Free The Amateur by Edward Klein Page B

welcoming them with open arms. Like Obama, she has a fundamental lack of respect for businessmen. In a typical blunder that sent shudders through the business community, she dismissed Tom Donohue, the highly regarded CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as irrelevant, saying that she preferred to deal with “real” industry executives.
    “I have always thought Valerie was a liability,” a prominent donor told the Washington Post . “I’ve talked to people in the White House about it, and they have agreed with me, but they are scared to say anything.”
    Behind its “no-drama” façade, the Obama administration has been rocked by major personnel shakeups (both the president and the first lady have gone through several chiefs of staff), but Jarrett is still the indispensable person in the mix. When speculation arose that Jarrett might want the Senate seat vacated by Obama when he became president, Michelle put the kibosh on the idea.
    “I told her,” said Michelle, “that I wanted her [in the White House], in that position, that it would give me a sense of comfort to know that [my husband] had somebody like her there by his side.”
    The president has made it abundantly clear that he feels the same way. As he told the New York Times : “Valerie is one of my oldest friends. Over time, I think our relationship evolved to the point where she’s like a sibling to me ... I trust her completely.”

    Trying to figure out Valerie Jarrett’s mysterious hold on the president and first lady is a favorite guessing game in the parlors and dining rooms of Washington.
    In part, her influence stems from the fact that Jarrett is the president’s trusted watchdog. She protects the vainglorious and thin-skinned Obama from critics and complainers who might deflate his ego. No one gets past Jarrett and sees the president if they have a grievance, or a chip on their shoulder, or even an incompatible point of view. That goes for such high-profile supporters as Oprah Winfrey and Caroline Kennedy, who have been largely frozen out of the White House because Jarrett believes they would use the opportunity of a meeting with Obama to push their own competing political agendas.
    In part, too, Obama views Jarrett as the voice of authentic blackness in a White House that is staffed largely by whites. Jarrett comes from the top rung of African-American society, and Obama—a man who struggled for years with questions about his black identity and status—has always been more than a little in awe of Jarrett’s pedigree.
    No minority group is more conscious of social status than blacks. While whites often see the black population in the United States as monolithic, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson, in his book Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America , sees not one, but essentially five distinct Black Americas: a mainstream middle class; a large, abandoned minority living in poverty and dysfunction; a small “Transcendent” elite with enormous power and wealth; individuals of mixed race; and communities of recent black immigrants.
    Jarrett comes from the class of light-skinned “Transcendent” elites. “Among African-Americans, there is a keen perception of the gradation of skin color,” says Rahni Flowers, who was Michelle Obama’s hairdresser from the time she was eighteen years old until she went to Washington. “It often determines how successful you are and what opportunities you are given. Michelle is darker; she’s not from the class of so-called ‘high-yellow’ blacks. Many African-American women are proud of the fact that she is a typical-looking black woman in hue and hair.”
    Whereas Barack and Michelle Obama came from modest middle-class backgrounds, Jarrett sprang from one of America’s most distinguished black families. The Robert Taylor Homes—the largest housing development project in America when it was completed in 1962—was named after her grandfather, a noted African-American activist.