Well, that was quick, wasn't it?
I mean Rahm Emanuel's departure from the White House to campaign for his dream gig, being mayor of Chicago.
Also the fact that some election experts say that the fact that he hasn't lived in the city in the past year will be a major impediment for him - as in making him ineligible for the office.
On Monday the Chicago Sun-Times quoted a Chicago attorney named Jim Nelly to talk about election law.
llinois municipal code requires that to run for mayor of a town in Illinois, "You must be a registered voter, and you must have resided there for one year prior to the election," Nally said.
The only exception to that is for "active members of the military" who return to to Illinois "immediately" upon the end of their service.
So while plenty of political people go to work in Washington, D.C., or business people go spend weeks in New York or other places, they have to come home pretty regularly to qualify under that standard, the experts say.
"When he was a congressman, his wife and family lived here, and he would fly home on the weekends," Nally said. "He had a place to sit on the sofa, to keep a toothbrush."
But when Emanuel agreed to become chief of staff, the family moved out to D.C. and the home was rented out to another family that now refuses to break the lease and clear the way for Emanuel to move back in. Emanuel could come back to Chicago to vote, but he could not stop at the house he owns on his way to the polling place, and that does not meet the residency test to run for mayor, Nally said.
In any event, it's now Chicago's problem, not the country's.
There has been no one more controversial amongst members of the Cabinet or Obama's top group of advisers than the at times profane now former Chief of Staff.
Progressives hated his selection from the day he was announced by Obama to be the President's main administrative assistant. Some of the criticism on Emanuel now comes from liberal bloggers like Matthew Yglesias, who wrote over the weekend:
We tend to treat state and local politics as just a JV version of national politics. So if you like a centrist Democrat as a congressional leader or a Chief of Staff, you’ll love him as Mayor of Chicago! The reality, however, is that there’s very little overlap between the issues the federal government deals with and the issues city governments deal with. And even though each individual locality is relatively unimportant, in the aggregate state and local government has a huge impact on American life. These issues deserve to be taken seriously on their own terms and not just as proxies for national political priorities.
Rahmbo has certainly captured the imagination of the nation though, hasn't he? His celebrity status was certified when his resignation was the focus of the first skit on Saturday Night Live.
Rahm is being replaced by Pete Rouse, who formerly worked as a chief of staff for former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, and has worked for the President since he was elected to the U.S. back in 2004.
