For a Democratic Party hungry for generational change, Rahm Emanuel might seem like an unlikely leader.
But not in his mind. Emanuel says even at age 66 he offers a different kind of change.
“If you think the party is weak and woke, there’s nothing about Rahm Emanuel that says weak and woke,” he said Thursday at a roundtable with Bloomberg Government reporters and editors. “That would also be a change.”
As is often the case in politics, he added, his strengths and weaknesses — a political career dating to the 1990s that’s intertwined with the last three Democratic presidents — might be one and the same.
“Have I been around with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? Yeah,” Emanuel said. “Did I win elections? Yeah.”
He added, “Does change become generational change? Or strength versus weakness? That hasn’t been answered yet.”
Emanuel unsurprisingly refused to rule in or out a presidential run in 2028. But as he publicly lays the groundwork — including with visits to key battlegrounds such as Michigan, laying out a policy platform, and maintaining a busy media schedule — Emanuel also is openly weighing what he thinks he can offer, and the questions he says he needs to answer.
“I don’t need another title on my Wikipedia page,” Emanuel said, but added that even after his last stint in office, he didn’t think he was finished with public life.
“Do you have the ideas that in my view address the challenges of today and tomorrow?” he said, explaining his thinking on 2028. “And then you evaluate something that you make a personal decision on: Is your head, your heart and your gut in the same place? And that’s a process.”
Emanuel was an adviser in the Clinton White House, a congressman who led the party’s return to power in the 2006 midterm elections, Obama’s White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, and ambassador to Japan under President Joe Biden.
Many Democrats, after seeing Biden’s apparent struggles late in his term, are eager to turn the page to a younger generation, believing the party has stagnated and lost touch with large swaths of America.
Age Limit
A raft of younger, ambitious figures, including governors and senators, are taking steps toward presidential runs, many of them relatively new to the national scene. Meanwhile, Emanuel is calling for a 75-year-old age limit on all federal offices — a restriction that, if enacted, would theoretically require him to resign during a second presidential term if he wins in 2028 and again in 2032.
“What makes you think at 78 you’re going to do what you never did at 75?” he said explaining his calls for older officials to move on.
Emanuel spent much of the meeting Thursday touting his record as Chicago mayor, including recruiting businesses to the city, while bemoaning falling reading and math in public schools, and “a palpable anxiety” about achieving the American Dream.
Coming in three weeks, he said, will be proposals to revamp community colleges and then ideas for four-year institutions, both part of his broader agenda to make that dream more accessible to more people.
“I think tough times call for a tough leader who gets the tough things done,” Emanuel said.
It sounded like a campaign pitch.
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