WASHINGTON – If asked, Valerie Jarrett said Sunday she would not rule out filling President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat in Illinois. Her first priority, she kept emphasizing, was facilitating the smooth transition of staff to the Obama White House, Jarrett, one of three top transition team advisers, told at two dozen members of the Williams Monroe Trotter Group, a society of columnists.
Jarrett is the daughter-in-law of Vernon Jarrett [1918-2004], Trotter member and longtime columnist with the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. Jarrett’s last column was about voting for Senate candidate Obama from his hospital bed in fall 2004.
Yes, said Jarrett, she serves at the pleasure of the incoming president and will do what he asks, and if that could mean serving in a Cabinet post, or filling what’s left of his senate term, which ends in 2011, she’ll consider the offer.
When Obama advances to the presidency, the 100-member chamber loses its lone black senator, unless an appointment is made. U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., a dynamic “jelly maker” legislator, unlike his “tree shaker” dad, is interested in the seat too.
Jarrett fielded an eclectic range of questions from colleagues including this one from Eugene Kane of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Will Obama state his full name –including middle name Hussein – at his inaugural swearing in Jan. 20? Jarrett seemed genuinely surprised by the question and offered no answer.
Betty Winston Baye of The Courier-Journal of Louisville asked if Obama has a “redneck strategy” to serve working-class whites from red states like Kentucky. They didn’t support or trust the Democrat, but they need economic help nevertheless, said Baye. Jarrett promised Obama will be a president for all the people. Just replay, she said, what Obama said to skeptics at his Grant Park acceptance speech.
Jarrett promised that there would be no “shadow presidency” in the last 2 ½ months of the Bush presidency. “The decider” will finish his work, and the Obama administration begins theirs in late January. Jarrett said the President Bush invited Obama to the White House for transition briefings, and the invite was probably the quickest of any commander-in-chief in recent history.
That’s a positive sign, she said. Positive indeed, especially considering that outgoing presidents are usually cooperative in transferring the reins of power, according to a presidential scholar who spoke with National Public Radio on Friday. It’s up to the incoming president-elect and staff, full of adrenaline from the bruising political campaign, said the expert, to calm down and listen.
George Curry asked what campaign promise Obama will have to ditch, considering the tanking economy, record unemployment and fragile homeownership? None, said Jarrett. She said they must pursue policies that create jobs, calm the financial markets, and chart new polices in the management of the Iran and Afghanistan wars. For example, the United States spends $10 billion a month in Iraq said Jarrett, while the Iraq government holds on to $79 billion provided by the U.S.
The no-surrender stance on the economy makes sense, but Team Obama is not in the house yet, so they’re not going to say yet what they can’t do.
For him to have any success, changes and sacrifices must come. If not, he risks losing favor very quickly with supporters – and critics – who are just waiting to pounce on his broken promises.
