Standing in the lobby of the St. Regis hotel, about to head into a Monitor event with reporters this week, I warned Rahm Emanuel that the C-SPAN lapel mics we were both now wearing could be “hot” – that is, switched on.
I was thinking, in particular, about the prominent Democrat’s penchant for salty language. He knew exactly what I was alluding to.
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Emanuel said. “I never swear on camera.”
Why We Wrote This
Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff and former member of Congress (among other high-profile roles), appears to be gearing up for a presidential run. At a Monitor event, he shared his strategies for rebuilding the Democratic Party’s image.
Indeed, the man with many titles – former White House chief of staff, former member of Congress, former mayor of Chicago, former U.S. ambassador to Japan – has tons of media experience. And these days, he’s hard to miss. With a regular gig on CNN, a column in The Wall Street Journal, and frequent appearances around the country, be it a fish fry in Iowa or a classroom in Mississippi or a forum at a Democratic think tank, he’s in the news nearly nonstop.
It’s no secret that Mr. Emanuel is thinking about running for president in 2028, and he’s honing his message. Education tops the list of issues he’s highlighting, and so, I asked him: What about his old friend James Carville’s mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid”? Or maybe today, “It’s the affordability …”
“… stupid,” Mr. Emanuel jumped in. “Don’t forget that word.”
The economy and education, he makes clear, are inextricably linked: A nation that isn’t educating its children cannot compete globally.
“Nothing China does today scares me. Everything we are not doing at home scares me,” Mr. Emanuel says, referencing data that shows some 50% of American children today can’t read or do math at grade level.
He highlights Mississippi, with fourth-grade reading scores moving up from No. 49 in the nation in 2013 to No. 9 in 2024. The state got there, he says, through the teaching of phonics – the old-fashioned method of sounding out words.
Democrats have lost their edge on education as an issue, Mr. Emanuel lamented. “We’re known more for opening bathroom doors and closing school doors than anything else,” he said, as reported in the Monitor’s coverage.
At our afternoon gathering on Wednesday – a part of the Monitor Breakfast newsmakers series – Mr. Emanuel displayed his trademark intensity, no matter the topic. He was full of vinegar on his proposal of mandatory retirement at age 75 for the president and the rest of the executive branch, as well as Congress and the judiciary.
“When you hit 75, we’ll make sure you get Global Entry. Get out of here. … You hit 75, up and out,” he said, a quote shared on X by Edward-Isaac Dovere of CNN.
This wasn’t just a slap at President Donald Trump, it was also an implicit back of the hand for his ex-boss, Joe Biden, and the former president’s ultimately thwarted decision to run for reelection well beyond age 75.
But if any topic got Mr. Emanuel as riled up as education and mandatory retirement, it’s antisemitism. Some critics have charged that Democrats have been too soft on reports of antisemitism at universities and too harsh in critiques of Israel that verge into antisemitic territory. As one of several Jewish Democrats showing signs of presidential ambition, he bristled at the idea that his party has an antisemitism problem. “I think the country has a challenge,” he said.
Still, Mr. Emanuel sounded a hopeful note. In 2023, while living in Japan, his vacation home in Michigan was spray-painted with neo-Nazi insignia.
“Some neighbor came the next day, cleaned it all up,” he said. “I don’t know who he or she is. I’ve seen both the ugly side and the good side of America.”