Valerie Jarrett wowed the JFK Jr. Forum tonight. More than a few told me that it was their favorite Forum of the year, no small feat in a year of big names: Newt Gingrich, David Axelrod, and Nancy Pelosi.
But, it’s not all about political stardom. The senior adviser to the President charmed us with class and smooth talked our most pointed questions. At the end of the evening, she had managed to remind a skeptical audience that for all his (perceived, of course) faults, BHO was their best and only hope. Indeed, Ms. Jarrett used the Forum to her full advantage; her staging and delivery were pitch perfect. She wisely chose not to deliver an address from the podium. After all, what could she have spoken on? The Obama consigliere touches nearly everything in the White House, but she has no area of expertise or angle. Any speech would have been flat, generic, and broad.
Instead, she sat on stage and bantered with the presidential adviser extraordinaire, Professor David Gergen. The professor built up Jarrett’s allure, calling her the “First Friend” and labeling her “the one who is asked to stay behind after meetings.” While surrounded by Secret Service and some of the tightest security I’ve seen in the Forum, Jarrett constantly played up her image as the outsider in Washington. She told the audience how she urged Barack Obama to leave DC more often and do more town halls. She asked questioners to email her and make suggestions directly. In response to a question about torture, she even told the student to speak to her afterwards if he had any specific examples of extraordinary rendition she could investigate.
She told the story of how she first hired a promising young lawyer named Michelle Robinson and met her fiance over dinner. She harkened back to the campaign, reminding the audience how unlikely electing a black man named Barack Hussein Obama seemed. When asked by Gergen how the White House would act if the healthcare summit failed, Jarrett (only somewhat) jokingly said that the first thing she learned in media training was not to engage in hypotheticals. In response to a question about minority support, she mocked the Bush administration for having only two outreach groups (evangelicals and business) in the Office of Public Engagement; hers has 45. Overall, she demonstrated a deftness in being able to parry questions in a seemingly sincere way; she would tack a humble “it’s really tough—we’re working on it” to the end of most complex answers. But perhaps more importantly, she understood the role of an adviser and friend. At every opportunity, she pivoted to praise the president, lauding his even temperament, his dedication to women’s issues, and his analytical prowess.
The one portion that felt lackluster was her closing advice and hortation to our generation. She gave lip service to the way JFK inspired a generation to public service, and asked the audience to help contribute and create a “groundswell” to change Washington. Instead of platitudes, a simple explanation from the heart of why she chose government over private law practice would have been more than enough. The reason? She wanted to make a difference for her daughter.
Photo Credit: Flickr / U.S. Department of Labor