Monday was a big day in my household–Congressman Rahm Emanuel called to say farewell.
He’s leaving Congress to go to work as Barack Obama’s chief of staff, and he wanted me to know it had been a privilege–I believe the word he used was “honor”–to serve as my representative in Washington.
All right, so maybe he wasn’t only calling me, and maybe it wasn’t Rahm himself on the line–it might have been one of those robocalls that went to every phone in his district.
Still, it was an improvement over how my previous congressmen left the scene. Let’s see: Dan Rostenkowski got hauled off to jail. Michael Flanagan served a forgettable term and then just sort of vanished. And Rod Blagojevich–well, we all know what happened to him.
So it was nice to hear Rahm to move on the way he did. His voice was so cordial and polite, almost cracking with sincerity. Nothing like his F-bomb dropping reputation. It makes me wonder: maybe all that tough-talking stuff is just a media fabrication.
I guess we’ll have to wait until the Blagojevich tapes to go public.