Emanuel: 'We Have a Once-in-a-Generation President'

President Obama’s former chief of staff lauded his old boss as a “once-in-a-generation president” who could shape America’s next four decades.

“On that first day I said Mr. President, which crisis do you want to tackle?” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Democratic National Convention tonight. He said Obama responded, “Rahm, we were sent here to tackle all of them, not choose between them.”

Rattling off the global financial meltdown, auto crisis, two wars, and great recession, Emanuel said, “Each crisis was so deep and so dangerous any one of them would have defined another presidency. Fortunately for us, we have a once-in-a-generation president.”

Emanuel said Obama’s “north star” is the 10 letters from “ordinary Americans” the president reads each night.

“It is their voices that President Obama brings to the Oval Office,” he said.

Emanuel predicted that in “the next four years an unforeseen crisis, challenge or conflict is going to show up and seize this country.”

“When the fog of uncertainty of a crisis storms the White House,” he said, the president’s leadership will shape “not just the next four years but the next 40 years of this nation.”