Adviser Pete Rouse to replace Emanuel as Obama’s chief of staff

President Obama is set to announce from the East Room on Friday
that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is leaving to run for mayor of
Chicago.



Senior adviser Pete Rouse, a longtime Capitol Hill staffer for former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and then-Sen. Obama (D-Ill.), has been named as acting chief of staff.

{mosads}The unusual White House pageantry for an exit announcement reflects the significance of Emanuel’s departure, which is expected to take place immediately. Obama is losing his chief strategist for dealing with Congress, where Emanuel served closely with House Democratic leaders for nearly a decade.

Obama begins and ends his day in meetings with Emanuel, whom White House press secretary Robert Gibbs credited with leading the fight for healthcare reform, Wall Street reform and just about every other initiative that has come out of the White House since Obama took office.

“His leadership, his energy has helped us accomplish” a number of items on Obama’s agenda, Gibbs said at his daily briefing on Thursday. He called Emanuel an “energetic, inspirational leader of us taking the president’s promises and agenda and enacting them into law.”

Praise also came from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who owes her historic position to the Democratic majority Emanuel engineered. She said the former congressman enjoys great “affection” from his colleagues on Capitol Hill and offered her endorsement for his mayoral bid.

Gibbs refused to confirm reports that Emanuel is leaving during his daily briefing, but praised both Emanuel and Rouse, whom Gibbs said has the president’s complete trust.

After Daschle lost his seat in 2004, Rouse moved over to be chief of staff to Obama, then a freshman senator. It was Rouse who wrote the blueprint for Obama’s time in the Senate, and it was Rouse who served as co-chairman of Obama’s transition before John Podesta took over.

“Pete has been with senator-elect, senator, president-elect and now President Obama,” Gibbs said. “There is a complete loyalty and trust with somebody like Pete. Pete’s strategic sense has played a big part in the direction of virtually every big decision that’s made inside of this White House.”

Pelosi said Rouse would be able to work with Democrats in Congress if he gets the job on a permanent basis.

“Pete Rouse certainly has the respect of those in Congress who know his service to our country well, and if that’s the president’s choice, then we salute him and offer cooperation with him.”

White House officials asked about Emanuel on Thursday said their soon-to-be-former colleague is misunderstood, that there is much more to him than the dead fish he once sent to a pollster and the F-bombs he drops frequently.

When asked for funny anecdote about the man known for his intensity and foul mouth, deputy chief of staff Mona Sutphen joked in an e-mail: “Nothing that’s fit to print!”

White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton, who worked with Emanuel at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), said his boss is a caring employer with an intense work ethic.

{mosads}“Because of a little salty language and a highly frenetic style, Rahm has been somewhat inaccurately caricatured,” Burton said. “Rahm is a guy who does work hard, but also takes a keen interest in the lives of the people around him and cares deeply about the families of his employees.”

Emanuel’s tough talk comes from a place of affection, said another White House official: “When Rahm says ‘I’m going to f—king kill you,’ it’s funny.”

Sarah Feinberg, who worked for Emanuel for years before leaving the White House to take a job with Bloomberg News, said Emanuel works his people hard, but never more than he works himself.

“No one works harder than Rahm,” Feinberg said. “He may ask for a lot from his staff — in hours, in ideas and in effort — but he is often the hardest-working guy in the room. He doesn’t ask more from his colleagues than what he is doing himself. And that inspires a lot of loyalty. He doesn’t issue commands; he works alongside his team hour after hour after hour.”

But there are moments when his aides worry that the famous temper will come with real consequences.

One aide who worked for Emanuel at the DCCC in 2006 said that when Democrats lost the special election for convicted Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s (R-Calif.) seat that year, Emanuel’s staff feared the worst.

“That was the one time I thought he might actually fire us all, or kill us with his bare hands,” the former aide said. “But the truth is that within an hour, he was over it, and on to figuring out what we had learned that would help us in November.”

His former colleagues in the House have sometimes grumbled over the last two years about Emanuel’s work at the White House, but Pelosi on Thursday insisted they, too, have affection for him.

“Of course he enjoys a great reputation — I might even use the word affection — among his colleagues in the House of Representatives,” Pelosi said. “He can do anything he sets his mind to. We all wish him much success.”

 And while Gibbs on Thursday said he doesn’t know if Obama will endorse Emanuel, Pelosi smiled and said yes when asked if she would support him for mayor.

Russell Berman contributed to this report.