Even at this late date in the Obama presidency, there is no surer way to elicit paranoid whispers or armchair psychoanalysis from Democrats than to mention the name Valerie Jarrett. Party operatives, administration officialsthey are shocked by her sheer longevity and marvel at her influence. When I asked a longtime source who left the Obama White House years ago for his impressions of Jarrett, he confessed that he was too fearful to speak with me, even off the record.
This is not as irrational as it sounds. Obama has said he consults Jarrett on every major decision, something current and former aides corroborate. Her role since she has been at the White House is one of the broadest and most expansive roles that I think has ever existed in the West Wing, says Anita Dunn, Obamas former communications director. Broader, even, than the role of running the West Wing. This summer, the call to send Attorney General Eric Holder on a risky visit to Ferguson, Missouri, was made by exactly three people: Holder himself, the president, and Jarrett, who were vacationing together on Marthas Vineyard. When I asked Holder if Denis McDonough, the chief of staff, was part of the conversation, he thought for a moment and said, He was not there. (Holder hastened to add that someone had spoken to him.)
Jarrett holds a key vote on Cabinet picks (she opposed Larry Summers at Treasury and was among the first Obama aides to come around on Hillary Clinton at State) and has an outsize say on ambassadorships and judgeships. She helps determine who gets invited to the First Ladys Box for the State of the Union, who attends state dinners and bill-signing ceremonies, and who sits where at any of the above. She has placed friends and former employees in important positions across the administrationyou can be my person over there, is a common refrain.
And Jarrett has been known to enjoy the perks of high office herself. When administration aides plan bilats, the term of art for meetings of two countries top officials, they realize that whatever size meeting they negotiatenine by nine, eight by eight, etc.our side will typically include one less foreign policy hand, because Jarrett has a standing seat at any table that includes the president.
Not surprisingly, all this influence has won Jarrett legions of detractors. They complain that she has too much control over who sees the president. That she skews his decision-making with her after-hours visits. That she is an incorrigible yes-woman. That she has, in effect, become the chief architect of his very prominent and occasionally suffocating bubble.
There is an element of truth to this critique. While aboard Air Force One at the end of the 2012 campaign, Jarrett turned to Obama and told him, Mr. President, I dont understand how youre not getting eighty-five percent of the vote. The other Obama aides in the cabin looked around in disbelief before concluding that shed been earnest.
