Unrest in Democratic Party Plays Out In Emanuel Controversy

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has become a reluctant central figure in the battle between liberals and centrists in the Democratic Party.

A spate of recent reports have portrayed Emanuel, known for his aggressive brand of Washington politics, as either the voice of reason in a weak, liberal White House or the wet blanket preventing President Barack Obama from pursuing the kind of change he promised as a candidate.

Emanuel has become the flash point in those arguments as liberals express betrayal over Obama's failure to convince Congress to pass a public option in healthcare reform and close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In recent stories and columns in The Washington Post, Emanuel is described as a political pragmatist, pushing Obama to accept realistic limitations on both issues in order to secure smaller victories over abject failures. Or as the Post's Dana Milbank put it, Emanuel is "the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter."

The president, in turn, is depicted as unsure, beholden to liberal groups' desires before ultimately heeding Emanuel's realistic assessment of the political environment and caving to centrists in a fashion reminiscent of the triangulation of Emanuel's other White House boss -- President Bill Clinton.

The culprits behind those stories are not Emanuel or those who support him, Democratic strategists say, but instead the liberal Netroots crowd disgusted by what they view as appeasement to the center.

Some of those efforts to weaken Emanuel are coming from inside the building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, one Democratic strategist said.

"There are people in the White House who are trying to get rid of Rahm, and they are leaking everything they can," said the strategist, who is close to Emanuel. "Some of it's personal, some of it's professional[ly] judgmental, but there is no doubt there's an effort."

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