Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Hello and welcome to Chatham House. It’s wonderful to see so many of you here this evening. It’s no surprise, Valerie, that the room is full.
I’m Leslie Vinjamuri. I know many of you. I’m Head of the US and Americas Programme here at Chatham House, and Dean of the Academy. It is – it’s always an honour to Chair an event at Chatham House, but this is a specific and particular honour for me to Chair you, Valerie, given your many years of service, on so many dimensions. I want to mention just a few of them. We are all, of course, very familiar with you for your time in President Obama’s White House. Valerie Jarrett was President Obama’s longest-serving Senior Advisor, from 2009 to 2017, the entire time.
She has shaped the past decade of US political history, but of course, has had many other roles. In her current life, there are many things that you are doing, Valerie, but I wanted to mention just a couple. Valerie is Senior Advisor to the Obama Foundation. She is Co-Chair of the United States of Women, Chair of the Board of When We All Vote, and I think we will have a moment to talk about those, in our conversation, and many other boards. But, even before she joined the White House with President Obama, she had had a long and distinguished career, of both private and also public service, and if you haven’t read the book, you can get a copy at the end, but you will read about the decision to make that transition, which I took very much to heart. I won’t share it with you at this moment.
But, Valerie, you worked as Deputy Chief of Staff for Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago. You held key positions for the city, as a Chairman of the Chicago Transit Board, Commissioner of Planning and Development. You are CEO of the Habitat Company. You sat on many boards, including as Vice Chair to the University of Chicago, Chair to the University of Chicago Medical Centre, Board of the Chicago Stock Exchange, that is the beginning of the list of many. So, just a very quick snapshot of your tremendous service to the United States, and, really, to women across the world, and to people across the world. So thank you, from all of us at Chatham House, for taking the time to speak with us tonight, ‘cause it does mean a lot.
Valerie Jarrett
Well, thank you. Thank you, Leslie, and good evening, everybody. I am so glad the room is full. Somebody said, “Well, if there are 300 people, is that pressure?” I said, “No, 12 people would have been pressure and disappointing,” so I’ve come a long way to spend some time with you and I’m delighted to be here, so thank you for welcoming me.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Thank you. Tonight’s session, I should just say, is on the record. It is livestreamed, so when you ask a question, be aware that everybody can watch you, not only today, but in days to come. Please put your – so that’s an incentive, right, to speak up? Please put your phones on silent, so that we don’t lose anything in the conversation. And please do tweet, because you all have a seat here, but many people don’t, and they will watch, but they will also follow what you have to say on Twitter, so the hashtag is on the wall.
Valerie Jarrett
And I’m ValerieJarrett. Pretty easy to find on Twitter.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And Valerie’s got a great Twitter feed, which I was enjoying reading just last night. So, yes, Valerie, we’re going to have a little bit of a conversation here, and then we will open it up to all of you, so please do have your questions in mind, because I hope to get to as many of you as we possibly can.
Valerie, in your book, you talk a lot about your early life, and not just gratuitously, and I say it’s very important to your entire experience, not only in the White House, not only with President Obama, but your career as a public service – as a public servant. So I wondered if you could start by telling us a little bit about that, why it was so important? Where you were born, and your different experiences, and who you are, and how that shaped your path to the White House, your relationship with the President, and just your experience of a public service, generally?
Valerie Jarrett
That was a big question. So, I was born in Shiraz, Iran, and the reason why I was born there is, that in the 50s, my father, who was a Physician, was looking for a job in the United States and he wanted to teach at an academic teaching hospital and he really couldn’t find a job equivalent to his white counterparts. And so he and my mother, who had been through some experience to say the least, started looking for job opportunities outside of the United States and he landed a job offer Chairing the Department of Pathology, and helping to start a brand new hospital in Shiraz, Iran. Obviously, at the time, the United States and Iran had far – well, had very strong diplomatic relationships, and their country was very interested in improvements along technology, healthcare and infrastructure. And so, Physicians from all over the world were going to Iran and helping setting up these hospitals and so, I was the second baby born in the Namazi Hospital. They practised on some other baby first, and then along came Valerie, and we lived there until I was five.
And from there, he was recruited to come here and he joined the Galton Labs and continued research that he was doing on fava beans, and we’re not going to talk a lot about the fava bean research, but it was really ground-breaking research, and he continued that here at University College of London for a year. We lived in Muswell Hill. And then he gave a paper at an international conference and the Dean of the University of Chicago Medical Centre was at the conference and offered him a tenured track position in my mother’s home town. And so he used to often say to me that sometimes the shortest distance to where you really want to go means you have to be prepared to take the long route around, and he certainly took a circuitous route to get to Chicago, and then I was raised there.
And I think part of the advantage of being born outside of the United States and looking at the United States from afar, is that, well, first of all, I think I can walk in a room and find something in common with anybody, and the hospital compound on which I lived had children from all over the world and we – I spoke French, and I spoke Farsi, and I spoke English, and sometimes I put them all in the same sentence at the same time, ‘cause that’s what kids do. But it gave me this sense of comfort, with people who had different backgrounds than myself.
I also think living in a country that, at the time, was very underdeveloped meant that I didn’t for granted clean water, food, civil liberties of being in a democracy, all of that, I had a comparison, when I was very early. And then finally, I think a lot of people in the United States thinks the United States is the greatest country on earth, but I think living outside of the United States teaches you, it’s not the only country on earth, and that we could actually learn a great deal beyond our shores. And those three lessons of my early life really didn’t settle in, I think, until I was an adult, and the very first conversation I had with Barack Obama, while I was trying desperately to recruit his fiancée to come and work with me in local government in Chicago, and he was resisting my extraordinarily generous offer, I thought, and so she suggested I had dinner with the two of them to talk it out. And so, at that dinner, he said, “Ah, so where are you from?” I said, “Chicago.” “Where’d you grow up?” “Chicago” “Were you born there?” “No, I was born in Iran” and I used to try not to talk about it, because most people hadn’t had a similar experience.
He did, not that he was born outside of the United States, he was born inside of the United States, but he did spend several years in Indonesia. And the three lessons that I learned, with my experience in Iran, were very similar to what he had experienced in Indonesia. And I think, in a sense, shaped a lot of our perspective on foreign policy, in terms of the United States not being an isolationist country, but one that recognises our role in participating in the global life and the improvements of the world, which require, I think, solutions from more than just one country, and that we can’t turn our back on the world, we should embrace the world, and a lot of that, I think, came from our early life.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
We’re going to get right to the heart of these foreign policy questions, ‘cause they’re so important to everything we do at Chatham House, but before we do, I want to ask a couple – I want to follow-up on this on one dimension in particular, ‘cause one of the things that you – we have a lot of young people here tonight, which is always fabulous. It’s very important to us at Chatham House that what we call the next generation of leaders, or just people who are engaging in all these important questions, really do turn up. And one of the things that you talk about in your book is the importance of mentors and you talk – you tell a very careful story about your – the first mentor that you had, but I’m also – you know, if you could say a little bit about that, but also, what it’s meant to you, to be a mentor, during your time in the White House and after.
Valerie Jarrett
Yeah, so I spent the first six years, after law school, practising at a lot of big corporate law firms, two of them in Chicago, and I had this, kind of, plan in my head, when I came out of college, I don’t know how many of you made plans, but I always have this, like, ten year plan, and I was going to develop my passion in the law, and then I was going to get married, and have a child, and live happily ever after, that was my plan. And so my plan, in my book, begins on the very first page, where I’m sitting ten years out, in my office, with my back turned to the door, crying. And I was in a terrible marriage, I could not stand practising law at a big law firm, I’m sorry if I’ve offended those of you who are at big law firms, but it wasn’t for me. I just didn’t feel interested or passionate about what I was doing, at all. And I had a good friend, who was older and a bit of a mentor to me then, and he said, “Why don’t you think about public service, you’ll feel a part of something bigger, more important than yourself. You can give back to the city that you love if you work in local government,” and Mayor Harold Washington had just been re-elected to his second term as Mayor of Chicago, first black Mayor of Chicago, and I had knocked on doors for him, like a, you know, just a junior person. Only had met him a few times, thought he was just delicious, his vocabulary, his progressive agenda, his love for our city, and I got swept up, and so, I quit that fancy job, and I was the first Lawyer in my family, and my parents were very proud of me. I was the envy of a lot of my friends, but it was just not fulfilling for me.
I joined local government. I walked in the first day and my boss met me at the door and he said, “Let me take you to your office.” It’s always dangerous when people use air quotes, right? So, he takes me to a cubicle in the bowels of the Law Department, with a window facing an alley, and I will admit to you, I did a bit of a gut check, but I thought, “Actually, this is where I belong,” and that first day of work, for reasons I do not remember, my mother drove me to work, and I’m a full grown woman, I don’t know why I needed a ride from my mum. I’m married with a child at that time, but maybe it was just so she could say to me, when she dropped me off, “I can’t believe I paid all that tuition, for you to go and work here. What are you doing with your life?” And I said, “Mum, it’s going to be great, I’m going to be able to give back to this city.”
And my client, my principle client, when I worked for the Law Department in the city, was an African-American woman who had the title Assistant to the Mayor for Finance and Development, and I was doing finance and development in the Law Department, and she just took me under her wing, and helped me in more ways than I could describe. It would take the rest of our time together. She took me to meetings that weren’t about legal issues, but were about policies, so I could understand the nexus between the policies we were developing, and the legal implications. She let me present to the Mayor. She would come by my house in the evening, because I – by the time we’d worked together a year, I was a single mum, and I would say, I’d say, “Look, Lucille, I’ll come back to work. I’ve got to go home and put Laura to bed,” and she would say, “How about I’ll just stop by your house, on my way home, and you can put her to bed, and then we’ll continue to work?” And who does that for you, right? She did it for me.
And then the final thing she did, is she convinced me, two years in, to ask for a promotion. And, out of nowhere, in the middle of a meeting, she said, “Valerie, you should ask for a promotion,” and I said, “When my boss thinks that I’m deserving of a promotion, he’ll give me one.” And she said, “Well, that’s maybe the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” And she said, “And I don’t want you to talk to your boss, I want you to talk to the Head of the Department, because, actually, you should be your bosses boss, ‘cause you had the six years in the private sector, your boss doesn’t know anything about finance, she’s a Condemnation Lawyer, she comes to you with all these questions, go and say you want to leapfrog over her.” Well, I just ignored her for, like, weeks and it got to the point where I didn’t want to see her, because I was afraid she was going to bring it up again, and she would. So I finally go in, and I ask for this promotion, and my boss listens to my long explanation for why I should have what I consider to be a rather obscene power grab, and at the end of it, he said, “Okay.” So I go back and I say, “Lucille, he said, “Okay,”” and she said, “Oh, isn’t that lovely?”
Fast forward 30 years, 30 years’ later, I’ve written my book, I go and I call Lucille and I said, “Look, I’ve said these things about you in the book. Most of them are very flattering.” I did mention that she didn’t speak to me for 15 years after. I wouldn’t leave City Government when she left, after Mayor Daley was elected, she thought I should leave and I didn’t. So I said, “This is all in the book,” and I said, “But, you know, Lucille, I’ve been thinking about that. Did you ever say anything to Judd about me, the Chair of the department, before I did?” And she chuckled and she said, “I might have.” All this time, I thought I had made that compelling case for why I should get the promotion.
And I realised part of her being my mentor was not just to advocate for me when I wasn’t in the room, which you need, not just a mentor, but an advocate, but she also made me go and ask for myself, and I think that oftentimes, people, particularly women, are not as good at self-advocacy and so it was such a good lesson to learn. And because she was so helpful in my life, I wanted to do the same thing, I wanted to pay it forward, in a sense, to other young people, who I saw struggling either, because they were in an unhappy job, and they didn’t have the confidence to swerve out of their comfort zone and do something that might be risky, but might actually make their life the adventure it was meant to be, or that they just needed somebody to say, it’s okay to speak up, and tell your story. And I was – well, I was dumb, for a lot of reasons, when I was young, but one of the reasons that I was most dumb, is I thought I was superhuman. Like, I thought I could be the perfect spouse, and the perfect mum, and the perfect Lawyer, and I would work all day, and I’d come home and put Laura to bed, and then go back and work more, with Lucille, and then when that was all done, I would make baby food from scratch. Why? I think the jars would have been just fine. Really, they would have been just fine, but I had it in my head that I had to do everything, and I didn’t – and I knew it was hard, but I used to say, “Well, if I were just smarter, or if I just, you know, could work a little harder, better organised, and more efficient, slept fewer hours, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard,” and then I began to realise, no, no, it’s just hard.
But I wasn’t telling my story, and so that’s the other thing I encouraged – I encourage everybody, but particularly young people, working families, you can’t expect the people with whom you’re working to either invest in you, and mentor you, or be aware of what’s happening in your life, unless you tell them. And I think, when I was a young working professional, I thought to tell my story would signal to the men with whom I was working that I wasn’t as serious about my job. So, when I’m nine months pregnant, I’m, like, pretending nothing’s happening down here. I gained 90lbs. There was a lot going on, and it was obvious to anybody who could see, but I just had this sense of how it should be, and I think the good news is that in certain ways, in that period, I was shifting not as quickly as I would like. But I think part of what we have to do is, when we are able to raise our voices and tell our stories, and find our voices, and for those who aren’t able, like, I often thought, when I was a young working mum, hanging on by my fingertips, what must it be like for somebody who’s working two jobs in a factory, minimum wage, no safety net for their children, when one thing goes wrong, they’re, like, one paycheque away from bankruptcy, one illness away from bankruptcy, what do you do? Which is why, when I finally was in a position to advocate for women in the White House, I was so thrilled to Chair the White House Council on Women and Girls, and fight for gender equity, through the lens of my early experience. My early experience as a working mum with means and support and everything going for me.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
So, that was the easy part. Then you get to the White House, and you face quite a complex environment. You manage to do an extraordinary number of things, and the Affordable Care Act, bringing over 100,000 troops home, inheriting a financial crisis, facing quite a tough context with Congress and you say, at one point in the book, that you realised that instead of trying to deal with the Congress that wasn’t working with you, you should have perhaps – and you then did work even more with Mayors, and with Governors, and overseeing the legitimisation of gay marriage, so many things.
You faced, presumably, tremendous obstacles, and when you look back at all of those accomplishments, and which one, sort of, stands out in your mind as having been, perhaps, you know, the biggest win, but perhaps were some of the toughest obstacles to get there?
Valerie Jarrett
Well, almost every day, there was something magical, so I – but to pick, I’d, maybe I would pick two. Number one would be the Affordable Care Act. I never understood why people were so grumpy about trying to provide affordable healthcare for every American, why is that so odd to them? Particularly because our plan was modelled after the one that Governor Romney had passed in Massachusetts, a Republican Governor, by passing some piece of law that was inactive in Massachusetts, and so why was there all the hoopla about this? And I think one of the ways in which I was naïve going into Washington, look I’m from Chicago, it’s pretty rough and tumble. The politics there is, you know, not for beanbags as they say. I’m not sure what that means, but you can just conjure up an image, it’s not like throwing beanbags. But I thought, going to Washington, that it would be challenging, but that we would be able to get people to see – work on issues of the common good, that we would – we were focused, from the very beginning, on what was in the best interests of the American people, and we thought we could convince people to come to the table, particularly ‘cause we were willing to meet them halfway, and we weren’t pushing the public option, for example, which a lot of Democrats thought we should have. We were saying, “Okay, let’s continue the private insurance market, but ensure that anyone with a pre-existing condition isn’t discriminated against. That we create these exchanges, so people who don’t have insurances affordable because of their employer doesn’t provide it, can do it, or people who want to go start their own business can do it, free from not being able to have insurance, cover women with – for preventive care, and make prescription drugs more affordable,” you know, and to me, that was, like, ma than apple pie. But it was hard, and the Republicans made up their mind from day one that they just weren’t going to meet us, even one inch of the way, and I mention in my book, we put 200 amendments into the Affordable Care Act, trying to get a single Republican to vote for it, and in the end, we were able to get none.
The night it passed, I was home, and we knew we had the votes, ‘cause we’d counted them, and I even got in my pyjamas and I got a bowl of popcorn, turned on the television, poured a glass of wine, and prepared to watch the vote. And I got a phone call from President Obama’s Assistant, and she said, “President Obama would like everybody, who worked on the Affordable Care Act, to come back to the White House and watch the vote together.” And I said, “You know what, Katie? I’m good. I got my popcorn, I got my glass of wine, tell him I’m with him in spirit,” and she cleared her throat and she said, “[Clears throat] President Obama would like everybody, who worked on the Affordable Care Act, to come back to the White House.” So I thought, “Oh, that’s right, I do work for the guy.” So, I got dressed, and it’s only ten minutes. So I slipped back to the White House, we watched the vote. I was glad I was there with everyone and then, out of nowhere, he invites everybody up to the Truman Balcony to celebrate. So that’s 100 people who had been watching it. The only way he got away with that is Mrs Obama was out of town, and I could just imagine the Secret Service in their phone, “Renegade plus 100 coming to the Truman Balcony.”
And so, that night, late, late, late at night, and I’m saying, like, 2:00 in the morning, we stayed up there forever. I sidled up next to President Obama, and I said, “How do you feel tonight, compared to election night?” He was so happy that night and he’d gone around and thanked everybody for the role that they played, including, like, the junior most person on my staff, who I have a photograph of that moment in my book, she’s gazing up at him, and he’s going, “Because of you, this happened,” and I mean, he was euphoric, and it was an unseasonably warm spring evening, and we had worked so hard to get there. I mean, against all odds, one would have said, and as we often say things seem impossible until they’re inevitable and then it became inevitable. So I said, “How do you feel tonight, compared to election night?” And, ‘cause election night in Chicago was also unseasonably warm, and he was pretty happy that night, and he said, “There’s no comparison.” He said, “Election night was simply a means to get to tonight,” and I thought, “That’s why I work for you,” ‘cause he never – it was not about him. It was always about in service of the American people and what we could do for them.
And then, briefly, I would say the second moment was when the Supreme Court ruled in favour of marriage equality, and when President Obama took office in the United States, same sex marriage was legal in two states. And by the time the Supreme Court ruled, six years later, it was 37 states and the District of Columbia, so a lot of progress, state-by-state-by-state to your point about working with Governors and Mayors. And I often wondered, if the case had come up when he was first elected, would the Supreme Court have reached the same decision? I don’t know, because I do think the Court is influenced by culture, and we know it is, because they’ve reversed themselves at times, because of culture or pressures. And he gave a speech that morning, in the Rose Garden, where he talked about that sometimes, it feels like a thunderbolt, and we were so proud to have been there at that thunderbolt, but if you think of the thunderbolt, then you’re ignoring the decades of work that lead up to those thunderbolts, and I think that right now, in the context of everything going on in the United States, I think it’s important, as important as ever, to keep the long view, and recognise that democracies have zigs and zags, and that you work, and you work, and you work, and then suddenly, you make progress. But you take steps back sometimes, and it just shows you just have to work harder.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
So one more question for you, before we open it up, so prepare. So you’ve pointed to two incredibly important successes that remain intact: the Affordable Care Act, gay marriage, and then we, sort of – those of us here, who come to Chatham House every day and/or who come in from the outside are looking at a lot of big issues that you know very well, in international affairs, that so far don’t look the same: the Iran deal, the current administrations pulled out, the Paris Accord, deregu – environ – deregulation of environment, on any number of dimensions, the current leadership has pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we know the list, it’s very long. So when you, you know, having worked so hard for so many things, not only on these really important domestic policy items, but on foreign policy and seeing so many of them unravelled by the current leadership, how do you, sort of, weigh that up? Do you think that this is the new state of affairs for a very long time to come?
Valerie Jarrett
Well goodness, I hope not. I certainly hope not, no.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Or are you more optimistic in the medium to long run?
Valerie Jarrett
I’ll say a few things. I’ll say, first of all, it was not about our hard work. It was always about in service, and that’s what you do, when you have the baton, you were supposed to run with it as hard as you can. You know when you go in that it’s four years, it’s eight if you’re lucky, and that every single day counts, and it’s why we tried so hard to get Congress, for example, to pass comprehensive immigration reform, because we knew if President Obama just did the DREAM Act or DACA as we called it, that the next President could reverse it, and we see right now, so many young people in America terrified, who I consider are citizens, by every virtue, except a piece of paper. Who want to be a part of our community, who give back, they serve in the military, and they teach in our schools. They are the fabric of our community, and they’re terrified.
And so the point is, is that you try to work on their behalf. You do the people’s work, and I learned early on, working in local government in Chicago, when your constituents are so proximate, you know, you see them in the grocery store, and they come up to you. You take your daughter to the park, they have an opinion, you know, they put notes under your door. One woman actually started lobbying my daughter. She was six, I mean, she comes home and she’s telling me, trying to explain what someone was telling her. I’m like, “Darling, you don’t have to talk to strangers.” But I do, and I think that experience, understanding the public service it’s 24/7, the people are counting on you. It is with their lives that you are trying to improve, that’s your purpose in being there, and you’re supposed to work really hard. That’s why they say public service. It’s not supposed to be a walk in the park and so, when people frame the question like, “Oh, you guys work so hard, don’t you feel badly?” No, I feel badly ‘cause of the docker kids who are worrying about their future, or the families who are being separated at our border, without having any idea how to match them back up with their parents, because we couldn’t get comprehensive immigration reform through. Or I worry about the people with pre-existing conditions, I have a pre-existing condition, one in two Americans have one, and I bet one and two people in this room at least have a pre-existing condition, and you’re worrying about what’s going to happen if that gets repealed.
The reason I’m still optimistic, and I’m very optimistic, is because I think, in a sense, for the United States, our election was a real wake up call. As I went through the stages of grief after the election, and I went through all of them, sometimes all in the same day, I just kept going round and around and around, and I kind of just went, well, what happened? I mean, everybody’s, like, what in the world happened? How could a country that had elected Barack Obama twice, elect his successor? I know. It’s how I make peace with myself. But – so, there are probably lots of reasons, but the one that I am focusing on, because it’s the only one I can do anything about, is that 43% of eligible voters in the United States did not vote in the election, shame on them. And so then you have to say, well, why? And a whole host of reasons, “I got busy that day.” “I don’t believe in the institutions anymore.” “I didn’t like either candidate.” I don’t know, but – so we have to change that culture, and I think what I have seen, since the inauguration beginning with the Women’s March and then, the young kids from Parkland, who travelled the country last summer, registering young people to vote all over the country, from the number of women and people of colour, who ran for election in the midterm elections, we have a record number of women in Congress, we have six women running for President, I think there is a level of activism and engagement that, frankly, we did not have in 2016, why?
I don’t know, maybe people were complacent and they thought, “Well, things have been going along a certain way, they always will,” and so I think the lesson is, of course, no they will not, unless it’s the will of the people. The will of the people is the check and the balance that we need, and when people advocate that responsibility, the most basic responsibility of citizenship is voting. It’s why I believe in mandatory voting. I may not feel I could get that done in the United States, but in lieu of that, Mrs Obama and I started an organisation called When We All Vote, and it is non-partisan. We’re just trying to get everybody to vote. We’re trying to change the culture in the United States around voting, beginning with young people, who frankly, have the most to lose from an election that doesn’t go their way. They’re going to be impacted the longest period of time and so, I have seen this activism, and it’s the #MeToo Movement, it’s Time’s Up, it’s people who have been responding to Police violence.
In Chicago, we have a black, gay woman, who’s the Mayor, and people said, “That would never happen in Chicago,” and so there have been all of these examples of activism and energy, and I still see so many ordinary people, doing extraordinary things in their communities, who still care about people who are less fortunate than themselves, who feel this sense of the social compact, if you will. And so that’s what gives me energy, and I hope this is just a zigzag, or a step backwards, to use the analogy I used earlier. And the question will be, can we continue the momentum, in terms of voter participation, that we saw in the midterm elections into the next Presidential race? And I think if we do, we’ll have a democratic President in the United States.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And so, I guess, it raises the question, you know, if people vote, it’s the will of the people to keep America engaged with the rest of the world, and I think, for this audience, it’s an incredibly important question, because there is the, sort of, question as to whether or not this adjustment that we’re seeing, in terms of America’s engagement, is just simply about this election and this President, or whether it’s something that’s a much longer-term trend.
I’m going to let you answer that, as you answer whoever is asking the next question, so if you raise your hands very high, especially if you’re at the back, so that you aren’t ignored. We’ll start right here in the middle, the woman in the middle, and then we’ll go right to the back. I’ll take two upfront, is that okay? Right here. If you wait for the mic, please, because as we’re livestreamed, and we might need to pass it along from – bit of a group effort.
Valerie Jarrett
So, I don’t…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And if you say your name and your affiliation.
Valerie Jarrett
So let me answer my question, and then we’re going to come to you. So, I do not think that this is a trend, because this is the first President who really had a go it alone attitude, looking at the United States in isolation. I think that, you know, anybody who studies the world recognises that the challenges that we have today, globally, cannot be ignored and certainly not ignored by a country that is as important to the world as the United States. Sometimes we used to say it was, jokingly, you know, President of the United States, Leader of the Free World actually does mean Leader of the Free World. The President of the United States has always been, in a sense, that beacon of hope, and even if people disagree with some of the policies, as I did with President Bush, on many policies, I did not – I didn’t disagree with his officiation that the United States was part of the world and the people are looking to the United States as this beacon of hope, as a symbol of democracy, as an important player to solve the big problems that we have. You mention – I’ll just say two right away: climate change, the United States can’t solve climate change on its own. Look, there are people in the United States, in positions of power, who don’t even believe in climate change, even though all of the evidence shows that man and women are contributing to climate change.
And the reason why the Paris Accord was so important to us is that 200 countries and the private sector in those countries, all came together and said, “We recognise that we can’t solve this by ourselves. We need everybody working together.” The deal that we entered into, with your help, to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons was UK, Germany, France, the EU, Russia, China, the United States could not have forced Iran to do that alone, but pulling out has certainly destabilised, you know, our relationship, collective relationship with Iran, and we see what’s happening, as recently as today. And so I – Ebola, when we had the Ebola outbreak in Africa, with your help, we were able to go in there with our military, contain it, and ensure that it didn’t spread to a disease that could have wiped out much of the world.
So I give just three of countless examples of where we need co-operation. We need to have strong strategic relationships with our allies. They need to know they can count on us. They need to know that we’re not going to humiliate them, because we’re going to have to call them for their help. And I think that most people, who are running – well, everybody, who’s running in the Democratic field, in the United States gets that. So, if we have a Democratic President, I think you’ll see a big reversal, in terms of foreign policy.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
My hope.
Valerie Jarrett
Good.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
I know and my hope. Right here, and again, if you stand up and say your name, that would be great.
Karen Robinson
Sure, so…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And affiliation.
Karen Robinson
…hi, I’m Karen Robinson. I’m here with Democrats Abroad. There’s actually a few of us from Democrats Abroad here, yay. And in respect of that, I wanted to talk about healthcare a little bit. Because, obviously, the Affordable Care Act was a remarkable achievement for the administration and it does still stand, despite the best efforts of the other side. But it has been undermined, in whatever way they could, both they’ve been trying to undermine it through the courts, and also, through administrative actions, and so forth.
It feels to me, like, within the current debate being had in the Democratic Party, in the primary, that actually, the trajectory has moved in another direction, in that there’s a lot of conversation about the next time we have a stab at this. Medicare for All is the thing that a lot of people are talking about, so I’m really curious to know your view, from a policy point of view, but also from a politics point of view, does that feel like a direction we should be moving in, or what do you think?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And I’ll let you wait on that one. Can we take one more, is that okay?
Valerie Jarrett
Sure.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
One – the gentleman right at the back, who we have the mic by, and then we’ll take these two.
Valerie Jarrett
We’ll do two.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Yeah.
Valerie Jarrett
And then you’ll have to remind me if I forget, right? Forget that one.
Mikhail Remeson
Mikhail Remeson, Member of Chatham House. In Singapore, a few years ago, Sec – then Secretary Mattis said, “Just be patient and the America you like and love and got to know will come – will be back,” but…
Valerie Jarrett
Let’s hope.
Mikhail Remeson
Precisely, let’s hope. But isn’t it a bit worse than the optimism you expressed just now? Because it’s not just an American phenomenon, here in the UK, people are confronted with opinion polls, with people leaving the polls now, who would never, in the past, have got anywhere near to that. And it’s not just the UK and the US, I mean, if we look at Duterte in the Philippines, if we look at Turkey, if we look at Poland, and if we look at Czech Republic, if we look at Italy, if we look at Brazil, and I can go on, isn’t it a bit broader, and a bit more worrisome than just, “Oh, I see the activism and the people there, and I see much more engagement?” I think there is a bit more needed and there is more than going on than just that.
Valerie Jarrett
Yes, okay, so let’s do the good question first, and then we’ll get to the second. I won’t say good/bad, more optimistic/more pessimistic.
So, I think that the advantage of the Democratic Party is that it’s a big tent, and all ideas are welcome that stay true to our core values, and one of our philosophies, which is why the Affordable Care Act passed, other than we just simply would not give up, even though a lot of people said to President Obama, “You are burning through your political capital, you are dropping in the polls, why don’t you forget about this and move onto something else?” And he said, “This isn’t about me,” back to my other thing, this is about delivering something important, and I mentioned at the outset that what we did was by – was modelled after what they did in Massachusetts. The reason why is, is that we knew that that was the best we could get done.
Now, we could hold out, as seven Presidents before had, and say, “Let’s get the perfect thing done,” and maybe Medicare for All would have been the perfect thing. But then, we would have 20 million people without health insurance, and all of the other benefits, that I described to you earlier, and so I think part of leadership is pushing the envelope as far as you can, moving the baton to use a series of different analogies, and then know you’ll come back and do more the next day. And maybe more is trying to get Medicare for All, maybe that should be the next step. But it’s the art of the possible, and I don’t know, if we took a vote today, whether that would pass. But maybe it would, and the fact that people are talking about it, I think is a healthy part of the dialogue, and sometimes, you’ll talk about something and you might not get it, but maybe we’ll get some more improvements. Maybe they’ll start investing and signing people up for the Affordable Care Act, where they’ve pulled out all of the investments that we put in for the navigators that help people get through the system and they’re not, as you said, they are not marketing it the way they should, if they actually – or cared about people having health insurance.
To the global marketplace and where there’s the level of contentioness. Well, I don’t know how we best describe it. That we’re seeing not just in the United States, but all over, look, I can’t do anything about the rest of the world. All I can do is try to encourage activism at home, and I hope that you would encourage activism here, and I hope that people, you know, all – in all of these countries, who do not like the direction that their country is going, would appreciate, so the theme of my book, that you have an enormous amount of power in your own voice, if you use it. And let’s not advocate, and just assume because we’re going through a pretty tough patch globally right now, that that can’t swing in another direction.
And one of the reasons why I like mandatory voting, to get back to that for a hot second, is because the energy tends to be on the extremes. The money tends to go to the extremes, the energy goes to the extremes, and sometimes, what that does is, it prevents people from compromising. Whereas, I think most people are actually somewhere in the middle of that bell curve, and that if Politicians were forced to go to where the vast majority of people really are, then they wouldn’t be so uncomfortable about saying, “Well, maybe we can move a little bit. Well, maybe we don’t have to hold our breath until we get Medicare for All. Maybe we could do the Affordable Care Act.” And that that’s actually how progress happens, if – once in a blue moon it’s a thunderbolt, but then it’s those decades and decades of hard work that lead up to it. And so, am I troubled by what I’m seeing around the world? Of course I am. Of course I am. That doesn’t mean that I’m satisfied that there’s nothing we can do about it.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
I think you sell yourself short, because what you said earlier is exactly right that you might not directly be able to do anything about the rest of the world, but the symbolism of what’s happening, you know, everybody is able to watch America’s internal politics, and the symbolism of what you did, with the Affordable Care Act, with any other number of things, and that message that it sends is, you know, to use a 1980’s word, it is empowering, and the reverse is true also. So I think actually, you’ve done quite a lot to…
Valerie Jarrett
We try to lead by example, that’s what we should be doing.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Which is tremendously powerful, as we know, and as you are, you know, the early part of your book really details so nicely. Right here in the front row.
Andrew Payne
Andrew Payne, University of Oxford and also, a Member of Council here at Chatham House. Thanks very much for coming to talk to us. During the Obama administration, there was fierce criticism of the so-called “Blob”. Under Trump, the Blob’s become the swamp, and perhaps, as a result, there are few sane and competent foreign policy experts willing to serve. The adults seem to have left the room, and now we have unfilled positions, the Secretary of Defence, UN Ambassador, and Director of Homeland Security. So, as someone who’s contended with the Washington bureaucracy for eight years, how much of a threat does this pose for the pursuit of coherent national security policy abroad, and what steps can think tankers and political appointees take to restore trust in experts?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
I think, to be fair to all the young people in the audience, you need to tell us what the ‘Blob’ is or was.
Valerie Jarrett
Well, look. Well, it gets to the point. Washington, I suppose, has this reputation for – what’s the best way to put it? Well, not being in touch with the rest of the country, and let’s put it that way. Where short-term political interest trump, no pun intended, was good for you, out of touch, special interests dominating, which is why, for example, President Obama did not take money from lobbyists, why we had a very strict rule about lobbyists serving in the administration.
But I think the problem, in terms of getting really good people, we had no problem getting absolutely the best people go into our administration, and that’s notwithstanding the reputation of Washington, and that’s ‘cause talent strikes at the top, and you can’t ignore that. You can’t ignore the fact that people were drawn to President Obama because they wanted to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Same reason I was drawn to City Government, and they didn’t have to watch their back and worry about what’s going to happen and the, kind of, the chaos, if you will, that people are seeing happening in Government now. And so I say to young people, and I – well, I say two things. I say to the people who are currently serving, who are in career positions, particularly in the State Department, the Treasury Department, “Please” – Justice Department, “Please stay. Just hold on, please,” ‘cause we need very good career people, who have the continuity to just hang in there for two more years.
But I would say, to a peer of mine, who was asking whether they should go into a senior position in the administration, I would say no, don’t. Because you will forever be associated with this administration, and who would want that?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Okay.
Valerie Jarrett
I’m sorry, am I being too blunt?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
There are a couple here, but I…
Valerie Jarrett
That’s actually how I feel.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
…I’m going to go straight to the back of the room, the woman with her hand raised high, sitting next to my sons.
Dr Lindsey Newman
Dr Lindsay Newman, Chatham House Member. I take your point that you would advise senior individuals not to be a part of the Trump administration, but if you were to find yourself as an Advisor to President Trump, at this point in time…
Valerie Jarrett
Good Lord.
Dr Lindsey Newman
…what would you advise him around Iran, and the current developments?
Valerie Jarrett
To try to figure out how to get back into the deal he walked away from. That was our best chance. A diplomatic solution, where we had the other world leaders, who I outlined for you, at the table with us, was the best solution. I don’t – I would have no advice for him today, because I think there is no good solution. War is not a solution. We’ve learned that lesson time and time again. At this stage of the game, I’ve got a diplomatic solution, coupled with sanctions, with teeth in them, was the right approach to go, and so, yeah, I have no advice for him.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
We have a two-finger, right here in the front row on that question, right?
Dr Lyndsey Newman
Oh, I’m sorry, no, I didn’t.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Oh, it wasn’t a two-finger? Sorry, okay. Well, we’ll still let you go next.
Valerie Jarrett
What’s a two-finger?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
A two-finger is when you have something that directly follows on from the question that’s just been asked.
Valerie Jarrett
Ah.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
But that’s okay, if you say who you are. If you say who you are.
Trisha de Borchgrave
Trisha de Borchgrave, Writer. I think it’s really interesting, ‘cause we’re having a very live debate in this country about the power of the Government, over the legitimate power of Parliament, and my question to you is about when we talk about those checks and balances, what’s the rightful authority of the President over the Executive Branch, as stipulated by the Constitution, because absolutely, I was 100% with every executive order that Obama gave, but what if that’s then taken and leveraged against stuff that we really don’t need and it’s irresponsible?
Valerie Jarrett
Alright, well, so two things: the executive orders that President Obama entered into, we thought were within his authority as President of the United States, and when he came into office, he reversed many of the executive orders that President Bush had put in place. Elections have consequences.
Now, as long as the ones that are being signed now are legal, well then, the President has every right to sign them and enter into them. And I think there are limitations to what a President can do, but then they also have a lot of authority. I mean, you think about the regulations, for example, that Leslie mentioned earlier on, in EPA, but do not get a lot of coverage in the press, either you’re going to have devastating impacts in communities all across the United States, and that is within his power to do. And that’s why people have to vote, I’m going to sound like a broken record by the time we’re done here, and if it goes beyond his executive authority, then – and my guess is, it’ll – it’s going to get challenged, because there are a lot of people watching every single step that he takes, and that is as it should be.
I mean, we can’t have a lawless administration. We have to have the checks and balances. We do not have the checks that I think we should have in the Senate. I mean, I often say, “If President Obama did, like, even one thing per month that this administration is doing every day, I can’t imagine what a Senate controlled by the Republicans might have done to him.” So we need – each of the co-equal branches of Government to do their jobs and right now, we are relying on the press, and the judiciary to make up for what we’re not seeing happen in Congress.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Valerie, you’re working on voting, you’ve referred to it several times, do you think we should have mandatory voting in the United States?
Valerie Jarrett
I do, yes, yes.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Quite seriously?
Valerie Jarrett
No, I’m – couldn’t be more serious, why not? What’s the reason you wouldn’t have it? And I was influenced, as I said, when I visited Australia, where – I mean, look, mandatory voting, if you don’t vote in Australia, I think it costs you $25. Alright so, you know, you’re not going to go hungry by your penalty, but I think we should create incentives for people to feel that the culture demands something in exchange for the privilege of living in our country. And we live in a vibrant democracy, and even on its worst day, it’s better than a lot of the alternatives, and that comes with – I think it should come with some responsibilities. It should not be just a free ride.
I believe in mandatory public service, right? I think that people, young people, in our country, should grow up knowing that you have to give something back to this country. I believe that maybe we should have the Draft bcause it seems to me that people who serve in our military and who are prepared to make the most sacrifice for our country, putting their lives on the line, oftentimes there are people who don’t have alternatives, and if we did the Draft, we would be a lot more judicious about entering into wars, because then everybody’s kids would be going, not just some peoples’ kids.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Right here, you’ve been waiting very patiently, and again, if you say who you are, and your affiliation.
Muriel Salmon
Hi, I’m Muriel Salmon. I’m international law student and I’m also an American abroad. So, I wanted to ask, right now in the US, a lot of Presidential candidates, such as former Vice President Biden is talking about working with the Republicans and working with the right – one’s civility is back into the White House, and yet, if you look at the Right, right now in America, you have, it’s kind of like the Republican Party’s dormant, and you have a new Trumpian Party, kind of, that’s evolved, and it’s gotten to a point where you have a lot of conspiracy theories, news anchors, news stations, which are spreading a lot of fake news, and you’ve been a target of that yourself through the Roseanne Barr incident. So I wanted to ask, how do you combat this kind of right-wing extremism conspiracy theories that have persuaded people to vote and elect President Trump into office, in a sense? Thank you.
Valerie Jarrett
Well, it’s a big problem, and let’s start with the birth of movement, just to get, like, right at it. So it’s appalling how many people in the United States do not think President Obama was born in the United States, and it’s a good example of when you just repeat something over and over and over again, people begin to believe it, particularly if they look up to the person who’s saying it. So, one of the main reasons I’m concerned right now about our leadership is, this willingness to just say things that are just simply not true, in the hopes of persuading people that they are. And you layer on top of that, tone from the top, social media, which grew up under our administration, I can remember the first time, early in the administration, President Obama said to me, “Do you know what Twitter is?” And I said, “Do you mean when you’re all atwitter?” And he’s like, “Alright, you don’t obviously know what you’re talking about, right?” Twitter just started, like, in 2008, and so, over the space of our eight years, and then certainly in these last two, we have seen something very different than when I grew up, when Walter Cronkite, who many of you in this room may have heard of, when he told us what the news was once a day at 6 o’clock, we knew it to be true. We knew it to be factually accurate and we knew that he was not blurring the lines between news and editorial and entertainment. And news was a loss leader, nobody made money off the news, they made money off a bonanza, or something, I don’t know, the, you know, The Lawrence Welk Show, I don – it wasn’t off the news. And so, now, it’s very different, news is a profit centre and you couple onto that that everybody curates their own news. You – it’s on demand. You decide whether you’re going to listen to Fox or MSNBC in our country. You decide what blogs you’re going to read. You decide who you’re going to follow.
And I worry, and this is particularly to the young people in the room, that you are developing an echo chamber of comfort, where you are only hearing what you want to hear. And part of growing up, and developing ideas, is to talk to people, civilly, with whom you disagree and it – I mean, we in the White House, beginning with President Obama, invited all kinds of people, and with whom we disagreed with on all kinds of issues, and we searched to see whether we were thinking things through and were there unintended consequences of what we were going to do. We were curious. We were intellectually curious. We were socially curious, and I worry about a whole generation that isn’t forced to do that. It doesn’t necessarily come naturally, because it’s uncomfortable, and we need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. When you think about issues like racism, or xenophobia, or homophobia, a lot of it grows out of people who just have not been exposed to people who might be slightly different than they are.
And my early experience in Iran taught me that regardless of culture and religion and geography, that you can find something in common. And how do we get back to that? And then when you layer onto that, what we experienced in the United States, with a country like Russia, clearly attempting to influence our election, and using social media as a weapon to do so, and we had no idea, actually, even how they did it, and where they did it, and who was influenced by it? Because it’s opaque. The social media companies don’t tell us, here are all the advertised incidents.
In the United States, if you do a commercial, and you – and it’s paid for, not with dark money, but through your campaign, you have to disclose, you know, I approve this message. Why don’t we do that on social media? Why aren’t we requiring people, who spend millions and billions of dollars, trying to influence all of our elections, to disclose who they are?
I saw a TED Talk recently about Wales where, clearly, micro-targeting of commercials, and the EU has invested a lot of money in Wales and nobody in Wales knows that, ‘cause that’s not what was micro-targeted at them through these commercials. So it’s a big problem, and the young people are going to have to figure this out. Because, you’re – you have the tools, you grew up using this, and you have to decide that you’re willing to get outside of that comfort zone, and you’re willing to force the issues, in search of common ground, and maybe along the way, you’ll learn something.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
We have a question just here, and then right – maybe we’ll take these two, if that’s okay? And the lady here, and the gentleman right here. If you’re at the back and you really want to ask a question, please be bold with your hands, okay.
Antoinette Tague
Hello, Valerie. Hi, Antoinette Tague, King’s College London. To share a mum joke with you, I’m 29, when I started my master’s last year, my mum asked me if I’d packed a snack, in the same way that she kind of drove you to your first day of your job.
Valerie Jarrett
Ah, “Have you packed a snack?”
Antoinette Tague
Yeah.
Valerie Jarrett
Good.
Antoinette Tague
Please, about the global gag rule. So, President Trump has signed obviously his Presidential Memorandum on his first day in office. The organisation I worked for, an international women’s health organisation, lost the $100 million US in funds. In two years, we’d fundraised about 30/$40 million again, and the projects that were affected helped something like 300 million people around the world, particularly with HIV acc – care and safe abortion access. So, the cathedral in Paris, has a fire in its roof, and within…
Valerie Jarrett
Raised a lot of money.
Antoinette Tague
Well, oh yeah, within a day or two. One organisation, Total, the petroleum company, pledged €100 million to the cathedral. So how do we activate that same base? Money talks, how do we activate that same emotion, where money talks, to women’s health and human rights, in the same way that it talks to a building? Thank you.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
It’s very hard not to answer right away, but we have another question right here. Right here.
Valerie Jarrett
You, that’s how we do it. People just like you, but I’ll come back to it.
Josh Van der Ploeg
Thank you. My name’s Josh Van der Ploeg. I’m here with Democrats Abroad as well, and mine was a two-finger question about the mandatory voting in fact, because I think it’s pretty safe to say that the issue extends beyond just voter participation, that the US political system is sclerotic, to be generous. So I was curious to think, you know, you mentioned the art of the possible, so, short of mandatory voting, what policies do you see as the most feasible, constitutionally and politically, to improve the US political system, money and politics, voter participation, polarisation, and things along those lines?
Valerie Jarrett
Alright, so, I won’t forget yours, because it’s near and dear to my heart, so let’s spend a moment on yours. So I think there are multiple steps that we could take, short of my first choice. So, first of all, let’s stop suppressing the vote. And there’s clear examples, in the United States, where states that pass laws to attempt to suppress the vote, Stacey Abrams, for example, should be the Governor of Georgia, and her opponent, who’s now the Governor, was the Secretary of State, passed two onerous laws that were clearly attempts to suppress the vote, were thrown out by the court, but yet on – yet, they still meddled in the elections and discouraged people from voting, in certain polling places where there were high concentrations of African-Americans. And so we need a more robust Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, that’s going around doing what our Justice Department did, which is to challenge these laws, which are clearly designed to suppress the vote.
Eric Holder, who was our Attorney General, has formed an organisation that’s working on redistricting at the state level, because that’s where our representation is determined, but he’s also challenging states such as Wisconsin, and winning in the courts, when they’re suppressing the vote.
I think we also have to look at ways of having technology improve voting and making it easier for people, so people could vote online. We have to have early vote, in every state. Not everybody can take off work and go on election day, which is a Tuesday in the United States, always a work day. Why can’t we vote on Saturdays? Why can’t we vote a week ahead of time? And there is a sense that there is election fraud in the United States, there is no election fraud. If there is, it is de minimis and yet, you have all of these alleged attempts to try to, you know, protect against election fraud, but all it’s designed to do is just suppress the vote.
So I think we have to make it easier for people to vote. We have the change the culture around voting. We have to get rid of the laws that suppress the vote, and then a final point I would make, North Carolina used to have a law that allowed high school students to pre-register to vote when they were 17, because evidence shows that if you vote in your first election, the chances of you becoming a lifelong voter go up. So what did North Carolina do? They repealed that law. So we need to go back to letting college – high school students pre-register to vote, and get them excited about it, which is part of what Mrs Obama and my organisation is designed to do.
Soon after all the money was raised for Notre-Dame, a friend of mine, who’s in the press, Yashar Ali, did a GoFundMe for three Black Churches in the United States in the South that had been demolished by arson, and he raised a lot of money very quickly. And I think what we have to do is to get smarter about using social media for these very important causes and to attract a base of people, not just women, but people who care about the issues that you’re fighting so hard for. And I’m ashamed about that gag rule. I’m ashamed about the fact that every single time we had a Government shutdown in the United States, it was either over the Affordable Care Act, or as negotiating to try to settle it, they tried to get us to defund planned parenthood. What does planned parent have to do with keeping a Government open and serving the people? Absolutely nothing, but they were using their leverage and so what we have to figure out is how we use our leverage. Why aren’t we putting pressure on corporations to help support what you’re trying to do? They’re certainly getting pressure the other way. We should be putting pressure as well, and I think underestimating our power, underestimating our buying power as women, and our ability to influence corporations, and we’re seeing this in the United States and all over, through the #MeToo movement. What was totally tolerated and unacceptable five years ago, boardroom after boardroom, and I’m on three boards, every board I know, everyone I know who’s serving on a board, of a reputable company, is challenging themselves to say what are we doing to ensure we don’t have a climate that tolerates sexual harassment here? And as well, they should.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
We’re right at time. I was going to take maybe one…
Valerie Jarrett
Sure.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
…more question, ‘cause there’s been somebody right at the very back, who’s been waiting and I hadn’t seen their question, so I just want to make sure. So, it’s actually towards the wall, right up – yes, there we go.
Valerie Jarrett
Last question.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Yeah, last question, and then we’ll wrap up.
Valerie Jarrett
And that’s the last question.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And if you say who you are and where you’re affiliated, that’d be great.
Taylor Falton
My name is Taylor Falton. I am in international development here, and I’m also from Atlanta, so your comments on what happened in Georgia are very touching to me personally, because I was living here, while it was happening, so there was not much I could do on this side. So, on that note, as an expat living here in London, I would like to talk a bit about what, personally to you, being on the international platform, what it feels like to hear about domestic issues that affect you personally and how you balance, or manage your time, to be on an international platform and have those domestic personal issues be, kind of, at the core of what you also live?
Valerie Jarrett
Well, I think it’s important for our voices of – for the voices of Americans to be heard beyond just who the President of the United States is. So that you all don’t think we’re crazy. I want you – I mean, it’s really it’s the same reason exa – for an example that even though we had, during President Obama’s time in office, a very, very difficult relationship with the Government of Iran, every year he would deliver a news message to the people of Iran, ‘cause he was saying, “Look, I recognise that all of the people of a country don’t necessarily represent your governmental leadership,” and that’s what I wa – that’s part of why I want to come here, so you see that no, there are Americans that have not lost their minds. We are perfectly lucid, and we are willing to be a part of an effort to ensure that the next President really reflects more of the values that I hold true.
But at the same time, the organisations that I’m affiliated with, are all working domestically, except for President Obama’s Obama Foundation, which will have, I hope, a very positive global impact. I care – and what I did, is right after, and maybe this is a good note to close on, is after the last election, when I was going through those stages of grief, I’ve always had a job. Since 16 I’ve worked. I worked through school, I worked – I’ve worked my whole life. I never had a break between jobs. Somebody told me, when I was on maternity leave, that was a break. I’m like, “Well, then, you haven’t had a baby.” That was not a break. That was hard work.
But – and I also feel like being a Senior Advisor to somebody, who I’ve known nearly 30 years, who’s like the younger brother I never had, whose wife is just like a sister to me, and to be able to have the privilege of serving in the White House, during his tenure, was the best job I’ll ever have, and I know that to be true. There’s just nothing going to be quite that great again.
And I also turned 60 a week after the 2016 election, nobody wanted to celebrate with me. I didn’t want to celebrate either. In fact, we celebrated my birthday a year later. But I did some soul-searching and I said, “Okay, if you don’t want a job, what is it that you actually care about?” Having had the privilege of working on every single issue that came across President Obama’s desk for eight years, who do I really – number one, what do I care about? And number two, where do I think I could actually move the needle? And then I wanted to devote myself to that and so, it came down to I care so much about gender equity. I mentioned earlier I Chair the White House Council on Women and Girls, all eight years, from its inception until the end. When this administration didn’t continue the Council, we gave them a little grace period to see whether they would, and when they didn’t, the person who helped me with it, for all eight years, Tina Tchen and I, created a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) called the United State of Women and we are continuing that fight for gender equity outside of Government, and we are holding up best practices across the United States. We had a huge summit in LA last summer. 6,000 people showed up, more people than showed up at the one that we hosted when we were in the White House, back to the comment about the activism that we’re seeing around the United States. And so, we’re holding up these best practices and trying to take them to scale, encouraging employers to focus on the whole basket of issues that will allow working families to thrive, and they are the same issues that were important to me, as a single mum: equal pay and paid leave.
The United States is the only developed country in the world that doesn’t have a national paid leave policy. Sick days, there are 43 million Americans without a single sick day, workplace flexibility, affordable childcare, a workplace free from sexual harassment and violence, that’s what I hear when I travel around the country, so promoting those initiatives is really important to us.
I also care about, and we haven’t talked about gun violence in the United States, devastating. Our worst days were the days that we spent going to memorial services for people who were victims or survivors of gun violence, and their families. It is the one area where we just felt so – the Government was so out of touch with the American people. 90% of the American people, when polled, say they want sensible background checks for guns, sensible ones. If you have a lethal weapon, you should go through a background check. Yet, in part, because of the stranglehold of the National Rifle Association had over Members of Congress, we were unable – even in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, where 20 first graders and six adults were murdered by someone who was barely out of teenage years themselves, we thought that would have been a wakeup call, but it wasn’t. And so, continuing that fight is something that I’m absolutely committed to do, as well as criminal justice reform. The United States has 5% of the world’s population, 25% of those who are incarcerated and we need to keep people out of the system. We need to make the system fair. We need to help people who are incarcerated and when the 600,000 who are released every year are released, we need to make sure they have a job, so they can be a member of society again.
And so, I’ve picked these basket of things and then the civic engagement work, the work I’m doing with Mrs Obama on voting, and President Obama on civic engagement, those are the things I care about, and so most of those are domestic, and maybe it’s ‘cause I, you know, came out of local government in Chicago, or maybe it’s just because I think I can move the needle the biggest amount in those areas. That’s where I’m drilled down on, and if something else comes along that strikes my fancy, I will say this, and please, I don’t want to end with you all hating me, those of you who are working in jobs, but I literally I wake up every single morning and I do exactly what I want to do. And I do feel like I’ve kind of earned it, after all those years of public service, and that’s refreshing, but it’s also terrifying, ‘cause if I have a bad day, I literally have nobody to blame but myself and so I try to make my days important and count, and I will say I’ve been looking forward to coming here, for a very long time. It was one of the first commitments I made on my book tour. Tim Collins is the one who I think he had to duck out earlier, is one who helped arrange this for me, and, Leslie, I just want to thank you and everyone here, everyone at the Chatham Club, who’s been so generous and so encouraging of me, being a part of this wonderful institution, so thank you.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Thank you so much. How tremendous was that? [Applause] Wonderful.
Valerie Jarrett
You’re all hearing about – they’re all out hearing about Chatham House Rules, and now I get to actually be in the Chatham House, and very cool.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Thank you, Valerie, and all I can say is that I’m so glad that the things that you care about, that you choose to do, have so much impact for all of us, not only in the United States, but as an example for everybody around the world, so thank you very much. Wonderful.
Valerie Jarrett
Thank you. Thank you all [applause].
Leslie Vinjamuri
Wonderful. That was wonderful.
Valerie Jarrett
Did you enjoy it?
