The Amateur

by Edward Klein

  By the fall of 2011, as the White House geared up for what was expected to be a massively expensive and brutally negative presidential campaign, Daley felt that his usefulness to the president had come to an end. But he kept his feelings to himself. He deeply resented the role Jarrett had played in his downfall, and before he left his post, he wanted to engage her in one last battle.

  A fierce debate had been rocking the White House over a proposal to require church-run hospitals and universities to give their employees free contraception. Jarrett, along with Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, favored the plan. But Bill Daley and Vice President Biden, both Catholics with intimate ties to the church hierarchy, opposed the mandate, arguing that it breached the separation of church and state and would lose the president Catholic votes.

  With Biden’s approval, Daley secretly arranged an Oval Office meeting between Obama and New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, the head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who argued that the policy violated the principle of religious freedom. Daley knew he was running a risk by scheduling such a meeting. Obama didn’t like to hear anyone tell him that he was wrong, and White House sources later revealed that the president had felt uncomfortable being put on the spot by Dolan, who would shortly be elevated to cardinal. However, Obama’s discomfort was nothing compared to Valerie Jarrett’s. She hadn’t been informed about the meeting, and when she learned about Daley’s end-run, she went to the president and vented her anger.

  Obama faced a major rift among his closest advisers on an immensely sensitive social issue. Who should he back? On one side stood Daley, Biden, and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the deputy chief of staff who had coordinated the passage of ObamaCare but opposed the contraceptive mandate because, she argued, it would lose Obama the support of liberal as well as conservative Catholics. On the other side stood Jarrett, Sebelius, and David Plouffe, who had replaced David Axelrod as Obama’s senior in-house political adviser, and argued that since most Catholics flouted the church’s dictates on birth control, they wouldn’t penalize Obama at the ballot box.

  Largely lost in the debate was a simple fact: a mandate forcing religious institutions to go against their beliefs and conscience and offer contraception was constitutionally wrong and politically stupid. That, however, didn’t stop Obama from announcing he was going ahead with the mandate, thereby pleasing his Democratic base and adding another victory in his crusade to move America to the Left.

  His victory dance was short-lived, however. For within a matter of weeks, he had to revise his original proposal to quiet the political storm that he had unleashed.

  In January 2012, a disgusted Bill Daley abruptly resigned, embarrassing the president. Obama called a hasty press conference and, grim-faced, announced his new—and fourth, counting Pete Rouse, who served in an interim role between Emanuel and Daley—chief of staff, Jacob Lew, the obscure White House budget director.

  It was a new low, even for Barack Obama.

  The Daley debacle underscored a truth universally acknowledged by Obama’s friends and adversaries—namely, that after more than three years in office, his administration was still amateurish and in disarray. The inability of Daley, with all his people skills, to bridge some of the differences between the White House and Congress emphasized just how isolated and out of touch Obama and his team were from the realities of Washington.

  “Every modern president, perhaps with the exception of Gerry Ford, entered the White House with a large quotient of self-assurance and arrogance,” a top aide to the Republican House leadership told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “But what makes this president unique is that he is so beyond that. Not only is he self-assured, the smartest guy in the room, but in his estimation all he has to do is state something and the scales will fall from your eyes. Despite the storyline people create, that he is a thoughtful, non-ideological compromiser, he has a distinct leftist ideology and can’t make a decision that takes him out of his comfort zone.

  “My first experience with him was in January 2010, just after his State of the Union speech, when we went to the White House for a bicameral meeting in the Cabinet room,” the Republican aide continued. “The president said he needed to find common cause on his cap and trade energy policy. He said, ‘I’ve taken on my party by being pro-nuclear, so now you have to give me cap and trade.’ By that, he meant he was willing to lift the ban on the construction of nuclear energy sites. But in fact, he hadn’t taken any substantive position on nuclear power. It was just words.

  “Not long after that, there was another meeting in the Cabinet Room. This time the president said, ‘The economy is not doing all that bad. You guys [the Republicans] have to stop being negative.’ And [Speaker of the House] John Boehner said, ‘Mr. President, the problem with the economy is the uncertainty on taxes, cap and trade, and healthcare. Until there is certainty, businesses are not going to invest.’ And the president slapped his hand on the table and said, ‘You’re WRONG! I talk to CEOs all the time and they tell me the problem is Washington doesn’t work.’ Of course, by that he meant that Washington didn’t work the way he wanted it to work.

  “He’s got so little appreciation and knowledge of how Congress works—that it’s an equal branch of government. If you challenge him, he’s furious. He gives you the death stare. He has no close relationship with any member of the Senate. And certainly not in the House. John Boehner says that, in his twenty years in Washington, he’s been through four administrations, and that this one is completely opaque. He doesn’t know who makes the decisions and how they make them in the Obama White House.

  “All this goes back to the fact that Obama is a leftist. He doesn’t understand that the way to make this town work, both sides have to get up from the table thinking that they’ve won something. This White House is incapable of doing that.”

  It wasn’t only Republicans who found Barack Obama infuriatingly out of touch. Even the mainstream media, which had fawned over Obama for the better part of three years, began to wake up to the truth.

  “This president,” wrote the Washington Post’s Scott Wilson, “endures with little joy the small talk and back-slapping of retail politics, rarely spends more than a few minutes on a rope line, refuses to coddle even his biggest donors. His relationship with Democrats on Capitol Hill is frosty, to be generous. Personal lobbying on behalf of legislation? He prefers to leave that to Vice President Joe Biden, an old-school political charmer....

  “Obama’s isolation,” Wilson continued, “is increasingly relevant as the 2012 campaign takes shape, because it is pushing him toward a reelection strategy that embraces the narrowcast politics he once rejected as beneath him. Now he is focused on securing the support of traditional Democratic allies—minorities, gays, young people, seniors, Jews—rather than on making new friends....”

  If Obama’s reelection strategy depended on the kindness of old friends, he was in for a disappointment. With the exception of union leaders like Andy Stern—the former president of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union, who had visited the White House more than fifty times—most of the president’s major supporters had been given the brush-off and were nursing bruised egos. This was especially true of high-profile Democrats like Oprah Winfrey, Caroline Kennedy, and leading members of the Jewish community—all of whom have been snubbed by the Obama White House.

  Indeed, one of the most important stories in Washington was just how angry and disillusioned these Democratic luminaries were with the president and first lady. A critical question hovering over the 2012 presidential campaign was whether these onetime friends would return to the Obama fold.

  PART III

  WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE

  We walk alone in the world. Friends,

  such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  CHAPTER 13

  OPRAH’S SACRIFICE

  Oprah is from the world of Christmas— mysti
cal, cheerful, appealing, even beguiling. She is no policy wonk, but is cast well as a black, female St. Nick bringing joy to the world. Her endorsement softens Obama, wraps him up, and makes of him a Christmas present to America.

  —Dick Morris

  Shortly after the 2008 presidential election, Oprah Winfrey traveled to Washington, D.C., to nail down an interview for O, The Oprah Magazine with Michelle Obama. Oprah expected the president-elect and his wife to give her a reception fit for visiting royalty, and for the occasion, she took along Gayle King, the magazine’s editor-at-large and her constant companion.

  More than a year and a half had passed since Oprah announced that she was throwing her support behind Barack Obama in his primary race against Hillary Clinton. The endorsement had represented a calculated risk for the queen of daytime television. It was one thing for her to recommend a book or launch the career of Dr. Phil, but it was quite another for her to back a political candidate. Oprah worried that her audience, which represented a broad economic, cultural, and political spectrum of American women, would resent her becoming a partisan for a political candidate.

  As it turned out, a sizable chunk of her audience took offense and stopped watching her show. No sooner had Oprah hit the campaign trail, appearing beside Obama at one primary rally after another, than her personal favorability ratings began to slide, falling from 74 to 66 percent. Her unfavorable ratings suffered an even worse fate; they jumped from 17 to 26 percent. Most important, her endorsement of Obama caused a significant drop in the ratings of her TV show and in the rates that she could charge advertisers.

  Was the sacrifice worth it? As an entertainer and businesswoman, Oprah had suffered a setback. But she felt proud that she had been instrumental in electing the first black president of the United States, and she believed that she had earned a place in the president-elect’s brain trust. As the New York Times editorialized: “Her early and enthusiastic endorsement of Senator Obama ... played a big role in winning over bit parts of Middle America to the Obama cause.” Two economists at the University of Maryland, College Park, estimated that Oprah’s endorsement netted Obama 1,015,559 votes and decided the primary election. And the Pew Research Center found that Oprah’s appearance on the stage with Obama made him more acceptable to African-American voters, some of whom had wondered if he was “black enough.”

  During the early weeks of the presidential transition, as Obama stitched together his new White House team, he appeared to embrace Oprah as one of his trusted advisers. When she phoned, he dropped everything and took her call. They huddled over strategy. Of all of Obama’s unofficial White House advisers, Oprah had unparalleled access, input, influence, and power.

  However, by the time Oprah and Gayle landed in Washington a month after the election, Oprah’s relationship with the Obamas had come unglued.

  Oprah had tried to ignore the ominous change in tone coming from the Obama transition team. As Barack Obama’s inauguration drew near, Oprah’s calls to Michelle went unreturned. Instead, Oprah heard from Max Doebler, the newly appointed White House ceremonies coordinator, who told Oprah that she needed to talk to him first about the interview. What’s more, Doebler said, Oprah had to run her interview questions past Jeff Stephens, a deputy speechwriter, for prior approval.

  “It was a pain as far as Oprah was concerned,” said a high-ranking executive of Harpo Studios, Oprah’s production company. “Oprah isn’t a snob, but she doesn’t like having to put up with mid-level clerks. These guys were $75,000-a-year men. Oprah was like, ‘Hello, what is this shit!’ But she did it; she went to Washington with Gayle and met with both Doebler and Stephens to hash out the details. I was surprised that she went there, hat in hand.”

  It soon became apparent that something had gone wrong between Oprah and the new administration—or, more precisely, between Oprah and Michelle Obama. The problem seemed to originate from two of Michelle’s advisers, Valerie Jarrett and Desirée Rogers, the new White House social secretary. They resented Oprah’s meddling in their bailiwick. Among other things, Oprah had a plan to redecorate the Lincoln bedroom. She also had ideas about how Michelle could put more zing into White House social events.

  As the person who controlled access to the first couple, Valerie Jarrett saw Oprah as a potential threat to her power. If Oprah went unchecked, she would bypass Valerie and go directly to the president and first lady. What good was it being the gatekeeper if you couldn’t lock the gate when you wanted? And so Valerie set about turning Michelle against Oprah. Oprah was too close to the president . . . Oprah was acting like she was the first lady... Oprah didn’t know her place... Oprah was a bad influence.... Valerie advised Michelle to “distance herself” from Oprah and cut her out of the White House inner circle.

  It didn’t take much to convince Michelle. As Michelle knew only too well, her husband had a compelling need to win the approval of strong women like Oprah. He seemed to be in awe of the talk show host, sometimes giving her advice priority over Michelle’s. For instance, Oprah thought that Obama was overexposing himself on television and told him to pull back. Though Michelle disagreed, Obama listened to Oprah and restricted his TV appearances. As far as Michelle was concerned, Oprah’s billions and her elite lifestyle disqualified her as an adviser to Barack, who had no truck with wealthy people, except as a source of campaign contributions, and was a redistributionist at heart.

  There was another reason for Michelle’s negative attitude toward Oprah. “Michelle is very jealous, I would say unusually so,” said someone who was very close to Oprah. “Most people after years of marriage have trust and don’t follow their husbands around and check on them. Michelle doesn’t seem to trust Barack at all. She insists on knowing his every movement and drops in on him at all kinds of odd times. It’s been the buzz of the White House. Oprah has gossiped about it and giggled about how obsessive Michelle is. This is what she hears from her friends who work in the East Wing, and, believe me, she has some good sources. Everybody wants to be Oprah’s source, and she loves gossip.

  “Michelle makes it clear to her inner circle, and this certainly includes Valerie, that she wants women around Barack watched and wants info about who he has an eye for and gets touchy with,” this person continued. “The thing is, she knows, like everybody, about JFK’s shenanigans, and she thinks, hey, JFK was young and good looking like my guy.

  “Michelle talked to Gayle King about it, just talking as friends. She has become much closer to Gayle than to Oprah, to Oprah’s anger and surprise. She told Gayle that if she found out her husband was running around she wouldn’t keep quiet. Gayle was kind of astonished that she would say that.”

  Eventually, Oprah got a green light for her interview, and on February 17, 2009, she and Gayle climbed into Oprah’s custom-built, $42 million Bombardier Global Express XRS and jetted off to Washington. The women had talked about having Oprah’s $335,000 Bentley Azure convertible pick them up at Reagan National Airport and drive them to the White House with the top down, even though it was a cold, cloudy day with the temperature in the thirties. But it occurred to them that Michelle wasn’t going to be waiting at the front door of the White House and wouldn’t notice their grand entrance.4 So they ditched the Bentley idea, and counted on the White House sending a suburban and driver to meet them at the airport. But that didn’t happen, either. Instead, Oprah had to pay for a limo ride to the White House.

  When they arrived, Oprah and Gayle weren’t treated like VIPs; they were made to wait at the security gate like ordinary visitors. Once inside, they had to cool their heels for a long time before they were shown up to the Yellow Oval Room in the family residence, where Michelle finally made an appearance.

  “Michelle told Oprah and Gayle what great light the room got,” said a Harpo executive who spoke to Oprah later about the meeting. “But it was a grim, overcast, washed-out sort of a day. Michelle also told them how great it was to be waited on by a large staff, as if Oprah wouldn’t know about that. And oddly enough, Michelle
mentioned that the White House cooks made the best pie in the world. But she didn’t offer Oprah or Gayle any. It was almost an act of cruelty. Instead, she served them almonds, not an Oprah fave.

  “Michelle seemed to direct her answers and asides to Gayle, rather than Oprah,” the Harpo exec continued. “It made both Oprah and Gayle very uncomfortable, which may have been the idea. Oprah struck back by asking Michelle whether she and the president were still fighting a lot. Taken aback by such a personal question, Michelle stumbled, then finally managed to say that the marital arguing had been a ‘growth point’ in their relationship.”

  Months later, when Michelle announced she was going to devote herself to fighting childhood obesity, Oprah offered to pitch in. She sent word to Michelle that she would love to have her on her TV show, where Michelle could tell millions of viewers about healthy nutrition for their children and families. Oprah also wanted to broadcast a show from the White House on the subject of exercise and weight control.

  Once again, Oprah waited in vain for a response from the White House. When an answer finally arrived, it was curt to the point of rudeness: “That wouldn’t fit into the First Lady’s plans.” According to sources for this book, Oprah told Gayle King that she felt like getting Michelle on the phone and really letting her have it. Oprah raged: “Michelle hates fat people and doesn’t want me waddling around the White House.”

  Eventually, Gayle convinced Oprah to let her draft a diplomatic note expressing Oprah’s disappointment. But an Oprah aide, who was close to several members of the White House staff, learned that Michelle treated Gayle’s letter with scorn. “Oprah only wants to cash in, using the White House as a backdrop for her show to perk up her ratings,” Michelle was quoted as telling her staff. “Oprah, with her yo-yo dieting and huge girth, is a terrible role model. Kids will look at Oprah, who’s rich and famous and huge, and figure it’s okay to be fat.”