Free The Amateur by Edward Klein Page A

and the people, or that the power of the Oval Office rests to a great degree on the affection of the country for its chief. From Washington to Lincoln to the two Roosevelts and, most recently, Reagan, the force of presidential personality has been a major factor in determining a president’s fate.... [P]residents who are unable to earn the trust of their countrymen are governors who cannot govern and lead.”
    Barack Obama has been unable to earn the trust of his countrymen because he is, at heart, predominantly concerned with his own thoughts and ideas and feelings rather than the thoughts and ideas and feelings of the people he was elected to serve. He believes that he was chosen as president to save a wayward America from its dependency on free-market capitalism. This has led him to push clumsy and unpopular far-left policies—universal healthcare, Wall Street bailouts, cap and trade, green jobs, and renewable energy—at the expense of rational policies aimed at putting America back to work.

CHAPTER 9
     
    GROUND ZERO
     
    She knows the buttons, the soft spots, the history, the context.
     

—Michelle Obama, speaking about Valerie Jarrett
     
     
     
     
     
     
    “I f it wasn’t for Valerie Jarrett, there’d be no Barack Obama to complain about.”
    The speaker was a member of the White House press corps who has covered the Obamas, husband and wife, since their early days on the political scene. My colleague and I were sitting in a Mexican restaurant in Washington, eating chimichangas and exchanging notes about Valerie Jarrett, or VJ as she is known in the West Wing.
    Jarrett is ground zero in the Obama operation, the first couple’s first friend and consigliere. Once asked by a reporter if he ran every decision by Jarrett, Obama answered without hesitation: “Yep. Absolutely.” Her official title is a mouthful—senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement—but it doesn’t begin to do justice to her unrivaled status in the White House. Nor does it explain her responsibility, which has gone largely unnoticed by the public, for the incompetence and amateurism that have been the hallmark of Obama’s time in office.
    Jarrett occupies a piece of prime real estate in the White House—Karl Rove and Hillary Clinton’s old office on the second floor of the West Wing. She has an all-access pass to meetings she chooses to attend: one day she’ll show up at a National Security Council meeting; the next day, she’ll sit in on a briefing on the federal budget. When Oval Office meetings break up, Jarrett is often the one who stays behind to talk privately with the president.
    At 6:30 on many evenings, Jarrett can be seen slipping upstairs to the Family Quarters, where she dines with the Obamas and their two daughters, Sasha and Malia. She is the only member of the White House staff who goes on vacations with the Obamas. She is also one of the few people in Washington besides Michelle Obama and Barack’s live-in mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, who is on such familiar terms with the president that she can call him by his first name to his face.
    “Valerie is the quintessential insider,” one of her longtime friends told me. “She functions as the eyes, ears, and nose of the president and first lady. She tells them who’s saying what about who, who’s loyal and who’s not. She advises them about who they should see when they visit a city or a foreign country. She determines who gets invited to the White House and who is left out in the cold.”
    Jarrett is supposed to be the point person for the administration’s efforts to keep in touch with the outside world—everyone from senators to foreign dignitaries. Obama sent her to talk to the Dalai Lama before he visited China. However, if you talk to Democratic donors, businessmen, congressmen, and African-Americans, as I have, it turns out that Jarrett is far better at giving people the cold shoulder than at