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appearance at Edgartown’s Old Whaling Church, where his old Harvard Law professor, Charles Ogletree, was holding his annual summer forum on race issues. Obama was introduced to the crowd by another Harvard professor, Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, as “my pick for president in 2012.”
    “[Skip] was a little off in terms of how soon it would happen,” Ogletree reportedly recalled with a chuckle. “Barack walked intothe Old Whaling Church through the back door and the place was packed and folks went wild. I expected him just to wave and thank people, but he gave a wonderful talk. . . . He made quite a splash.”
    The next day, Obama was the guest of honor at a reception at Skip Gates’s house in Oak Bluffs.
    “It was a remarkable gathering of Vineyard veterans who relished the idea that this guy was popular beyond measure,” Ogletree said.
    All of this took place shortly after Obama’s forty-third birthday—and before he had accomplished anything noteworthy beyond his Boston convention speech. He had never worked in the trenches of the Democratic Party, and during his seven years as an Illinois state senator he had taken a pass on tough issues by voting “present” 129 times. But Obama’s lack of experience and preparation for high office didn’t faze Valerie Jarrett, and during his stopover on Martha’s Vineyard she encouraged him to run for president.
    As things turned out, it didn’t take much coaxing on Jarrett’s part. Obama had been thinking about the presidency long before the epiphany on Martha’s Vineyard. He already had the White House in his sights.

    Valerie Jarrett had been fanning Obama’s political ambitions practically from the day they met, in Chicago back in the early 1990s, when Barack was a community organizer and his fiancée, Michelle Robinson, worked for Jarrett in Mayor Daley’s city hall. Jarrett virtually adopted the Obamas after they married and introduced the neophyte politician to the city’s power brokers andLakefront millionaire fund-raisers who would back his political ascension.
    Many of the people I interviewed for this book told me that, for all Obama’s egotism and vanity, he was acutely aware that he would never have become president if it weren’t for Valerie Jarrett. And after he won the White House, Obama rewarded Jarrett by installing her in the second-floor West Wing office once occupied by Karl Rove, and before that by First Lady Hillary Clinton.
    On the wall of her office, Jarrett hung a gift from Obama—a framed copy of the original 1866 petition asking Congress to amend the Constitution to give women the right to vote and, beside it, the final resolution passed by Congress in 1919 granting women that right. “Valerie,” Obama wrote, “You are carrying on a legacy of strong women making history! Happy Birthday, Barack Obama.”
    “Valerie Jarrett is my wife’s cousin,” Vernon Jordan told the author of this book. “Valerie’s mother and my wife Ann are first cousins. I see Valerie at family Sunday night suppers in Washington. She has a huge amount of influence in the White House. The president has the utmost confidence in her and relies on her advice.
    “Her power derives from one simple fact—proximity,” Jordan continued. “No one except Michelle Obama is closer to the president than Valerie. Every cabinet member and politician wants to be on Air Force One and in the Oval Office, and the president has given Valerie the power to handle all that.”
    Early in Obama’s first term, Jarrett often stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom and carried an overnight bag that she kept in her office.But staying over became such a routine that she moved permanently into a room in the family’s private quarters, referred to by the White House staff as “the Residence.” She redecorated the room to suit her taste and kept a complete day-into-evening wardrobe, which was curated by her daughter, Laura, and included expensive designer dresses and gowns from Badgley