-By Warner Todd Huston
After the shellacking that President Obama received at the hands of voters in the midterm elections, his chief advisor, Valerie Jarrett is finally in the hot seat. Over the weekend, two articles attacked her as all that is wrong with the White House with one piece slamming her the “Obama whisperer” and another one flat out advising Obama to fire her.
Jarrett has been with the Obamas since their beginning in Chicago and has become the President’s spokesperson, closest adviser, and, some say, the real decision-maker in the White House.
This ultimate insider has been criticized by conservatives for years, but now it seems even liberals have about had enough of her.
For years many have been afraid to cross her–and for good reason–but with this political drubbing, it looks like at least a few in the media have finally decided to speak up in opposition to Jarrett’s iron fisted rule behind the scenes.
In one long ranging piece–The New Republic’s The Obama Whisperer–Jarrett is described as a schemer who has made it her job to undermine anyone she thinks threatens her position as Obama’s main and some say nearly only advisor. She is even reported as having essentially chased former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel out of Washington.
The TNR piece is not a flattering picture of the President’s muse. She comes off as cold, calculating, self-promoting, churlish, she is said to offer insincere, sycophantic compliments to Obama and is presented as the type of person who lashes out viciously cutting people off at the knees and banishing those seeking to help the president and his administration if she is displeased with their efforts.
In fact, after one contentious meeting with illegal immigrant activists, the TNR piece reported that Jarrett banished some of the activists from further contact with the White House, removed them from email info lists, and sent some scathing emails telling them why they had been jettisoned.
The most shocking thing New Republic reports is that Obama no longer has daily meetings with a full staff of advisers like every other president has. He has pretty much limited his briefings to Valerie Jarrett and his current chief of staff Denis McDonough making this president the most isolated president in history.
The second Jarrett piece is even more direct by suggesting that Obama fire Jarrett outright.
For Politico, Chicago writer Carol Felsenthal suggests that Obama needs to really shake up his office after being handed one of the worst political defeats in presidential history and the best way to do that is to fire Valerie Jarrett. Or at least banish her to a position farther from the inner circle.
Felsenthal’s determination is that Jarrett has become one of the President’s biggest problems.
“But the fact is,” she wrote in the Friday article, “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.”
The Chicago writer’s final advice to the president is this: “for Pete’s sake get her out of the way of the hard work of governing that needs to be done.”
As Obama continues to flail about as a lame duck president, many liberals are starting to agree with that advice.
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Follow Warner Todd Huston on:
Twitter
Facebook
Tumblr
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.