WASHINGTON — Ron Klain, who after a few near misses finally achieved his career-long goal of becoming the White House chief of staff, will turn 60 this summer. This is, as his boss might say, a big deal.
Mr. Klain has previously hosted blowouts to celebrate his round-numbered birthdays, notably his 50th in 2011, when hundreds of friends and Obama administration luminaries descended on a Maryland farm for a state fair-themed extravaganza, complete with deep-fried Oreos and tributes to the honoree.
Plans for his 60th have become such a source of Beltway status anxiety that a small universe of Washington strivers is angling for details: Some have asked White House contacts whether a celebration is in the works and if invitations have gone out.
The commotion makes clear that Mr. Klain is an unquestioned man to see in the current White House, the most influential chief of staff of recent vintage and a marked departure from the four battered and marginalized short-timers who held the position under President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Klain, who was the chief of staff for Vice Presidents Biden and Al Gore, is viewed in and out of the West Wing as the essential conductor of administration business, a surrogate for the president and — in the mischievous portrayal of opponents — an all-powerful, unelected orchestrator of an ultraliberal agenda.
Republicans have taken to calling him Prime Minister Klain.
“He’s kind of the guy behind the curtain,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said recently of the chief of staff. It is an oft-repeated Republican line of attack and a characterization the White House is determined to quash.
“I’m a staff person, not prime minister,” Mr. Klain, who declined to be interviewed for this article, told Kara Swisher last month on her podcast “Sway.”
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, a longtime colleague of Mr. Klain’s, reaffirmed this message in an interview, referring to him as “the premier staff person, certainly of my generation.”
In fact, the chief of staff holds an outsize authority in the constellation of Biden insiders, many of whom, like him, go back decades with the president. People in and around the White House describe Mr. Klain as the essential nerve center of an over-circuited administration whose day-to-day doings reflect how this White House works and what it aspires to.
Mr. Klain rarely travels anywhere with the boss, including local hops like President Biden’s visit to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to push the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion infrastructure plan. Instead, the chief of staff stayed behind to work the phones and strategize with lawmakers and White House negotiators and, essentially, deal with a simultaneous array of meetings, triage decisions and crises.
“I probably talk to him every day, and we can finish each other’s sentences,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader. “If there’s a thorny problem, I’ll call him.”
Wednesday, for instance, included Mr. Biden’s visit to the Hill, a White House decision to evacuate thousands of Afghan interpreters and other allies from the 20-year war in Afghanistan and an uptick in Covid-19 cases across the country. The pop star Olivia Rodrigo also dropped by to help promote coronavirus vaccines, the prevailing buzz in the West Wing that day.
“Today was Olivia Rodrigo Day at the White House,” Mr. Klain declared at his 6:30 p.m. wrap-up meeting with senior staff, long after the singer had departed. He synthesized the day’s infrastructure developments and prepared to brief the president the next morning.
Mr. Klain has also taken a special emissary’s role with select members of the Senate, where the evenly divided chamber has raised certain relationships to the highest-priority “chief of staff portfolio.”
One is Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the moderate Democrat whose swing-voting tendencies have earned him special care and feeding. “I’ve never had a…
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