The secret meeting of the nation’s most exclusive political fraternity took place on a
Zoom
call on December 18, deep into what had become the rockiest presidential transition in memory.
President Donald Trump refused to accept defeat. More than 200 congressional Republicans would not say whether voters had truly elected Joe Biden as the nation’s 46th president. And the world found itself submerged in a deadly pandemic, with a vaccine not yet widely available.
One by one, the men logged on to the ubiquitous video-conferencing platform. On came the Republicans Dick Cheney, who served as Gerald Ford’s chief of staff, and Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s third of four chiefs of staff. The Democrats John Podesta, who worked for Bill Clinton, and William Daley, who served under Barack Obama, also joined the call.
Nineteen of the 22 living former presidential chiefs of staff, some of the biggest personalities in Washington over the past five decades, arrived to support Ronald Alan Klain, a man whose shoulders would soon bear the weight of Washington’s most unforgiving job. Klain, the Indiana native and veteran of all three branches of government and K Street, had been training for the job of President Joe Biden’s chief of staff since he was a child.
The chief-of-staff job spares no one.Chris Whipple, author of The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency
Now 60, Klain has been by Biden’s side in different roles since the late 1980s. He worked on Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign and later as his chief counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again,” Biden said of Klain upon appointing him in November.
Klain would become the 30th White House chief of staff, a job title created during the Truman administration. Its occupants have described it as being the president’s “son of a bitch” and “traffic cop.” Denis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff, and Josh Bolten, George W. Bush’s chief of staff, had organized this previously unreported call, which four participants confirmed to Insider. They mostly declined to comment on the content of their conversation.
Decades of Washington intrigue surrounded them in the digital firmament. This was just the third meeting of its kind: They happen only before a new president takes office — and only for a president’s first chief of staff. The tradition began in 2008 with Rahm Emanuel, according to Chris Whipple, the author of “The Gatekeepers,” the 2017 New York Times bestselling book exploring the history of Washington’s toughest job. In usual times, the group would have gathered in person at the White House. But these were no usual times.
The mood was congenial. The men took turns giving Klain advice, from most senior to least senior. Cheney spoke first, giving Klain a roughly 20-minute briefing. (A spokesman for Cheney didn’t return Insider’s messages seeking comment.) Each successive chief took a little less time. Donald Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff, was in poor health and did not participate; he died at 88 in June of multiple myeloma. Jim Baker, the 10th and 16th chief, under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, had gone on a hunting trip. Reince Priebus, Trump’s first chief, was on a plane to California. Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief at the time, declined to participate. He did not return messages seeking comment.
“It’s a tough job, and the people who have been in it feel a certain affinity not only for the job, but for the people who take the job, irrespective of party, and I think that was demonstrated on that call that day,” said Denis McDonough, now Biden’s…
Read More: Inside Ron Klain’s Summer From Hell — and How He Got Here.