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Last week, at an event hosted by Georgetown University, where he studied four decades ago, Ron Klain explained the rigor he has with the 46th president of the United States. “I’ve been fortunate to work for Joe Biden for over 30 years,” he said. “And so I know him well and I know what his needs are, and how he likes to be staffed and how he likes the operation.”
The operation chaired by Biden has gone well so far. This week, he has celebrated his hundredth day in office, having achieved its two main objectives: a rapid implementation of pandemic vaccinations and a stimulus plan of $ 1.9 million for restart the economy.
Klain, the White House chief of staff, is there the key architects of this success, consolidating his status as the most skilled American political manager of his generation. “No one was so prepared to be a White House chief of staff, and so far I think he’s up to it,” says Chris Whipple, author of The Guardians, a book on paper. “If Trump’s White House was a smoking and counterfeit jalopi, Biden’s White House is a fine-tuned Rolls-Royce.”
A turning point for the administration came in March, when the stimulus bill received final approval from Congress. Biden followed the vote with a small group of advisers. “After he finished, the president thanked the room, then turned to Ron and said, ‘Look, we all know this wouldn’t have been possible without Ron.’ And Ron immediately said, ‘ That would not have been possible without the team, “says a senior administration official.
“I think this defines how he approaches work better than anything. He is a chief of staff who has the confidence of the president, but he also makes sure that the people in the building share the credit, ”he added.
Klain, 59, was born into a Jewish family in Indianapolis: his mother was a travel agent and his father a building contractor. His own aspirations for office quickly stalled in Georgetown: he sought a seat in the student senate, but was disqualified and fined a dollar for campaigning too close to a polling station, according to a 1979 university diary article, excavated by Politician, a policy website.
After graduating in law from Harvard University, he returned to Washington in the late 1980s, working for Supreme Court Judge Byron White, and then working on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was chaired by Biden. . Other political roles followed, including Vice President Al Gore’s chief of staff (actor Kevin Spacey would later play Klain as a stubborn advocate for Gore’s case in the HBO movie Count).
After Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, Vice President Biden chose Klain as his chief of staff. He emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s leading presidential debate specialists, assisting both Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“To be a great coach of debate, you really have to be a teacher of all subjects. There are policies, there are communications, there are processes, there are presentations, ”says Karen Dunn, a litigation lawyer who joined the sessions. “Ron was able to bring tremendous vision and insight to all of these categories and at the same time be admired and liked.”
One of Klain’s most prominent tasks during the Obama years was managing the Ebola outbreak, which prepared him for the coronavirus. “He knows how the government works and how to make it work,” says Tom Frieden, former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Klain has also had a spell as a lobbyist, working for clients such as Fannie Mae, the government-backed mortgage giant. He was also a CEO of Revolution LLC, the venture capital firm founded by Steve Case, a former CEO of AOL.
Over the years, it has earned a reputation for its proximity. “It simply came to our notice then [people in Washington], which is a rare quality sometimes in politics today, “says Tom Daschle, the former South Dakota senator who hired him in the 1990s.
Not everything went perfectly. Klain has had to deal with the erroneous nomination of Neera Tanden for budget director; the White House struggles for deal with an increase in migration across the southern border and strong criticism for hesitating to raise the refugee limit, a key promise of the campaign. Republicans have accused the White House of overly aggressive tax and spending policies and said the president has not lived up to his bipartisan votes.
But Klain is not easy to stagger, people close to him say. “A real strength is the ability to not let any turn or immediate turn derail a general strategy or derail the building – not to let people stand on their own or decide that everything is lost,” says Anita Dunn, l White House chief adviser.
Some allies of the president believe Klain has the potential to be one of the most effective White House chief of staff in history. But Whipple says it’s too early to tell. “The hardest thing about being a chief of staff is going into the oval office, closing the door and telling the president what he doesn’t want to hear. He may be up to it and not. Some White House leaders who they get too close to the head, they have difficulties ”.
For now, at least, Democrats are generally delighted with Klain’s performance. “It’s putting out big and small fires, it’s solving problems and helping to deliver on promises,” says Scott Mulhauser, a former Obama administration official. “That’s what you want from your chief of staff.”
Additional reports from Kiran Stacey
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