Is Rahm Emanuel on the way out?

The thing is, I simply don’t know if this ought to be another humble submission to my esteemed colleague John Rentoul’s outstanding series, regarding Questions in Headlines to Which the Answer is No.

You see, Alex Spillius has a rather intriguing scoop in the Telegraph this morning, alerting the world to the possibility that the American President’s Chief of Staff may leave the White House before two years of Obama’s first term are up.

He seems cheesed off at not getting his way.

It’s hard to overstate the extent to which Republicans, already feeling that they’ve got the wind in their sails ahead of the mid-term elections, will jump on this as a sign of administrative failure in the White House. That would be a great shame, not least because it is partly true.

Emanuel is a man whose reputation enters a room long before he does; and he was appointed to that post specifically because he was a fixer with a record of getting things done. His departure would be interpreted by a large portion of the American populace, and many of the right wing cable channels and radio stations, as a sign that things are at breaking point in the Oval Office, and not enough is getting done.

He would be a very big scalp for the Republicans. Expect to read plenty more in the next few months about what Emanuel got up to when he lived and worked in Chicago.

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