When You've Got The Name And The Looks

The children of Martin Luther King Jr. have always said “Marty got daddy’s name, Dexter got daddy’s looks.”

Jessie Jackson Jr. got both.

I myself got two colorful monikers, one Arabic, one Hindu, preceding my English surname, two names as far away from my father's utilitarian "Fred" as you could get. I quickly boiled them down to "Kris" the way "Barack" boiled his name down to "Barry" for the exact same reason he did - to avoid being different from everybody else.

When I was younger, I used to ask my father "why I wasn’t a 'Junior'?"

"Because I didn’t want you to be burdened with it if I didn’t keep my name clear."

The things that men like Jesse Jackson Sr. and my father and other highly motivated black men across the South went through to get to college, then to go out into an America that was in such racial turmoil in the sixties and be somebody was a part of a crossroads in time.

Jesse Jackson Sr. protested against the goverment.

My father went to work for the government.

So when your father runs for the presidency of the United States of America, even if it is a symbolic campaign, you don’t have a burden to be carried, you have a bar to be raised.

Since I didn’t know much about the younger Jackson, I decided to see for myself just who was the man behind those flashing eyes and that hungry smile. It quickly turned into a bona fide internet research junket when I clicked on a link to his wife, Sandi.

The most striking thing about Jesse Jackson Jr. that jumped out at me after reading through several biographical accounts of his life is the sense that this is a young man in a hurry. “Hyperactive” is what they called him at the military school he attended when he and his brother Jonathan proved too much for their mother and their Chicago school to handle.

In Jesse Jackson Jr.'s short career, he has chomped at the bit to run for mayor of Chicago as well as the U.S. Senate. He bypassed local politics altogether at the beginning of his career, against the advice of his father, jumping right into his first congressional race when Congressman Mel Reynolds was caught soliciting a minor.

He is still hyperactive.

He only misses TWO floor votes in thirteen years in Congress, a feat in and of itself.

He does his homework on the issues before he starts talking.

He sponsors constitutional amendments instead of special interest bills.

He knows the rules and the protocol of Congress inside and out.

He opposes President Bush ideologically but maintains a personal relationship with him.

He’s got three degrees – bachelor of science, master of divinity, law degree.

He has co-written several books, and authored one about why he is who he is.

But - he’s never had a job outside the family business, never been ordained, never taken the bar.

Jackson Jr. HAD to at least talk to Rudy Blagojevich. So did Obama's people. ANYONE who wanted a real shot at getting the Illinois Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama would have. Valerie Jarrett only escaped her own in person meeting or phone sessions because she probably wasn't a real candidate anyway.

But Jackson Jr.'s hyperactivity may have worked against him this time.

When he described Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention this summer, he said “he doesn't always tell people what they want to hear. He tells them what they need to hear."

So Jesse Jackson Jr., I'm not going to tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear.

Slow all this apologizing down for something you say you didn’t do. WAY down.

DO NOT concede your bid for the Senate right now – all the facts are not in yet.

Figure out how to tone down that prickly, thin-skinned edge you exude a couple of notches.

Estimate how much of the truth you think we can handle - and tell it before the other guy does.

You’ve got your father’s name. You’ve got more than a passing physical resemblance to him. Now, what we need to see is some of that famous Jesse Jackson Sr. charisma, some of that magnetic, plainspoken charm that used to allow us to see your father for more than he was.

Because in the end, that’s what a real leader is – someone who projects their greatness into our lives in a way that helps us believe a little more in ourselves, and trust a little more in you.

Brown Faces In High Places

I talked to my mother earlier this week.

"That Obama," she said, "he's already had three news conferences. Calls the reporters by name. I think he's definitely letting everybody know who's going to be in charge." She sounded tickled to death as she said this, as if he was one of her former students who had finally begun to exhibit some of the promise she had detected in him when he was in her class.

From the formidable phalanx of thousands who man his transition efforts to the daily announcements of new appointments to his future staff, it seems as if Barack Obama is already working overtime to assemble a large part of his administration before January. The pundits seemed to be consumed by the number of appointees who have been associated with the Clinton's in the past. My concern is a more visceral one - how many brown faces are being appointed to high places?

Eric Holder leads the list with his pending appointment as Attorney General.



Holder was born in 1951 in The Bronx, New York, to parents who had emigrated from Barbados. He grew up in Queens and was educated at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and attended Columbia University, where he earned a B.A. in 1973 and a J.D. in 1976.

After graduating from Columbia Law School Holder worked in the U.S. Justice Department as a trial attorney in the Public Integrity section from 1976 to 1988. He was then appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve as an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

In 1993 Holder was appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia by President Bill Clinton. In 1997, upon the spring retirement of Jamie Gorelick, Clinton nominated Holder to be the next Deputy Attorney General.

Holder served as Acting Attorney General under President George W. Bush for several weeks until the Senate confirmed Bush's nominee, John Ashcroft.

Since 2001, Holder has worked as an attorney at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.



Valerie Jarrett will be a White House senior advisor.



Valerie Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran, to natural born American citizens. At age 5, the family moved to London for one year, then returned to Chicago in 1963.

Jarrett graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon, a New England boarding school, in 1974. She earned a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1978, and a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. She also speaks Farsi and French.

Jarrett got her start in Chicago politics in 1987 working for Mayor Harold Washington as Deputy Corporation Counsel for Finance and Development. She was Deputy Chief of Staff for Mayor Richard Daley. Jarrett served as Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development from 1992 through 1995, and was Chair of the Chicago Transit Board from 1995 to 2005.

She is currently the CEO of The Habitat Company, a real estate development and management company, which she joined in 1995. She was a member of the board of Chicago Stock Exchange (2000-2007, as Chairman, 2004-2007).

She is also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago Medical Center, Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago and a Trustee of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. Jarrett also serves on the board of directors of USG Corporation, a Chicago based building materials corporation.



Rob Nabors has been tapped for the post of Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget.



Rob Nabors was born in Fort Dix, N.J. in 1971, then lived in Arizona, Maryland, Germany, Virginia, South Korea, Florida, Italy, Massachusetts and, once again, Virginia. Nabors earned a B.A. from Notre Dame in 1993, and an M.A. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1996.

He began his career in government as a Program Examiner, Office of Management and Budget, 1996-98, serving as senior adviser to director, OMB, 1998-2000; assistant director for administration and executive secretary, OMB, 2000-01; minority staff, House Appropriations Committee, 2001-04; and minority staff director, House Appropriations Committee, 2004-06.


Melody Barnes will lead his Domestic Policy Council.




Barnes earned a bachelor's degree from the Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and received her law degree from the University of Michigan. She served as Assistant Counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, where she helped enact into law the Voting Rights improvement Act of 1992. Served as Director of Legislative Affairs for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Served as Chief Council to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) on the Senate Judiciary Committee, December 1995 until March 2003. Serves currently as the Executive Vice President for policy at the Center for American Progress.




Desiree Rogers has been selected for the position of White House Social Secretary.



Rogers, earned a Bachelor's degree in political science from Wellesley College, and a MBA from Harvard Business School. In 2002, Rogers attended the Harvard Kennedy School Women and Power Program.

In 1990, Rogers was appointed to head the Illinois State Lottery.
Beginning in 1997, she worked for Peoples Energy as a vice-president of corporate communications. By 2001, she climbed to senior vice-president.

She was named to the board of Equity Residential in 2003. Rogers was made President of both Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas in 2004. She left Peoples Energy in 2008 to run a new social networking initiative of the Allstate insurance company.


Mona Sutphen was announced as a deputy chief of staff.



Ms. Sutphen earned her bachelors degree in international relations from Mount Holyoke College. She later received an M.Sc. in international political community from the London School of Economics.

Sutphen has been a U.S. Foreign Service Officer from 1991 to 2000. She served in the Clinton White House at the National Security Council from 1998 to 2000. Positions she has served in include the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, the Office of the High Representative, in the State Department human rights bureau, and the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok.

Currently, Sutphen is a managing director with Stonebridge, LLC.


And Patrick Gaspard is slated to become White House political director.



Patrick Gaspard is a former community organizer around school reform issues. He is married with two children. Gaspard worked for Governor Howard Dean's presidential campaign and numerous congressional candidates, and campaigns going back to the historic Mayoral election in New York in 1989. In 2004, Gaspard was the national field director for America Coming Together. Gaspard was the executive vice president for politics and legislation for the 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East labor union. He was a registered lobbyist for the union on the federal State Childen's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), in 2007. Gaspard was the political director for the Obama campaign, a position he assumed in June of 2008.

Just Who Is Valerie Jarrett?

Valerie Jarret's name seems to be everywhere these last few days as aides to Barack Obama float her name as a replacement for Obama in the Senate.

Just who is she?

Meet Valerie Jarrett, the Woman Who Taught Al Sharpton to Lower His Voice.

One of Jarrett's better-known conferees has been the Reverend Al Sharpton. As Sharpton tells it, he was initially skeptical of Obama — until Jarrett went to work on him. "Part of what moved me from, 'Who is Barack Obama and what is he really about?' to 'Yes, this is a guy who can help make changes even if we're not on the same page in terms of style and approach'--a lot of that came from talking to her," he gushes …"

Earlier this year, Rolling Stone magazine published "Obama's Brain Trust" , which took an in-depth look into Jarrett's role in the campaign:

"The second influential friend in Obama's brain trust is Valerie Jarrett, who joined the campaign in the summer of 2007. At the time, insiders say, Obama didn't appear to be catching on with voters, and the mood among staffers was "Aw, man, this isn't working. These guys just aren't doing it right. They're just gonna run a bunch of ads, and then it's gonna be over." Axelrod and Plouffe were counseling patience, but the national poll numbers showed them 30 points behind Clinton. It was a combustible moment, and it could have sparked the kind of backstabbing and infighting that have destroyed so many Democratic campaigns. But Obama pre-empted any uprising by bringing Jarrett to the table to be his voice on the senior team when he wasn't in the room. Instead of an implosion, there was a change in course. Obama began to draw sharper contrasts between himself and Clinton, and the campaign began to gain ground. "Everybody kind of just swallowed and worked things out, and the warship didn't really have a dent," recalls one insider.

Jarrett, a longtime deputy to Mayor Richard Daley, met Obama in 1991 when she hired his wife, Michelle, as an assistant to the mayor. A well-connected Chicago insider, Jarrett is the most influential woman and African-American in Obama's inner circle. Her primary role is to pierce the bubble of the campaign — to shoot straight with the candidate and to give the two Davids some push-back on strategy. Accomplishing the latter task is easier than it sounds: Jarrett has known Axelrod for more than 15 years and worked closely with him on Daley's mayoral campaigns. Described as "the other side of Barack's brain," Jarrett plays the same role for the candidate's wife. "I help form a bridge between Michelle and the campaign," she says.

Jarrett describes her relationship to Obama as fraternal. "I don't have a brother," she says, "so he is like family to me." Indeed, Jarrett's personal relationship with Obama gives her a subtle, calming influence that others can't match. When Obama was cooped up in the office of his Hyde Park home after the Rev. Wright fiasco, writing the speech on race that would rescue his campaign, she reached out to him to give him a chance to let off some steam. "He was under a lot of pressure because he decided to do this speech on very short notice," she recalls. "So Sunday night, I know he's up writing this speech — Barack does a lot of his writing late at night because the house is quiet and Michelle and the girls are asleep, and that's when he thinks best. And I had heard this hilarious story about a friend of ours, and I thought, 'Well, I'll send him an e-mail. If he's focusing on his speech and he doesn't want a distraction, he can ignore it. But if he wants a break, he can lighten the mood a little bit.' He called, we had a very good laugh, and then we went back to work."

Jarrett also helps Obama with humanizing touches that — for all of the candidate's transcendent stage presence — sometimes elude the former law professor. The vivid anecdote with which he closed his speech on race — about the white campaign organizer named Ashley who, as a child, ate mustard-and-relish sandwiches during her mother's battle with cancer — was a story Jarrett had picked up on the campaign trail in South Carolina and related to Obama on a late-night flight to Georgia."

A Vogue Magazine story, "Barack's Rock" describes Jarret's influence as a Chicago power broker:

"...Valerie Jarrett's real clout comes less from her career than from her extraordinary connections and seemingly endless capacity for extracurriculars. As one observer put it, "She knows everyone in Chicago." Obama's media adviser Anita Dunn recently cracked that "she may be one of the most plugged-in people in the United States." Or as Susan Sher says, "Whatever situation she's in, she rises to the top," enumerating how Jarrett did just that at City Hall, where she ended up in the famously difficult post of chairing the Chicago Transit Authority for eight years; at the Chicago Stock Exchange; and on the board of the University of Chicago Hospital, which she now also chairs. "She is like a god in Chicago, an icon," says Adrienne Pitts, a 40-year-old lawyer who takes every opportunity to see Jarrett speak at events around the city, something she does with less frequency now that Jarrett is so often traveling with Team Obama or helicoptering into problem situations or trying to catch some of the big, joyous campaign moments and watch history change. That is, when she can get away from her day job."

Jarret's Early Years

"Jarrett was born to an African-American family in Shiraz, Iran, where her father, Dr. James Bowman, ran a hospital for children as part of a program that sent American doctors and agricultural experts to developing countries to help jump-start their health and farming efforts. At age 5, the family moved to London for one year, then returned to Chicago in 1963. Her father, who is of African American descent, is a pathologist and geneticist. He is currently Professor Emeritus in Pathology and Medicine, University of Chicago.[3][4] Her great-grandfather was the first African-American to graduate from M.I.T., her grandfather was Robert Taylor the first black man to head the Chicago Housing Authority, and her father, Dr. James Bowman, was the first black resident at St. Luke’s Hospital. Though Ms. Jarrett has never worked in Washington, her great-uncle is Democratic powerbroker Vernon Jordan. [5] Her mother, Barbara T. Bowman, is an African-American early childhood education expert and co-founder of the Erikson Institute for child development.[5][6]

She graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon, a New England boarding school, in 1974. She also received a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1978, and a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981."

Divorced after a brief marriage, Jarrett is a single mom and has one daughter, Laura, who attends Harvard Law School.

Jarrett's efforts and input will be felt at the highest levels of the Obama administration now being formulated between Washington D.C. and Chicago.