The Boss. Finally

And now, a recap of the 2011 Chicago mayoral election from @MayorEmanuel:"If you have a giant fucking pile of money and a bunch of dumb fucks running against you, dreams do come true." Okay, fine, that's not the real Rahm Emanuel (it's his Twitter impersonator, a local college professor), but that doesn't make it any less true. In the race for Chicago's top job, Rahm absolutely Rahminated the competition—one opponent called him "a buzz saw," another said campaigning against him was like "running face-first into a gale-force wind." On election night, David Axelrod called him "a heat-seeking missile: He sets his objectives, and then he achieves them." Rahm may indeed be all these things (the world's first heat-seeking, gale-force politician!), but Chicago's problems won't be as easily vanquished as its mayoral candidates. The day after the election, Rahm got a blunt reminder of what he's up against. "Big Problems, Painful Solutions Could Seal Emanuel's Fate as One-Termer," read the morning's headline. Back at campaign HQ, Rahm held up the paper. "Look, I've got a lot of problems to deal with. I know that," he said, referring to a budget deficit of $654 million, blighted neighborhoods, and a dysfunctional school system. "People are pinning their hopes on me. They're betting I have a long-term strategy." Of course, Rahm, a policy wonk, has a plan: He wants to make parents sign a contract to keep kids in class, track police response times in poor neighborhoods, and negotiate concessions from unions. But more important, he has a new image—an Obamaesque persona who preaches compromise and says things like "shared sacrifice" and "grand bargain" instead of dropping the F-bomb indiscriminately and sending dead fish in the mail. "Come on," Rahm says of his fishmongering days, "that was literally half a life ago. And I mean, do I really swear that way? You guys overembellish the colors to make them brighter and stronger."

The truth is, Rahm, who takes office May 16, knows he's never been in a position like this before. "He has never been the number one," says U.S. representative Jan Schakowsky. "He's always served the principal." And now that he's alone at the podium, Rahm knows he needs to mind his p's and q's. "There are five major chief-executive jobs in the United States," he says. "The president, the governor of California, the governor of New York, the mayor of New York, and the mayor of Chicago. I hope I am not insulting anybody else, and if I am insulting a governor somewhere, I apologize." And, well, if that apology isn't good enough, take it up with the fucking mayor.