Staff turnover in the Biden administration is nowhere near what it was under Donald Trump, when senior aides came and went as through a revolving door in a hurricane.
Nonetheless, the press always likes a bit of speculation about who might be in and who might be out, and here comes the Washington Post with an exhaustive examination of how Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s chief of staff, has not had the smoothest first year in the job.
The piece is based on interviews with “more than 60 White House and administration officials, Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress and other Klain associates”.
In one of the kinder comments about Klain’s year in a role which Trump filled four times in four years, the Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal told the paper: “I think that, by and large, he’s making the trains run on time – even though some of the boxcars may seem to be empty some of the time.”
Blumenthal might’ve been alluding to supply chain problems, among various crises (Covid, Ukraine, the assault on US democracy, the fallout from calling a Fox News reporter a “stupid son of a bitch”) which have dogged Biden’s first year.
But the Post piece focused on the damage to Biden, and thus to Klain, from protracted and mostly failed negotiations with the president’s own party on Capitol Hill, in particular over domestic spending and voting rights reform, both high-profile failures.
The Post said many Democrats complained progressives had been given too much weight, one saying Klain had created “a monster” by empowering Pramila Jayapal, the leader of House progressives. (Adhering to rather endearing American newspaper norms, the Post said that source used “an expletive to underscore the point”.)
Jayapal countered: “If he empowered us, it was because we were pushing the president’s agenda.”
The paper also spoke to Klain. He, it reported, “appeared to acknowledge that playing an inside-Washington game had been problematic for Biden in his first year, creating an image that the president spends most of his time in political negotiations.
“Klain vowed that Biden would spend more time on the road in 2022, interacting with Americans and showcasing his trademark style of backslapping empathy.”
There is of course much more in the piece. If you like that sort of thing, it’s here.