The Obama Whisperer No one has understood Valerie Jarrett's role, until now
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 officials—they 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.
With eyes on possible shakeups in President Obama’s administration following his party’s midterm losses Tuesday, New Republic’s Noam Scheiber takes a deep dive on one of Team Obama’s most trusted advisers: Valerie Jarrett, noting just how expansive her role in the administration is: “[President 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, Obama’s former communications director. Broader, even, than the role of running the West Wing. …Jarrett’s inescapable presence made her an object of fear and scorn. ‘It’s pretty toxic,’ says another former administration official. ‘She went to whatever meeting she wanted to go to—basically all of them—and then would go and whisper to the president. Or at least everyone believed she did…People don’t trust the process. They think she’s a spy.”’
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