"Senator Lindsey Graham - of all people - praises the choice of Rahm Emanuel for Chief of Staff. Conservative Pete Wehner does not. Liberal Ezra Klein has mixed feelings. Another liberal, David Corn, says the choice could send the wrong signal. Yuval Levin at National Review calls the choice "extremely disconcerting."

Personally, I respect Rahm's political skills even if his style might be off putting to some. And make no mistake about it: he is a vicious partisan, though not necessarily an ideologue. But the position he's accepted isn't about style or even necessarily about partisanship. It requires being effective, efficient, and keeping the trains running on time inside the administration.

How Rahm goes about doing that is his business - and his boss's. If he goes around blowing up at the staff, berating/browbeating/threatening members of Congress, etc., one would think it will show up in the results. And in the end, results are what matter. Whatever else you want to say about Emanuel, he's proven that he gets results, and for that reason he's probably a very good choice by Obama."- Tom Bevan, Real Clear Politics conservative

I think Emanuel is a good choice. To borrow a phrase from the Bush Administration, he serves at the pleasure of the president so his partisan nature really shouldn't matter. If he doesn't act the way Obama wants him to, he'll be out of a job and he didn't give up a senior position in the House and inside track to the Speaker position to get displaced in a year or so. The guy gets results and he probably knows that he needs to serve Obama's interests, not his own.