Valerie Jarrett: 'Consigliere' for Obama

by Mark Silva

John Podesta, the ex-White House chief of staff who helped President Barack Obama staff his White House, has a simple title for Valerie Jarrett, Obama's close friend from Chicago and senior adviser in Washington:

"Consigliere.''

Jarrett, notes Bloomberg News' Julianna Goldman, came to Washington from Chicago "with a portfolio of power as personal as it is political.'' Jarrett calls the president "Mr. President'' in the offices of the West Wing, Goldman reports, and calls Obama "Barack'' in the privacy of other quarters.

"He's got someone who he knows has his back and is operating only in his interests," explains Podesta, who was co-chairman of Obama's presidential transition team with Jarrett and is a former chief of staff to ex-President Bill Clinton.

"If there's a consigliere in the White House, it's Valerie," Podesta told Bloomberg.

Saturday night, when the Obamas dined outside the White House, it was Jarrett's riverfront place in Georgetown where they convened. The Obamas were there past 11 pm, on a night before Easter morning church services, as we noted here in The Swamp on Sunday.

(Valerie Jarrett, pictured above speaking with Mayor Richard Daley in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 20, in a photo by Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune.)

Last week, when the president made his surprise visit to Baghdad, it was Jarrett who called the first lady to adviser her that the president had taken off safely from Iraq.

"Jarrett's friendship dates to when she hired Michelle Robinson, Obama's then-fiancee, in 1991 to work for (Chicago Mayor Richard) Daley.'' Bloomberg's Goldman notes in a telling personal profile of the president's senior adviser.

"Jarrett's connections helped propel Barack Obama's initial rise and she has remained at his side, whether on family vacations in Hawaii or as an unpaid senior adviser to his 2004 senatorial and 2008 presidential campaigns.

"It has been a long journey'' for the woman born in Iran, where her father, a physician was working. She spent part of her youth in London before moving to Chicago. She holds a degree from Stanford and a law degree from the University of Michigan.

Jarrett left her job as chief executive officer of Habitat Co., a Chicago real estate development firm, where she earned $302,000 last year, to work for the president.

"I am quite mindful that he is the president of the United States, but he's also still my friend," she says, in the Bloomberg profile. "The difference is, of course, now I work for him."