\u201cWashington is Washington, and then there is the rest of the country, and there is a detachment that is hard to explain unless you have spent a fair amount of time in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n
Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President Barack Obama (and unofficial \u201cfirst friend\u201d) knows whereof she speaks.<\/p>\n
The assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement shared her insider\u2019s perspective on Washington gridlock with a crowd at the Harvard Kennedy School<\/a> (HKS) on Feb. 19.<\/p>\n Jarrett cited Republicans who refuse to engage, lobbyists who fight legislation such as financial regulation, and media that have helped to polarize the national dialogue as all playing roles in preventing critical reforms from moving forward.<\/p>\n Describing the everyday legislative process, such as that surrounding the health care debate, as \u201creally, really ugly,\u201d Jarrett compared the machinery of creating law to a sausage-making factory where the best intentions and the facts get \u201clost in the morass of Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been one year, and Rome wasn\u2019t built in a day,\u201d said Jarrett, addressing some of the president\u2019s former supporters \u2014 and current critics \u2014 who expected quick and sweeping change. Obama\u2019s commitment to a variety of reform efforts, she insisted, is as \u201cvibrant today as it was one year ago.\u201d<\/p>\n In the near future, Jarrett said, Obama plans to post online a version of a revised health care bill that would be \u201cgood for the American people,\u201d in advance of a health care summit with recalcitrant Republicans later this month. She said he will respond to good counterproposals, and will continue to be \u201copen for change.\u201d<\/p>\n