“There’s no job I could compare it to in the private sector that deals with the breadth of issues you have to deal with on a daily basis,” he said.
Klain, known around Washington for his dedicated tweeting, continues to hold Biden’s trust, several administration officials said. Inside the West Wing, there is a contingent of Klain fans and loyalists who see him as a generous, responsive and capable boss, eager to offer advice and counsel on policy, politics and messaging.
“I could spend 10 min with Ron and be ready to do the briefing,” Psaki said. “He’s so ingrained in every aspect of the place. He’s also a driver of moving things forward. Whenever he leaves, it will be a huge loss.”
There’s no question that this president, who will turn 80 this month, relies heavily on Klain and the other senior advisors who’ve been with him for years. Three administration officials, who asked for anonymity to relay closely-held private conversations, intimated that Biden himself has urged Klain to stay.
Part of the thinking is that Klain is uniquely well-suited for an era of more intense partisan combat, should Republicans regain the House or the Senate. Beyond that, there is concern about whether his potential replacements — Zients is rumored to be among them — could match his political experience.
Some people close to Klain, who declined an interview request, are worried about his health and stamina given his around-the-clock approach to the job. He is often up at 3:30 a.m. checking — and tweeting about — gas prices, and still up at 10 p.m. doing occasional MSNBC hits from the North Lawn. He is a voracious emailer, sending notes at all hours, sometimes writing in all caps. He has also made time in recent months for weekly happy hours on his office patio with senior- and junior-level staffers.
But across the broader administration and on Capitol Hill, some officials and lawmakers working with the White House are privately eager for a change. Over the last two years, some have come to view Klain as a micromanager and grown frustrated with his certainty about his own political instincts as Biden’s approval rating has languished around the 40 percent mark.
More than a dozen administration and congressional officials who spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity described a chief of staff intent on managing the flow of information to the president and keeping a tight grip on power, advising everyone on everything and being involved in even the smallest policy and planning details. Whenever Biden is set to deliver a speech, one official explained, “Ron often has to see the [camera] shot beforehand.”
Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, denied that Klain ever asked for such a thing.
Although Klain is known for urging colleagues to chime in during staff meetings, he can be dismissive of differing views, including from high-ranking Cabinet officials. With Democrats bracing for a midterm drubbing, these officials increasingly blame him for several of the president’s missteps.
According to people familiar with the internal deliberations, Klain was the foremost advocate for Biden seizing on the July 4 holiday to hold an “Independence from Covid-19” event on the South Lawn. He rejected input from other members of the Covid team who were anxious about declaring victory prematurely, although Biden did include a qualifier, that his words were “not to say the battle against COVID-19 is over.”
Months ago, when it seemed like Biden’s major domestic spending bill was dead in the Senate and long before the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, Klain was spinning a startlingly rosy vision of the looming midterms. He told allies that Biden Democrats could surge enthusiasm among the party’s base by forgiving student loan debt and trying to repeal President Donald Trump’s Title 42 directive, which used the pandemic as the impetus for expelling migrants along the Southern border. Bates…
Read More: Staff changes are coming to the White House. Will Klain be part of them?