The Other Power in the West Wing WASHINGTON President Obama was in a bind, and his chief of staff

could not figur e out how he had ended up there. PRESIDENTIAL BOND Ms. Jarrett and Barack Obama on his campaign plane in 2008. Af ter the election, he implored her to join him in Washington. Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church were up in arms last fall over a proposal t o 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 l iberty 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 wh o had been involved and supported this, said Mr. Daley, who left his post early t his year. What he did not realize was that while he was trying to put out what he consider ed 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 tenac ious White House operator who would ultimately outmaneuver not only Mr. Daley bu t also the vice president in her effort to include the broadest possible contrac eption coverage in the administration s health care overhaul. A Chicagoan who helped Mr. Obama navigate his rise through that city s aggressive politics, Ms. Jarrett came to Washington with no national experience. But her un matched access to the Obamas has made her a driving force in some of the most si gnificant domestic policy decisions of the president s first term, her persuasive power only amplified by Mr. Obama s insular management style. From the first, her official job has been somewhat vague. But nearly four years on, with Mr. Obama poised to accept his party s renomination this week, her standi ng is clear, to her many admirers and detractors alike. She is the single most in fluential person in the Obama White House, said one former senior White House off icial, who like many would speak candidly only on condition of anonymity. She s there to try to promote what she understands to be what the president wants, t he former aide said. Ultimately the president makes his own decisions. The questi on that is hard to get inside of, the black box, is whether she is really influe ncing him or merely executing decisions he s made. That s like asking, Is the light o n in the refrigerator when the door is closed? Yet if that answer remains elusive, interviews with more than two dozen former a nd current administration officials offer a portrait of a woman wielding a manyfaceted portfolio of power. Partly it is her ubiquity, the guiding hand in everything from who sits on the S upreme Court to who sits next to whom at state dinners, the White House staff me mos peppered with VJ thinks or VJ says. When the billionaire investor Warren E. Buff ett showed up for a private lunch with the president last July, the table was se t for three.

Ms. Jarrett often serves as a counterweight to the more centrist Clinton veteran s in the administration, reminding them and her innately cautious boss that he c ame to Washington to do big things. Some of his boldest moves, on women s issues, gay rights and immigration, have been in areas she cares about most. If Karl Rov e was known as George W. Bush s political brain, Ms. Jarrett is Mr. Obama s spine. She is also his gatekeeper, sometimes using that power to tip the balance in int ernal debates. After the financial crisis, as the administration grappled with h ow to rein in Wall Street, Ms. Jarrett made sure that Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman whose voice was being drowned out, got a meeting with t he president. The result: tougher measures than the president s top economic advis ers were advocating. And she is the president s protector in chief, or as Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner put it, the person who must be as omniscient as possible in spotting tro uble on the way. Those whom she deems to have failed Mr. Obama tell of scolding late-night calls and her trademark accusation of betrayal: You are hurting the pr esident. But she has also steered him toward controversy, as in the contraception debate. And some of Mr. Obama s most senior advisers worry perhaps not entirely without j ealousy that her direct access to the president has at times led to half-baked d ecision making and unclear lines of authority. (Page 2 of 5) Mr. Obama s first two chiefs of staff, Rahm Emanuel and Mr. Daley, clashed with Ms . Jarrett over strategic direction and over who had greater authority to interpr et and carry out the president s wishes, several officials said. The president and Ms. Jarrett, a senior adviser, have known each other since bef ore his political start in Chicago. He s got a real mess in the West Wing, said one close presidential adviser. Valerie i s effectively the chief of staff, and he knows, but he doesn t know. She s almost li ke Nancy Reagan was with President Reagan, but more powerful. Two Who Clicked

The week after the 2008 election, Mr. Obama implored Ms. Jarrett to join him at the White House. She was contemplating putting her name forward for the Senate s eat he had just vacated, but she quickly put those aspirations aside. Together they carved out her wide-ranging job description: senior adviser to the president and chief liaison to the business community, state and local governme nts and the political left. For him, I think it was more important that she be there than that she have any s pecific job or set of issues, said Susan Sher, Michelle Obama s second chief of sta ff and a longtime friend of Ms. Jarrett. Ms. Jarrett declined to be quoted for this article, beyond a statement: My role i s to ensure that a wide and diverse range of perspectives are heard to inform th e president s decision making process, she said, and to give the president candid ad vice. Parsing the psychology of the president s bond with Ms. Jarrett has become somethi ng of a West Wing pastime: is she some sort of mother or sister figure to an onl y child whose own parents variously abandoned him?

Close friends say that in Ms. Jarrett, the introverted president simply found so meone who understands what makes him tick better than most. They met more than two decades ago, when Ms. Jarrett a lawyer, like both Obamas offered Mrs. Obama a job in the Chicago mayor s office. Ms. Jarrett was a single mother who had come up the ranks of city government, th e daughter of a prominent African-American family. Her grandfather, Robert Taylo r, built much of Chicago s public housing, her father was a pioneering doctor, and her mother had a Chicago street named after her for her work in early childhood education. Mr. Obama was a rootless but ambitious Harvard law graduate, looking to make a political name. At their first dinner, they talked about a philosophy of empowerment for the downt rodden. That s where we clicked, she later told Ms. Sher, and from then on she was d etermined to introduce Mr. Obama, almost five years her junior, to the activists and donors he needed to move first to the legislature and then to the United St ates Senate. In their small social circle, Ms. Jarrett, who would go on to run a Chicago real estate company and sit on numerous civic and corporate boards, was always seen a s the adult in the room, the one looked to for guidance, said John W. Rogers Jr., a longtime friend of both Ms. Jarrett and the president. Replicating that role in the White House, however, has not been easy. To some extent, Ms. Jarrett is part of a White House tradition. Bill Clinton bro ught along his fellow Arkansan Bruce Lindsey as his Mr. Fix-It. Mr. Bush had his Texas confidantes, Karen Hughes and Harriet Miers. But few have had the stature and the ability to step outside traditional White H ouse protocol of Ms. Jarrett. She is the only staff member who regularly follows the president home from the West Wing to the residence, a practice that has ear ned her the nickname the Night Stalker. By day, Mr. Obama is Mr. President to her, b ut in social settings, he is just Barack. When the Obamas take an out-of-town brea k, she often goes along. After a ratings agency downgraded the nation s debt last year, it was not the Trea sury secretary at the president s side, helping map out how to manage the market s r eaction. According to a participant in the discussion, it was Ms. Jarrett, who h ad joined Mr. Obama and a few close friends at Camp David for his birthday. (Page 3 of 5) There is an inherent challenge in managing anyone, this is not particular to Vale rie, who is a senior adviser and part of a structure, and also close personally with the family, said David Axelrod, the president s chief strategist. Obviously it s cleaner and less complicated if everyone is discussing things at the same meetin gs. But it s a manageable problem. Aides say she never uses her private time with the president to relitigate decis ions. Even so, the White House is organized around the principle that the presid ent s time is an administration s most valuable commodity, not to be spent on low-pr iority matters or those not fully vetted. Yet several officials say that is what happened with one of Ms. Jarrett s pet projects, Chicago s bid for the 2016 Olympic s. 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 r

eported that Chicago had not survived the first round of voting. There was total silence, one official recalled. It was a long trip home.

Ms. Jarrett cuts an elegant figure in the West Wing, with her pixie haircut and designer clothes. Aides say she can be thoughtful in little ways that matter, en listing the president to rally staff members after political or personal setback s. But she can also be imperious at one event ordering a drink from a four-star general she mistook for a waiter and attached to the trappings of power in a way some in the White House consider unseemly for a member of the staff. A case in point is her full-time Secret Service detail. The White House refuses to disclose the number of agents or their cost, citing security concerns. But th e appearance so worried some aides that two were dispatched to urge her to give the detail up. She listened politely, one said, but the agents stayed. A Sometimes Testy Link Working from a cozy office previously occupied by Mr. Rove, with a staff of near ly three dozen, Ms. Jarrett is the president s link to the world outside the White House bubble. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice occasionally uses Ms. Jarrett, with w hom she has become friendly, as an informal back channel to pass along foreign p olicy views, officials said. And Bob Riley, a former Republican governor of Alabama, remembers the way Ms. Ja rrett responded to his pleas for equipment to contain the BP oil spill in 2010. W ithin 24 hours, what we had been told was an impossible task was done, he said. Often, though, Ms. Jarrett seems to be more of a lightning rod for complaints of White House insularity and a thin-skinned response to detractors. She is widely blamed for the president s soured relationship with the business com munity. (To judge by donations, Wall Street has switched its allegiance to Mitt Romney.) But Ms. Jarrett s White House defenders say that the criticism is fundame ntally misplaced and that she is merely an available target for the financial co mmunity s anger over administration policies it dislikes. Behind the scenes, they say, Ms. Jarrett has advocated pro-business policy changes like a regular review of existing regulations. Less well known is her testy relationship with certain elements of the president s base. She serves as the front door to the donors who helped elect the president, revie wing guest lists to White House parties and candidates for patronage positions. But she has snubbed some early supporters, among them the financier George Soros , ignoring his pleas for a substantive meeting on the economy with the president . The message she delivered, according to one person familiar with the exchanges , was that she felt Mr. Soros was already on the team, and that while he might wa nt to talk to the captain, the captain was very busy. Mr. Soros, who has spent tens of millions of dollars on Democratic candidates an d causes, is largely sitting on the sidelines this presidential election. With Ms. Jarrett s unquestioning belief in the president has come a tendency to ta ke political criticism personally, even when it would be more useful not to, said Marilyn Katz, a Chicago friend of both Ms. Jarrett and the president. Another fr

iend compared her to a mother whose son can do no wrong: call, she says, No, no, that can t be. (Page 4 of 5)

Even when the neighbors

So when the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Anthony Ro mero, publicly criticized some of the president s antiterrorism policies, she swif tly shoved back. Great harm has been done, she warned in an e-mail he shared with colleagues. There has been a material breach of trust. A White House spokeswoman said Ms. Jarrett does respond aggressively when she fe els that the president has been attacked. But in an interview, Mr. Romero said that she needs to understand that we don t wor k for the White House, and our job is to criticize any president who is not doin g the right thing. Ms. Jarrett was similarly livid, one former White House official said, with member s of the Congressional Black Caucus who accused the president of paying insuffic ient attention to the particular economic woes of blacks. When the writer and ac ademic Cornel West joined in, calling Mr. Obama the black mascot of Wall Street, M s. Jarrett s response was ruthless, Dr. West said. He recalled a phone call in which she dismissed his criticism as sour grapes for not receiving a ticket to the inauguration, and said he later heard from friend s that she was putting out the word that one, I was crazy, and two, I was un-Amer ican. It was a matter of letting me know that I was, in her hat I needed to get in line, he said in an interview. kind of Negro. I m a Jesus-loving black man who tells se, in the crack house or in any other house. She got at she was not used to being spoken to that way. Driving the Agenda When a seat on the Supreme Court opened up just months into Mr. Obama s term, he i mmediately thought of Sonia Sotomayor. It would be a historic choice, making her the first Hispanic justice. But some advisers were worried by reports about her judicial temperament. Given the tough Senate votes coming up on health care and the economy, why not go with a safer pick? Ms. Jarrett, dismissing the reports as sexist, argued that appointing Ms. Sotoma yor would send an important signal, recalled Anita Dunn, who was then the presid ent s communications director. It was quintessential Valerie Jarrett, according to Ms. Dunn. It is not so much that she is Mr. Obama s liberal id. Rather, her voice is often the one at the tabl e reminding everyone of the president s aspirational first principles, that he didn t j ust come to the White House to hold the office, but to make change, Ms. Dunn said . That has been particularly true when it comes to diversity and issues she consid ers matters of civil rights. Gay rights advocates say they considered Ms. Jarrett their secret weapon in the Wh ite House on issues like repealing the military s policy of don t ask, don t tell. And w hile aides said Mr. Obama found his own way toward supporting same-sex marriage, Ms. Jarrett reinforced his instincts, Mr. Axelrod said. This is consistent with w ho you are, she told the president. view, way out of line and t I conveyed to her: I m not that the truth, in the White Hou real quiet. It was clear th

On immigration, Ms. Jarrett successfully urged the president to stop deporting c ertain illegal residents who arrived as children. And while some of his advisers worried about the political perils of legally challenging Arizona s tough immigra tion law, Ms. Jarrett argued that its central provision requiring the police to check the immigration status of people taken into custody amounted to racial pro filing, a civil rights issue right in the president s wheelhouse, recalled Pete Rous e, another senior Obama adviser. (Ultimately, the Supreme Court upheld that prov ision, but struck down most of the law.) Perhaps no policy area better shows how Ms. Jarrett can drive the White House ag enda than the contraception mandate. Ms. Jarrett has a fiercely loyal following among those she backed for key positions throughout government, drawn mainly fro m a White House women s network she helped build and nurture. The director of the Domestic Policy Council, for instance, previously worked for her, and she counts Ms. Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, among her good friends. (Page 5 of 5) Through that network, Ms. Jarrett made clear her position that a broad exemption for religious employers like hospitals and universities could leave as many as one million women without the benefit. Ms. Sebelius was of like mind, announcing last August that only churches themselves would get a pass. The resulting outcry prompted Mr. Daley to confront Ms. Sebelius. (Through a spo keswoman, she said she recalled a conversation with Mr. Daley but not the partic ulars he described.) Catholics, a group Mr. Obama won in 2008, make up more than a quarter of the ele ctorate. Though most personally support birth control, Mr. Daley and Vice Presid ent Joseph R. Biden Jr. worried about how forcing church-affiliated organization s to pay for it would play. Moreover, they felt that the rule put important Catholic allies in the health ca re fight in a tough position, and potentially violated a law banning regulations that impose a substantial burden on religious expression. Mr. Biden arranged for Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York to meet with the pr esident and express the church s view. With the support of some of the president s p olitical advisers, Ms. Jarrett pushed back in her own meeting with Mr. Obama, ai des said. And she signaled Ms. Sebelius to keep fighting I m with you on this, said one former official with knowledge of the matter. But by January, even friendly voices were accusing the president of throwing his progressive Catholic allies under the bus. Democratic members of Congress were fi elding calls from constituents who felt, in the words of one, that this was a big blunder. In a senior advisers meeting, the president, exasperated, ordered his s enior staff to figure it out, one participant said. But if some expected significant backtracking, they were mistaken. In phone call s the next week, the president outlined his compromise: the burden for the cover age would shift from employers to insurers, but women who worked for religious o rganizations could still avail themselves of the benefit. When the president called me, said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Paren thood, I could practically hear Valerie s influence. Today, many of the issues Ms. Jarrett championed are being replayed in the campa ign. In recent ads, for instance, Mr. Romney has accused the president of using h is health care plan to declare war on religion. The president, for his part, has

accused Mr. Romney of wanting to take women

back to the 1950s.

And Ms. Jarrett has added another role to her portfolio, traveling to swing stat es to campaign, sometimes at Mr. Obama s side. Homestretch, Homestretch? she keeps telling him. he ll reply. she says. We ve just got the convention, then three debates.

Yes, almost there,