XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: croakley@failure.biz   
      
   Almost since the start of Barack Obama’s presidency, people who   
   have actual, real duties in the West Wing of the White House—the   
   working, executive part of the government, that is—have been   
   urging him to do something about Valerie Jarrett. Push her into   
   the East Wing, where she can hang out with Michelle Obama and   
   the White House social secretary, or give her an   
   ambassadorship—or something—but for Pete’s sake get her out of   
   the way of the hard work of governing that needs to be done.   
      
   Now it’s really time to do it.   
      
   Let’s stipulate right away that it would be unfair to blame   
   Jarrett, the longtime Obama family friend and confidante, for   
   the walloping that the president and his party suffered at the   
   polls on Tuesday. And Jarrett will no doubt be needed in the   
   weeks ahead to comfort her old pals, Barack and Michelle. What   
   happened on Tuesday almost couldn’t be worse for Obama   
   personally—not just the Senate’s going Republican but all those   
   governorships lost, including Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s   
   defeat in Obama’s adopted home state, even after the president   
   and first lady came to Illinois to campaign for him. The morning   
   after the elections, Democrats and their top staffers were   
   hopping mad, blaming Obama and, by extension, his staff for the   
   defeat.   
      
   But let’s also face facts—and expect the president to do so as   
   well. We’re at that point in an already long-toothed presidency   
   when things inside really need to change. In the days before   
   anyone knew how brutally the Democrats would get beaten,   
   politicians and staffers and pundits were urging a shakeup of   
   the White House staff.   
      
   This is, after all, a time-honored practice for an   
   administration in trouble. Somebody’s got to take the blame   
   other than president, who’s not going to resign himself. Past   
   presidents who fared badly in midterm elections have not been   
   shy about making high-level changes—George W. Bush fired Defense   
   Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after the 2006 midterms and also   
   replaced his chief of staff. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and   
   Ronald Reagan at the same low point in their administrations   
   replaced their chiefs of staff when they failed to perform up to   
   expectations or fell from grace. George H.W. Bush did the same   
   to chief of staff John Sununu.   
      
   Jarrett is more than a mere senior staffer to this president,   
   and of course she is not going to be fired outright. Not ever.   
   If her role in this administration reflected reality, Jarrett   
   would be called “First Big Sister” to both Michelle and Barack.   
   And who would fire the kind of big sister who “really dedicated   
   her entire life to the Obamas,” as New York Times reporter Jodi   
   Kantor told me when I interviewed her about her intimate look at   
   the first family, The Obamas? “She has thrown her entire life   
   into their cause, and she’s made it very clear that she would   
   happily run in front of a speeding truck for them.”   
      
   Very moving. But the fact is, on balance it appears that Jarrett   
   has been more an obstructer than a facilitator over the past six   
   years when it comes to governing, and it’s probably long past   
   time for the president to move her gently into another role.   
      
   For starters, even today, nobody knows precisely what Jarrett   
   does in the White House. What exactly do her titles—senior   
   advisor to the president, assistant to the president in charge   
   of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, the Office of Public   
   Engagement, the White House Council on Women and Girls—mean?   
   More to the point, Jarrett has often used the aura of authority   
   that these titles give her to stand in the way of talented White   
   House staffers and a smoother-running administration, according   
   to several books that have been written about the Obama   
   presidency, among them Chuck Todd’s forthcoming The Stranger.   
      
   Take Obama’s first-term chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who   
   clashed early and often with Jarrett and felt “undermined” by   
   her, as political reporter Jonathan Alter, the author of two in-   
   depth books on the Obama administration, told me in 2013.   
   Emanuel recognized early on that Jarrett was trouble and worried   
   that she could become what former Newsweek correspondent Daniel   
   Klaidman, in his book Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the   
   Soul of the Obama Presidency, called a “shadow COS.” Emanuel   
   tried to sideline Jarrett by pressing for her to be appointed to   
   Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat, according to Alter: “He wasn’t   
   sure that he wanted a competing power base that was closer to   
   the president and first lady than he was.”   
      
   But Michelle Obama wanted Jarrett in the White House, so   
   Emanuel’s plan fizzled. He left in the fall of 2010 to run for   
   mayor of Chicago.   
      
   http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/fire-valerie-   
   jarrett-112659.html#.VGO-EPnF-t8   
      
       
      
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