Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol had some thoughts on former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel‘s bid for mayor of Chicago, particularly the media’s coverage of the subject:
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, Time magazine’s Mark Halperin called the Kristol’s analysis “misguided,” “insane,” and “absurd.” Halperin reiterated that Emanuel has “wanted to be mayor of Chicago for a long time.”
The sanity of Halperin’s analysis probably depends on how one defines “a long time.” Taking up Bill Kristol’s challenge, as the folks at NewsBusters also did, I found that the first reported instance of Emanuel expressing an interest in running for mayor came on April 19, 2010, in an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS.
In fact, for someone who allegedly has wanted this job for a long time, Emanuel was denying rumors as late as January 2010 that he would run for mayor. He told MSNBC on January 11, “the reason I left Congress to join the president is because I think this is a historic time with great challenges and I was pleased to get offered to do this job.”
