Hillary
Clinton has become the first female nominated for President of the United
States but, should she win the election, she will not be the first female to
occupy and control the Oval Office (insert Monica Lewinsky joke here). That
honor arguably goes to Valerie Jarrett, currently Senior Adviser to President
Obama.
Jarrett, born in Iran to American parents,
has been with the Obamas since her days as Deputy Chief of Staff in the office
of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, the elder. She hired Michelle Obama, them
Michelle Robinson to fill an opening in the mayor’s office. As Wiikileaks describes the
beginning of a long relationship:
In 1991, as deputy chief of staff to Mayor Richard Daley, Jarrett interviewed Michelle Robinson for an opening in the mayor's office, after which she immediately offered Robinson the job. [33] Michelle Robinson asked for time to think and also asked Jarrett to meet Robinson's fiancé, Barack Obama. The three ended up meeting for dinner. After the dinner, Michelle took the job with the mayor's office, and Valerie Jarrett reportedly took the couple under her wing and "introduced them to a wealthier and better-connected Chicago than their own." Jarrett later took Michelle with her when Jarrett left the mayor's office to head Chicago's Department of Planning and Development.
The
rest, as they say, is history. Not only did Valerie Jarrett become a
mentor to the young Barack Obama, she soon became what Investor’s
Business Daily called Obama’s Rasputin, someone who had more security
than our personnel did in Benghazi:
She receives more protection than our Libyan ambassador, calls the
president by his first name, dines and vacations with the First Family and had
the power to call off three strikes against Osama bin Laden.
Ambassador Chris Stevens did not have a Marine detail in Benghazi,
Libya. But White House senior adviser and Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett
reportedly had a full Secret Service detail on vacation in Martha's Vineyard.
"Jarrett seems to have a 24-hour, around-the-clock detail,
with five or six agents full time," Democratic pollster Pat Caddell said
in an interview recently with Breitbart news. If Stevens had a similar escort,
he'd probably be alive today. Such protection isn't usually available to senior
advisers, but Jarrett is no ordinary adviser…
Indeed
she is not. She arguably has more influence over Obama than anyone with the
possible exception of Michelle Obama herselkf. As IBD
notes:
Her influence is shown by an account in Richard Miniter's book
"Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide
for Him."
It relates that at the urging of Jarrett, Obama canceled the
operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three occasions before finally approving
the May 2, 2011, Navy SEAL mission. Seems she was concerned about the possible
political harm to Obama if the mission failed.
Miniter writes that the president canceled the kill mission in
January 2011, again in February and a third time in March, in each instance at
the urging of Jarrett.
Miniter cites a source within the Joint Special Operations Command
who had direct knowledge of the operation and its planning.
Edward Klein, author of the best-selling book about Obama,
"The Amateur," once asked Obama if he ran every decision by Jarrett,
and the president responded, "Absolutely." A former foreign editor
of Newsweek and editor of the New York Times Magazine,
Klein describes Jarrett as "ground zero in the Obama operation, the first
couple's friend and consigliere."
Her
power and influence extends to staffing by the White House to a virtual veto
power over foreign policy decisions. Valerie Jarrett undoubtedly had
significant input into President Obama’s Munich-like deal with Iran, which
kicks the nuclear can down the road to assured detonation over Israel, which
Iran continues to threaten to wipe off the map when it is not wishing “death to
America”. Her influence
over President Obama is legendary:
The Iranian-born Jarrett (her parents were American-born
expatriates) is the only staff member who regularly follows the president home
from the West Wing to the residence and one of the few people allowed to call
the president by his first name.
Noam
Scheiber, writing in the November 9, 2014, New Republic,
called Jarrett “The Obama Whisperer”, noting her power and influence and the
fear she instilled in other staffers:
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.
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, Obama’s 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 Martha’s 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 Lady’s 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 administration -- “you 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
negotiate -- nine 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.
Hillary won’t be the first female occupant
of the White House to call the shots. She might not even be the second, for he
has at her side one Huma Abedin, who is as much at her side as Jarrett is at
Obama’s. Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
Valerie Jarrett’s hold over President Obama is as mysterious as it has proven
dangerous. We do not need another Jarrett in the person of
Huma Abedin, whose corruption and influence peddling may be surpassed only
by the future president who would put her in a position of power.
Daniel John Sobieski is a
freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human
Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
