The divisive first Obama appointment

President-elect Obama (doesn't that sound strange?), certainly tossed his campaign rhetoric about bringing us together, reaching across the aisle, and entering a post-partisan era, overboard--as he made the first appointment of his administration the sharp-elbowed, abrupt, overbearing, hyper-partisan Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff.

The number three in the U.S. House Democratic leadership, Emanuel is known as a man who gets things done, but establishes a rather super-partisan, far left, confrontational tone for the new administration.

An old Clinton hand, Emanuel is also a well-connected member of the Chicago Democratic Machine and close friend of Obama's. While Obama downplayed the extent to which he had sold out to the Dailey machine to build his Illinois political career, instead playing up his roots as an outsider "community organizer," this appointment shows his true roots.

Emanuel was tight with Bill Clinton, but just the opposite with Hillary. In terms of healing the Democratic Party, for a united front in getting the new administration off the ground, there are a lot of aggrieved Democrats laying around in the bushes, who got in Emanuel's way over the years, and got run over.

It is fortunate Emanuel is a liberal Democrat, or the press would savage him for his success in private business, which rivals Hillary's career in commodities trading. In less than two years as a Wall Street bond trader after he left the Clinton White House, Emanuel wracked up some $16.2 million in commissions.

This rivals what Dick Cheney made in his brief career at Halliburton, and for which he has been continuously strafed by the left and their handmaidens in the mass media.

Emanuel's appointment does signify an aggressive start to the Obama administration, but not exactly what was promised in all the new prexy's soaring rhetorical flourishes.