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In Washington, where big personalities create even bigger legends, Democrat Rahm Emanuel has achieved mythic status.

He throws cells phones. He once sent a dead fish to a pollster who displeased him. At a dinner to celebrate Bill Clinton�s 1992 election, Emanuel repeatedly stabbed the table with a steak knife, shouting the names of his political enemies. Journalists have trouble quoting him, because his routine utterances are replete with profanity. . .

Emanuel�s political intensity has a darker side. His numerous contacts with disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich�s office to push various candidates for Obama�s open Senate seat put him inside the lines of an unseemly political scandal.

The Obama transition team last week cleared itself of wrongdoing in the matter, but it�s unlikely that its report is the last word on the federal government�s wide-ranging public corruption investigation.

�Part of his portfolio is dealmaking, being sure people are doing what they�re supposed to be doing,� �鶹�� political scientist Cal Jillson said of Emanuel. �The assumption is that Obama�s team will stay clean in this, but if there�s a stumble, it will be in Rahm�s shop.�

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