White House Memo Shows Obama Administration's Painful Efforts To Defend Valerie Jarrett

White House Memo Shows Obama Administration's Painful Efforts To Defend Valerie Jarrett

A soon-to-be-released book by Mark Leibovich reveals in excruciating detail the White House’s efforts to defend longtime Obama friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett in the run-up to a New York Times profile that ran in September 2012.

Leibovich, himself a reporter for the New York Times, got ahold of a White House memo titled “The Magic of Valerie” that included 33 talking points circulated throughout the administration.

Here are the talking points excerpted in Leibovich’s forthcoming book, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital:

The magic of Valerie is her intellect and her heart. She is an incredibly kind, caring and thoughtful person with a unique ability to pinpoint the voiceless and shine a light on them and the issues they and the President care about with the ultimate goal of making a difference in people’s lives.

Valerie is the perfect combination of smart, savvy and innovative.

Valerie has an enormous capacity for both empathy and sympathy. She balances the need to be patient and judicious with the desire to get things done and work as hard as possible for the American people from the White House.

To know what both drives Valerie Jarrett and why the President values her opinion so much, you benefit greatly from really getting to know the woman.

Valerie is tapped in to people’s experiences, their good times and bad. She knows from her own life what it is like to believe and strive for your dreams.

Valerie expects people to work their hearts out for the President and never forget where you work and the magnitude.

Single mother, woman working to the top in a competitive male dominated world, African, working for change from the grassroots to big business.

Valerie is someone here who other people inside the building know they can trust. (need examples.)

This Town doesn’t come out until July 16, but BuzzFeed picked up a copy at a Hudson Books bookstore in the Newark Airport, where it was already being sol