Jarrett has been close to both Barack Obama and Michelle Obama for years and is now co-chairwoman of his transition team.  It is fair, I think, to say that her record shows much about both Obamas, since the three have been allies for so long.

Jarrett worked briefly as a lawyer for Mayor Harold Washington, and stayed on after his death to become Mayor Richard Daley's Deputy Chief of Staff.  In other words, she was a key cog in the Daley machine.

She is also a businesswoman, CEO of the Habitat company, which manages housing in Chicago, not always successfully.  The Boston Globe did a very substantial investigation of the problems in some of the housing that she, and other allies of Obama, managed.  You should read their whole exposé, and even watch the video that accompanies it.  Here are some samples to show you why you will want to read the whole thing.

Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers.  As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies.  And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters.  Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered.  Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.
. . .
Among those tied to Obama politically, personally, or professionally are:

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama's presidential campaign and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.
. . .
Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers - including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko - collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama's campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at least $200,000, by Obama's own accounting.
. . .
"Throughout his career in public service, Barack Obama has advocated for the development of mixed-income housing and public-private partnerships to create affordable housing as an alternative to publicly subsidized, concentrated, low-income housing," the Obama campaign said in a statement provided to the Globe.

As a result, some people in Chicago's poorest neighborhoods are torn between a natural inclination to support Obama and a concern about his relationships with the developers they hold responsible for Chicago's affordable housing failures.  Some housing advocates worry that Obama has not learned from those failures.

There are, I think, four great lessons in this sordid story, three easy lessons and one less so.  First, many of Barack Obama's long-time allies, including one of the closest, Valerie Jarrett, are sleazy.  That isn't a surprise to anyone familiar with the Chicago machine.  Second, Obama must have known they were sleazy — unless he never read a Chicago newspaper.  Third, Valerie Jarrett does not belong on his transition team, or anywhere near the White House.

The fourth lesson is less obvious, but may be the most important of all.  These public-private partnerships failed spectacularly, causing great suffering to poor people — and Obama appears to have learned nothing from that failure.  He wants to do many more of these partnerships.

In some ways, his failure to learn is understandable.  After all, the partnerships worked out very well for him, and for some of his allies.

There's an old saying among students of government: personnel is policy.  By making Valerie Jarrett co-chairwoman of his transition team, Obama has told us something about the policies he will pursue — and who will benefit from those policies.

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.

(Even some leftists are troubled by Jarrett's record, as you can see here.

There are aerial pictures of some of the properties here and another long post here.

For what it is worth, Jarrett does not come from a poor background.  Her father was a doctor, and like senators Obama and Biden, she attended a private school.)