Rahm Emanuel faces daunting second-term challenges

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel will raise his right hand to take the oath of office for a second term Monday morning at the historic Chicago Theatre, but after the ceremony is over and he walks off the stage, a stack of daunting challenges will be waiting.

His city's finances are in free fall. His Chicago Public Schools CEO is under federal investigation. His best hope for fixing the government worker pension system lies inside a State Capitol consumed with its own problems. And his top political nemesis, the Chicago Teachers Union, is waiting at the other end of a negotiating table for a new contract or another strike.

If Emanuel is feeling the weight of it all, he's not the type of politician who'd let on.

"I'm not 'The Scream' in Edvard Munch's painting," Emanuel joked, referring to the well-known, dizzying 19th Century painting that features a ghoulish figure with a mouth-wide-open, stressed-out expression. "I'm not that."

Rahm's second term will be "historic".