On a brutally cold morning in mid-December, Rahm Emanuel, hatless and wearing a glove on only his left hand, stood for an hour in front of the turnstiles at the Paulina el station, which sits in his old Congressional district on Chicago’s North Side. As the trains slammed and screeched overhead, he offered his hand to the mostly young and professional commuters heading downtown. Emanuel’s manner seemed more studied than spontaneous. He employed standard lines — “nice hat,” “good book” — and relied on the logos on riders’ head wear and jackets for conversation starters. He addressed both sexes as “man,” and when a woman asked about his plans for the Chicago Transit Authority, he was characteristically a trifle abrupt — “Here’s the deal,” he said to start — and egocentric.

By Scott Turow, New York Times Magazine