Axelrod on Emanuel, Daley and Life in the White House

Still readjusting to life in Chicago after leaving his post as a senior White House advisor, the man who helped shepherd Barack Obama from Hyde Park to the White House told a lunch time audience Thursday why he never expected Rod Blagojevich to be a good governor, how Rahm Emanuel is a suitable successor to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and what he most will remember from his time in the West Wing.

David Axelrod said at the City Club of Chicago that Emanuel and Daley, while different in many respects, share the same drive. Daley is shy, he said, and Emanuel is most definitely not. And the landscape of the city Daley inherited in 1989 is much different than Emanuel’s today.

Daley “eats and lives and breathes Chicago and he came to the office that way,” Axelrod told Chicago News Cooperative columnist James Warren during a wide ranging interview before the luncheon crowd. “He grew up with this stuff and he understood this city at a very, very kind of granular level.”

Axelrod called his political relationship with Daley one he would be proud of the rest of his life.

As Chicago’s new mayor, Emanuel will have three problems that can’t and won’t wait for solutions: fiscal challenges, the future of public education and pockets of violence that continue to claim the city’s youth. Emanuel’s innate understanding of government and politics will serve the city well, Axelrod said.

Daley had challenges, too, when he took office in 1989. He needed to unify a racially divided, decaying city. Success on those fronts is a testament to Daley’s “genius” for cities, and his innate understanding of Chicago, Axelrod said.

In a room full of many of his former colleagues from politics and journalism, Axelrod also talked about his role in helping Blagojevich get elected to Congress and why he decided not to help him run for governor.

“I did not see in him the qualities for executive leadership and I was surprised when he came to me and said that he wanted to run for governor and couldn’t really articulate for me why,” Axelrod aid. “You ought to know what you want to do, you ought to know why you’re doing it and it can’t just be that it’s cool to be governor.”

Axelrod, who returned home in February to help organize Obama’s reelection campaign, also spoke about current issues on a national scale: the threat of a federal government shutdown, controversy over Obama’s decision not to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, and the administration’s handling of Libya.

Now removed from the daily grind of the White House, and back in Chicago where he’s focused on shaping the Obama campaign themes for 2012, Axelrod said one of the most difficult aspects of the presidency is discerning between what is and is not real in a world where every rising issue is quick to be labeled as the defining moment of the administration.