Valerie Jarrett is now scapegoat-in-chief

The notion that a single staff person is responsible for most of the administration’s shortcomings over the last six years is rather far-fetched. Whether it’s ObamaCare or the VA or immigration or ISIS or Syria, it’s the president who is making the decisions and selling them. If the principal problem, as the president told Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation,” was a failure to adequately communicate his policies, then the man with the bully pulpit must take most of the blame.

But the press has a shakeup mentality: all major political defeats must be followed by some kind of housecleaning. And reporters are getting tired of the story line about Obama essentially brushing off the debacle. So the journalistic knives are out for Jarrett.

It’s not hard to understand why. As a personal pal, Jarrett is easy to cast as the embodiment of the insularity of the White House. As the president’s protector, she has a track record of ticking off other administration officials. At the same time, Jarrett has no public successes attached to her name. And when she’s on television, she appears a rather robotic defender of her boss.