Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas (30 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

WOOING OPRAH

I
n late December 2013, the battered and bruised president and first lady prepared to take off with their daughters for the family’s annual two-week vacation in Hawaii. They were glad to turn their back on the bitterness of Washington politics—and, if truth be told, Washington was glad to see them go.

“The town is turning on President Obama,” Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei reported in Politico, “and this is very bad news for this White House. Republicans have waited five years for the moment to put the screws to Obama—and they have one-third of all congressional committees on the case now. Establishment Democrats, never big fans of this president to begin with, are starting to speak out. And reporters are tripping over themselves to condemn lies, bullying and shadiness in the Obama administration.”

Before the Obamas left the nation’s capital, Valerie Jarrett suggested that Michelle phone Oprah Winfrey, who had a home in Hawaii, to see if she could patch things up with the Queen of All Media. Relations between the Obama White House and Oprah could charitably be described as frigid. Oprah felt that the Obamans had treated her with a lack of respect, and she found ways of making her discontent known.

Just a few months before, Valerie had invited Oprah to join a group of celebrities—including Amy Poehler, Jennifer Hudson, and Alicia Keys—to meet with the president and discuss how they could generate publicity for his controversial healthcare law. Oprah refused the invitation. Instead, she sent a low-level representative from one of her talent agencies to the meeting, which was regarded by the White House as a slap in the president’s face.

Oprah was surprised to hear from Michelle. Many months had passed since they had spoken, and Oprah wondered what the first lady wanted.

Michelle informed Oprah that the Obama family would be vacationing in Kailua, on the island of Oahu, just a hop, skip, and a jump from Oprah’s estate on Maui. And it just so happened that she and Oprah were about to celebrate major birthdays—Michelle’s fiftieth on January 17, and Oprah’s sixtieth on January 29. Michelle was thinking of staying in Hawaii (without Barack and the girls) for the big five-oh.

The first lady was obviously fishing for an invitation, and Oprah obliged.

“Let’s celebrate together,” Oprah said. “Come on over.”

And so, in the first week of January, as President Obama and his daughters returned to below-freezing temperatures in Washington, D.C., Michelle gathered up trunkfuls of resort wear and her traveling entourage—including Valerie Jarrett; a small army of servants, aides, and advisers; a government jet; and a sizable Secret Service detail—and flew over to Maui.

News that Michelle had stayed behind in the Aloha State, leaving her beleaguered husband to deal with his problems alone, created quite a buzz in political circles. Some members of the White House press corps wondered whether the separation hinted at a hiccup—or worse—in the First Marriage.

“This was her decision to remain at . . . actually, the president’s suggestion in Hawaii, to spend time with friends ahead of her upcoming very big birthday,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said. “If you have kids, you know that telling your spouse that they can go spend a week away from home is actually a big present.”

The truth was more complicated than that.

Most presidents and their wives discovered that, after years of campaigning and living apart, they grew much closer in the confines of the White House. Not the Obamas. They lived quite separate lives. They had gone on separate vacations before—he with Tiger Woods in Florida, she with her daughters in Aspen, Colorado—and they had celebrated birthdays apart. Barack liked to hang out with his old basketball buddies from Chicago—men like Martin Nesbitt, John Rogers, and Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan—while Michelle bonded with a group of girlfriends that included her Princeton roommate Angela Acree and obstetrician Sharon Malone, wife of Attorney General Eric Holder.

“Women energize me,” she told
Essence.
“[It’s] important for us as women to find each other. And there’s that natural reenergizing that happens when women get together and we kind of hold each other up.”

Michelle carved out a separate identity for herself in other ways as well. For a woman who once insisted she was “not interested in politics,” she became a political force in her own right. She ventured well beyond her role as a mother and anti-obesity advocate and waded knee-deep into partisan politics. It was she who announced the creation of the White House’s new grassroots political arm, Organizing for America, and who made rousing campaign-style speeches defending Obamacare.

Her handlers in the East Wing of the White House continued to turn up the volume on the first lady’s public profile. She made appearances on
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
,
The Dr. Oz Show
,
Good Morning America
, and
The Rachael Ray Show.
And shortly after her husband’s second inauguration, she appeared, via a live video link from the White House, at the Academy Awards. Dressed in a low-cut Naeem Khan silver beaded gown, and with members of the military standing behind her, the first lady announced
Argo
as the surprise winner for Best Picture of the year.

According to the Gallup poll, Michelle was far more popular than Barack. Sixty-six percent of Americans had a favorable view of Michelle, which tied her with Hillary Clinton and put her more than twenty points ahead of her husband.

“She is one of the rock stars of the Democratic Party,” said Mo Elleithee, a well-connected Washington political operative, “and she’s taking advantage of that to do more than just campaign for the president.”

In every aspect of Michelle’s life—both personal and political—she was guided by the firm hand of Valerie Jarrett. The two women had been close friends when they first arrived in the White House, but now, after living through countless crises and a second presidential campaign, they were joined at the hip.

On most evenings, they met after dinner in a quiet corner of the White House Residence. They’d usually open a bottle of Chardonnay, catch up on news about Sasha and Malia, and gossip about people who gave them heartburn. Their favorite bête noire was Hillary Clinton, whom they nicknamed “Hildebeest,” after the menacing and shaggy-maned gnu that roams the Serengeti in East Africa.

Often, the conversation drifted from the disagreeable present to a more promising future. As far as they were concerned, it was going to be a
mutual
future; Michelle and Valerie had decided that, whatever they did after they left the White House, they were going to do it together. Just the two of them. It was going to be Michelle and Valerie. Barack could do his own thing—write books, make speeches, head up humanitarian efforts around the world, whatever.

“They discuss their possibilities all the time, and Michelle talks about their futures—hers and Valerie’s—as if they are one and the
same,” said one of Valerie’s confidants. “They have bonded during the years in the trenches and are incredibly close friends. The idea of an Illinois Senate run for Michelle isn’t completely off the table, though it seems to be fading as a likelihood. Campaigning would require too much work, and it would be a step down from their luxurious Air Force One lifestyle. With the Republican pushback against Obamacare and practically every other Obama policy, both Michelle and Valerie have soured on the political life.

“Michelle’s definitely going to write a memoir,” this person continued. “She and Valerie have begun shopping for an agent and the right publisher. They’ll get millions for it. After the book, they want to travel abroad—maybe make their base for a while in Spain or France. They have friends there, and they love both countries—the food and the fashion.

“These are two women who very much embrace the good life. Valerie sees Michelle and herself sitting on the boards of a handful of corporations, giving speeches for big bucks, writing books, and living large.”

Few people lived as large as Oprah Winfrey. She had a sprawling mansion on forty-two acres in Montecito, California; a condo in Telluride, Colorado; a penthouse in Manhattan; a four-unit duplex in Water Tower Place in Chicago; and a ranch in the moss-covered hills of Maui.

In January 2014, several of America’s most powerful women assembled on the wraparound porch of Oprah’s Maui mansion. There was Oprah herself, in all her glory as the maîtresse de maison;
Oprah’s best friend, Gayle King, the co-anchor of
CBS This Morning
; Sharon Malone, Eric Holder’s stylish wife; Michelle Obama; and Valerie Jarrett.

“We sipped fresh fruit drinks and watched the sunset,” Oprah later recalled in a conversation with friends. “I’m always fascinated by the relationship between Miche and Val. It’s so unlike the relationship I have with Gayle. We’re success-oriented women, but we know how to chill. Val and Miche don’t. Val’s always on. And she always seems to be pressuring Miche.

“Being with them over a period of time can be tiresome,” Oprah continued. “They’re always badgering you for something. I’ve spent much of my life fending off powerful and not-so-powerful people who want things from me. But these two women are something else again. They’re walking agendas. Their wish list never stops.”

Among other things, Valerie asked Oprah to go to bat for Obamacare and to campaign for Democratic candidates in the upcoming midterm elections. Oprah turned her down flat. She said she couldn’t afford to be distracted from the demanding task of building her fledgling television network.

But that was not the real reason she refused.

“Oprah feels slighted by the Obamas,” said her friend. “They have been incredibly thoughtless in the way they have treated her. It’s been unfair and hurtful. There is no way at this point they are going to draw her into politics again.”