Aides tell me that Klain’s grasp of policy minutiae is evident. Indeed, it’s rare for Klain to come across an issue that he hasn’t faced in a similar legislative battle at an earlier point in his long career.
“He makes everyone feel like he’s deeply in the weeds on the things you were working on,” says Jen Psaki, who served as Biden’s first White House press secretary. That gives Klain something rare in Washington: perspective informed by detailed policy knowledge.
Former White House counsel Dana Remus tells me, “What [Klain] does internally is to keep everyone focused on the policy priorities and work priorities.” Yes, things go wrong. But as Remus explains: “His eyes are wide open. He understands we’re all human.” Mistakes happen “particularly where people are working around the clock.” The emphasis is on addressing mistakes and fixing them quickly.
Klain is the first to recognize that there will never be a situation in which everyone thinks the administration is doing the right thing. Listen to progressives, and they’ll say Klain has been too quick to accommodate moderates; listen to moderates, and they’ll insist he indulged progressives’ ambitions too long.
Nevertheless, he has managed to shepherd major victories through Congress. Consider the Inflation Reduction Act, which was salvaged from the failed Build Back Better package. Its passage reflected immense patience on the part of Klain, who indicated for months that the bill’s negotiators would get to some sort of deal.
Certainly, the negotiations weren’t perfect. They blew up in a dramatic fashion in December 2021, when the White House accused Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) of reneging on an agreed-upon framework. Psaki concedes laying out the day-by-day negotiation progress was a “mistake,” since airing out the negotiations “made the process the story.”
Still, they were able to reach a deal by summer. Brian Deese, head of the National Economic Council, credits Klain’s “ability to recognize it’s important to manage the hour-by-hour, and also the longer-term strategy, and longer-term arc.”
Aides emphasize that Biden and Klain deeply believe in the ability to get things done, even in partisan times. That has prompted complaints from the base that Biden has been naive or too “nice” in working with Republicans, though defenders would say it simply reflects Biden and Klain’s faith in compromise.
This might be harder to maintain in the coming years. Biden shifted to a tougher tone in the run-up to the elections, though Jen O’Malley Dillon, Klain’s deputy, says Biden’s criticism of the “ultra-MAGA” element in the GOP was always about a “segment” of the GOP. Biden still intends to push for bipartisan deals, but given the nature of the coming GOP majority, the White House is prepared for a different tone.
Klain also helped implement the effort to fix the White House’s relationship with the media. When Biden came into office, he sought to take the venom out of the press room and regain the White House’s reputation for conveying truthful information. Klain helped carry that out: He understood when the administration needed to give the media “something” to meet the news appetite and when it simply had to say it had nothing to share.
It’s also notable that leaks have become a rarity in the administration, in part because Klain helped created a culture of “collegiality, respect and [staff] having a voice,” as O’Malley Dillon puts it. That’s essential in a town rife with “process” stories. Instead of getting caught up in the…
Read More: Opinion | Ron Klain deserves his share of credit for Biden’s success
