Valerie Jarrett: Barack Obama's 'Other Woman'

This weekend’s NYTimes Magazine has an in-depth profile on Senior Presidential Adviser Valerie Jarrett. Titled The Ultimate Obama Insider, an Intermediary to the Outside World, the piece begins by saying that President Obama refrains from saying ‘no’ to only two women: his wife Michelle and Valerie Jarrett.

The first digital page of the story gives us real insight into how Valerie Jarrett gets the job done, not hesitating to return to the President, after his initial brush off of her concerns on public perception. Jarrett seems to have excellent instincts in understanding how issues are playing out in the Heartland.

The 52-year-old Jarrett lives in Georgetown, at the same apartment complex as friends Desiree Rogers and Susan Sher. (See Michelle-Style: Hanging Out with the Girls at 3303 Water Street: Home of Michelle’s Women Power brokers).

Obama trusts Valerie Jarrett completely, saying “She’s family — she combines the closeness of a family member with the savvy and objectivity of a professional businesswoman and public-policy expert. And that’s a rare combination to have. You know,” he went on to say, “there are other friends of mine who are close to me but who don’t really understand the nature of my work. There are others who are extraordinary experts in policy and politics but don’t have that track record with me.”

Other highlights of the NYT dossier on Valerie Jarrett:

• She’s as cool and unflappable as POTUS
• Jarrett is the only member of the Obama economic team to actually run a businss, in her case a large real estate concern in Chicago
• Valerie Jarrett serves as an unofficial ambassador and sounding board on minority issues
• Iran is Jarrett’s birthplace, where her physician father ran a hospital as part of an American aid program. Her father, Dr. James Bowman, was an eminent pathologist given to wearing bow ties and trekking his young daughter across Africa for her summer vacations. Equally influential was her mother, Barbara, a childhood-development expert and the daughter of Robert Taylor, the first African-American to head the Chicago Housing Authority.
• Even though Washingtonians are hankering for a Jarrett/Emanuel power struggle, there apparenently isn’t one.
• President Obama runs every decision by her.
• Jarrett’s emotive radar is first-rate and her mind operates at warp speed in bringing inconceivable combos of powerbrokers and influencers together.

If you’re a fashionista, then wanter over to Huff Po, where you’ll find the rest of a Valerie Jarrett style slideshow. A