WASHINGTON — President Obama was in a bind, and his chief of staff could not figure out how he had ended up there.
Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church were up in arms last fall over a proposal to require employers to provide health insurance that covered birth control. But caving in to the church’s demands for a broad exemption in the name of religious liberty would pit the president against a crucial constituency, women’s groups, who saw the coverage as basic preventive care.
Worried about the political and legal implications, the chief of staff, William M. Daley, reached out to the proposal’s author, Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary. How, he wondered, had the White House been put in this situation with so little presidential input? “You are way out there on a limb on this,” he recalls telling her.
“It was then made clear to me that, no, there were senior White House officials who had been involved and supported this,” said Mr. Daley, who left his post early this year.
What he did not realize was that while he was trying to put out what he considered a fire, the person fanning the flames was sitting just one flight up from him: Valerie Jarrett, the Obamas’ first friend, the proposal’s chief patron and a tenacious White House operator who would ultimately outmaneuver not only Mr. Daley but also the vice president in her effort to include the broadest possible contraception coverage in the administration’s health care overhaul.
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“She is the single most influential person in the Obama White House,” said one former senior White House official, who like many would speak candidly only on condition of anonymity.
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Partly it is her ubiquity, the guiding hand in everything from who sits on the Supreme Court to who sits next to whom at state dinners, the White House staff memos peppered with “VJ thinks” or “VJ says.” When the billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett showed up for a private lunch with the president last July, the table was set for three.
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Based on her assurances that his personal appeal to the Olympic committee could clinch the deal, the president flew to Copenhagen. During the flight back, CNN reported that Chicago had not survived the first round of voting.
“There was total silence,” one official recalled. “It was a long trip home.”
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If Karl Rove was known as George W. Bush’s political brain, Ms. Jarrett is Mr. Obama’s spine.
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She’s almost like Nancy Reagan was with President Reagan, but more powerful.”
Its obvious that her advice has done nothing but help the Pretender in Chief dig his social and political holes deeper and made him look like a fool. So one wonders what does she have on him to allow her to continually fail and yet keep her position? College Transcripts, evidence of his Chicago corruption, his past connections he wants kept secret??