One of the enduring mysteries about White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is why he took the job in the first place. At the time he accepted it, he was the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, a position he’d attained with considerable effort. Two years earlier, Emanuel had chaired the House Democrats’ campaign arm and led the party to a 31-seat majority after a decade of futility.

In early May, White House Counsel Greg Craig circulated a memo inside the West Wing. Part of a series of memos on protocol, it explained how to deal with writers researching books and articles on the White House.