative wing of the Democratic leadership like Emanuel. Heck, how often do you think Emanuel has cited Jim Hightower in a speech?

I am not naive enough to believe this signals a major shift in Rahm Emanuel’s policy positions or thought - much less his emergence as a leader in the progressive movement. But if Rahm reads the political winds shifting to the left and is setting sail to catch them, for now I’ll take it.