Rahm-ination
It really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody to hear that I think Rahm Emanuel is totally hot. He’s got that graying-older-man thing that I love so much going on (looking at you, David Brandon!) and kicks ass at everything he does, which are basically the only two qualifications I look for in a man. He’s a tough-as-nails badass; the completely horrifying story about how he lost half of his right middle finger should be enough to prove that, but then you add in the super-stock of B.A. brothers he came from and it’s pretty much all over.
Over the holidays, when the luxury of time allowed me to lovingly comb every section of the New York Times and spend 15 straight hours parked on the couch in front of New Year’s Day bowl games, I read a piece by political writer Matt Bai that put the first Rahm Emanuel court decision—the one that initially OK’d him to run for mayor of Chicago—in an interesting context, arguing that anyone who goes to work in Washington for the federal government is essentially only on loan from his or her home district and never really leaves it.
“The diamond-shaped District of Columbia was conceived as a district — and not as a city or a state of its own — for a reason,” Bai wrote. “It is supposed be an amalgam of the 50 states, a place where we send talented emissaries, elected or otherwise, who are willing to serve. In theory, all the people who populate the federal government, whether as senators or midlevel bureaucrats, are on loan from other places, often doing the nation’s business at the cost of more lucrative or convenient opportunities back home.”
“Plenty of people don’t like Mr. Emanuel, and plenty more don’t like his politics,” Bai continued later. “But whatever one thinks of the man, it’s indisputable that he has spent most of his adult life doing the people’s work. Had the elections board counted that against him, whether or not he had set foot back in Chicago for months at time, it would have lent credence to the destructive idea that there is Washington and there is the rest of us, and somehow public servants are supposed to choose between the two.”
I got to thinking about this argument yesterday when an Illinois appeals court overturned that first ruling and ordered Emanuel’s name off next month’s mayoral election ballots. The state’s Supreme Court put him back on today and has agreed to review the appeal. And how serendipitous that the news should come on the same day I found a recent Newsweek op/ed on national service, published by Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
“‘Service member’ should not apply only to those in uniform, but to us all,” McChrystal writes.
“All of us bear an obligation to service—an obligation that goes beyond paying taxes, voting, or adhering to the law. America is falling short in endeavors that occur far away from any battlefield: education, science, politics, the environment, and cultivating leadership, among others.”
He goes on to outline his opinions on exactly what defines national service, how long it should last, and what incentives should be provided to those who complete it.
In addition to my eternal praise of his hotness, it probably also shouldn’t be that surprising to learn that, five years ago, an advocate of this type of national service was one Rahm Emanuel. He devoted an entire chapter of his 2006 book The Plan: Big Ideas for Change in America to a concept of national civilian service and the history behind such an initiative, including the Peace Corps (launched at my Ann Arbor alma mater) and AmeriCorps.
The whole chapter is worth a read (thanks, Google Books!), especially because it adds some context to the passage about “basic civil defense training…where they will learn what to do in the event of biochemical, nuclear, or conventional attack; how to assist others in an evacuation; how to respond when a levee breaks or we’re hit by a natural disaster.” Much of the political right went nuts over that one when Emanuel was appointed White House chief of staff in 2008.
Other concepts of national service, McChrystal’s included, are much broader than that, and some proposed national service initiatives have mentioned incentives like tuition reimbursements (ask Donna Debt over here about that one!). But even in looking at the above statement on its own, can anyone really argue that arming one another with the knowledge of what to do in a time of crisis is actually a bad thing?
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Tags: Chicago mayor, Matt Bai, national service, Rahm Emanuel, Stanley McChrystal
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