Why I Loved Dealing With Rahm Emanuel

Rahm Emanuel's larger-than-life caricature as a hot-headed politician prone to throwing temper tantrums and lobbing F-bombs is "vastly overstated," writes David Brooks. Emanuel is actually quite thick-skinned, and while he is a "professional strategist" for sure, "he is not one of these cold-eyed tacticians who is always hedging his bets," writes Brooks in the New York Times. "He speaks the language of loyalty and commitment, not the language of calculations and self-interest."

Conversations with him were always a "headlong rush," writes Brooks in what he describes an as "appreciation." But it was genuine passion for policy ideas, not the fake passion of a political hack. "I interview a lot of politicians," he sums up. "Rahm is unique. Flawed like all of us, he is a full human being, rich and fertile from the inside out." (More Rahm Emanuel stories.)