Jarrett tells audience: No tell-all book from me

Those eagerly awaiting a tell-all book about the Obama White House years shouldn’t expect Valerie Jarrett to pen it.

“I’m not so much on all these books,” the Obama senior adviser said during a conversation Thursday at the City Club of Chicago. “So chances are likely I will not be writing a memoir — I’m too young for a memoir.”

So occasions like the breakfast gathering at Maggiano’s Little Italy perhaps offer the best opportunity to hear from a presidential confidante in the remaining months of Obama’s presidency.

Jarrett — with her mother and daughter in the audience — shared some of her triumphs, frustrations, and disappointments about her time in the White House.

“When I look back over the last six years of unfinished business, one of my largest frustrations and disappointments is that we were not able to get comprehensive immigration reform,” she told a largely friendly gathering. “It wasn’t just the right thing to do . . . it would have strengthened our borders, it would have been good for the economy.”

She said she was also frustrated that Congress didn’t act on the president’s legislation for “sensible” gun control.

“It’s also a period in the presidency when you start to realize that everything you hoped and dreamed for when we started might not come to fruition,” she said.

Jarrett talked of her pride in the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act. She said other presidents had lain the foundation for health care reform but Obama “was able to take it over the finish line.”

She was also asked about everyday life in the White House, and the First Family’s attempts at normalcy.

“No matter what we’re doing over the course of [Obama’s] schedule during the day, he’s got to be taking that long commute home by 6:28 so he’s at the dinner table [by 6:30 p.m.],” Jarrett joked. “It’s a really long commute but, believe me, at 6:15, we are frantically figuring out how to get him out of there.”