White House Aide Makes an Impression on Sitcom : Television: Rahm Emmanuel is Clinton’s political director. Now, a ‘Rahm Emmanuel’ shows up on ‘Hearts Afire,’ a show produced by the President’s friends, the Thomasons.

The last 12 months have been pretty good to Rahm Emmanuel. First, he rounded up $70 million as Bill Clinton’s fund-raising chief, then Clinton named him White House political director, and now he has become a fictional character on a popular sitcom.

Monday night, Emmanuel popped up as the name of a dashing character in a romance novel being written by one of the cast members of “Hearts Afire,” a show produced by Clinton’s friends Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and set in Washington.

The event marked the latest in a series of small Clinton-related nuggets that the two longtime Clinton friends have dropped into their CBS show in recent months. Not long ago, for example, a character in the series made a disparaging comment naming a journalist who had written a seemingly critical remark about Hillary Rodham Clinton.

That incident raised some eyebrows--at least in Washington--about the mixing of politics and prime-time entertainment. Emmanuel’s new fictional career as a lead character in a bodice-ripper has provoked only envious teasing.

The Thomasons, both of whom hail from Arkansas, have a long history with Clinton. During the campaign, the two served as informal advisers to the presidential campaign. Harry Thomason played a key role in arranging major televised events for Clinton.

Linda Bloodworth-Thomason produced a highly effective video biography of Clinton shown during the Democratic convention last July and later used as a closing advertisement for the Democratic campaign.

After the election, the two hosted the vacationing president-elect at their house near Santa Barbara.

Emmanuel, 32, worked frequently with Harry Thomason during the campaign. He then ran the day-to-day operations of the presidential inaugural committee, of which Thomason served as co-chairman. Afterward, Emmanuel suggested, at least partly tongue-in-cheek, that Thomason pay him back for all his work by working him into one of the couple’s shows.

But his actual incarnation as a fictional character came as something of a surprise. “I was talking to my fiancee Monday night on the phone and she said, ‘Did you know you were just on television?’ ” Emmanuel said. “I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ ”

Then, Tuesday morning, White House communications director George Stephanopoulos called. “Did you know you were on TV?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“It just kept going like that,” Emmanuel said, adding that he is not sure how much of a future his romance-novel alter ego may have.

“I called Harry and thanked him and said I appreciated the fact that it was a romantic novel and not a spy story,” he said.