Meet Obama’s environmental evangelist.

And so started Jones' transformation from advocate to public servant. It's not an entirely smooth one; Jones and Obama don't agree on everything. Yes, Obama's environmental, energy, economic, and labor policies have been influenced by Jones and other progressives' work. But in the past, Jones has been a loud supporter of green jobs because they have the chance to help raise people of color out of poverty. In his book, he warns of an "eco-apartheid": a situation in which people of color are left behind as green jobs and green benefits all go to the privileged. But in official Washington, rhetoric about the middle class is always preferable to talking about poor people. In the day I spent with Jones, I heard him mention the disadvantaged only twice. I asked him why he wasn't speaking more about using green jobs for the poor. He offered a knowing smile and said, "We need an economy first."

Otherwise, the friction comes from which energy sources qualify as green. Obama is more supportive of clean coal and ethanol than Jones. (Jones on clean coal: "We could power the country with clean coal, or we could have unicorns pull our cars for us." Jones on ethanol: "One hundred percent against corn-based ethanol. Corn should be food and not fuel.") It's a tension that is acknowledged within the government. When discussing the administration's party line on cap-and-trade, Jones told an advocacy group all the usual talking points but left out a willingness to work with clean-coal and ethanol producers. The communications strategist chimed in saying that she knows it's not Jones' favorite part of the message, but advocacy groups can also say that the government believes in having a "diverse portfolio" of publically funded green energy and green jobs. Jones simply smiled.

Later, when I asked him how he rectifies his own beliefs with the party line, he said that when he's talking about green jobs these days, he has one overriding thought: "What would Barack Obama say?" Jones may still be learning Washington, but he already knows how to be on message. (So much so that while I was with him, he started a speech off with the strained declaration that there was no economic stimulus in this country. There was only the American Economic and Reinvestment Act. Tomatoes, tom-ah-toes. Just don't call the whole thing off.) He told me that the definitions of what was and wasn't a green job were still being hashed out, and would likely be defined not just by the feds but by state and local governments as well, since they'll have their own green-job money to spend. It was an artful dodge that I could imagine Obama performing. On-message yet again.

By buying into the administration's rhetoric, Jones runs the risk of sounding like a talking head. But he manages to avoid that ignominy by exhibiting a rare quality in Washington: He's a storyteller. To Jones, there's an analogy, allusion, or alliteration awaiting every complex explanation of geothermal energy and photovoltaic cells. He has an honest sense of humor—no sarcasm and no biting insults—that puts people at ease with the scary reality that the economy-as-we-know-it is going to have to change. During a speech about why we must start making polluters pay for carbon emissions—a key piece of the president's cap-and-trade agenda—he told a story of a man being charged a fine for throwing a gum wrapper on the sidewalk. If we're doing it for crap, we should be doing it for carbon. When he puts it that way, it makes a surprising amount of sense.

The man is a sound-bite vending machine. Some other Vanisms from our day together:

• "This dollar is working double-time, triple-time, overtime."—On how green-jobs funding infiltrates an economy in multiple sectors.
• "It used to be that we were the No. 1 economy in the world because we were the No. 1 producers. Somehow we got it into our minds that we could be the No. 1 consumers."—On the need to transition out of our current economic system.
• "And so we started going from bubble to bust to bailout to bubble."—On the last 20 years.
• "The president doesn't want a bunch of solar sweatshops."—On the risks of green jobs being low-level, low-paying labor.
• "It's a long and winding road from the president signing a bill into law and signing the back of a paycheck."—On the hurdles of actually getting green-job stimulus money into Americans' bank accounts.

He speaks with a gentle voice most of the time, but every now and then he explodes for dramatic effect. When discussing why the specifics of cap-and-trade confuse Americans, he put on the voice of a dumb child and in a very loud, singsongy voice said, "I am confuse-ed." This was in a meeting with four people he had just met. During another meeting with new acquaintances, he pronounced the word million as if he were Dr. Evil from an old Austin Powers movie. When I asked him about a Spanish report saying that for every five jobs Spain created, it lost nine, Jones started guffawing. "El reporto bogus-o!" he cackled and repeated over and over. The leader of our potential green-jobs revolution has, at times, the disarming sense of humor of a 12-year-old boy.