Colorful Congressman
Naftali Bendavid, the Chicago Tribune’s deputy Washington bureau chief, has a new book out that focuses heavily on Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., and his leadership as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the Democrats’ 2006 capture of the House of Representatives. “The Thumpin’: How Rahm
| AP |
Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution” portrays Emanuel as a fierce and colorful personality.
“He’s almost like a fictional character,” Bendavid told a crowd gathered at the Politics and Prose bookstore Friday evening. Emanuel’s intensity, missing fingertip (it was severed when he was a teenager) and excessive use of profanity all contribute to Emanuel’s odd mystique, said Bendavid.
Emanuel’s got such a dirty mouth that Bendavid found it difficult to discuss the Illinois congressmen in a kid-friendly way, forcing himself to use a watered-down version of the “F word” during his talk, because, he said, “this is a family bookstore and a public reading.”
Bendavid also revealed that, before the book was released, Emanuel called him to make sure he hadn’t said anything bad about Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, and others. And, after the book was released, Emanuel called Bendavid again to complain that Bendavid had left out some of his “strokes of genius.”
