Klain talks ups, downs as top Biden aide
Ex-chief of staff will watch work ‘come to life’
WASHINGTON – Ron Klain wondered if he should step down.
President Joe Biden’s top aide had prepared for his powerful and coveted role of White House chief of staff throughout his decades of service at the highest levels of government. He had hoped to steer the White House for Biden’s first two years.
But after months of grueling and stressful work on the COVID-19 pandemic, getting an enormous relief package through Congress but stalling out on major measures to combat climate change, lower health care costs and tackle other top Democratic priorities, Klain was wiped out. And then there was the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, a low point for Biden that saw his poll numbers crash.
The White House was facing a lot of criticism as Biden neared the end of his first year in office, some of it aimed at the chief of staff.
On one of the darker days, Louisa Terrell, Biden’s legislative liaison, stuck her head in Klain’s office. Walking over to his desk, Terrell plunked down a smooth, gray rock she had picked up walking along the Rhode Island coast when it felt as if the White House was being hit from all sides. She wanted Klain to know the team was “rock solid” behind him.
“From that day on, I kept it right in the middle of my desk,” Klain told USA TODAY in an exclusive interview Tuesday, his last full day in the White House. Along with encouragement from the president and others on the team, the “plain and simple” rock was one of the reasons Klain fought through the rough patches and stayed in the job longer – as he likes to point out – than eight of the last nine White House chiefs of staff.
The rock is also one of the most cherished mementos Klain took with him when he walked out of the White House Wednesday, turning the job over to Jeff Zients, whom he hugged on the driveway as hundreds of aides – many of whom call themselves “KIainiacs” – cheered and applauded.
Zients, a management guru who headed Biden’s coronavirus response team, will need those skills to implement the bills on infrastructure, domestic semiconductor manufacturing and climate change the administration pushed through in the past two years.
“If there’s one thing that I will enjoy watching from the outside,” Klain said, “it will be seeing all these things we did last year come to life, and not just be bills with his signature, but buildings and roads and jobs.”
‘I needed Ron’
When tapped by Biden after the 2020 election, Klain had been widely praised as one of the most experienced people to become chief of staff.
“I needed Ron, and I knew it,” Biden said at a White House event this month on Klain’s departure, during which both men wiped away tears.
The Indiana native, now 61, had worked in all three branches of government. Klain was known for his prodigious intelligence and political acumen. But he also knew what it was like to lose – including getting passed over for chief of staff when President Barack Obama was changing top aides.
His past experiences mattered, he said, at the end of 2021 when Biden’s legislative agenda and signature Build Back Better plan stalled. People were panicking. But Klain was convinced that because proposals like bringing down prescription drug costs and fighting climate change had broad support, the Democrats should continue to find a way to get an agreement on a slimmeddown package. Eventually, many of Biden’s proposals in the Build Back Better plan were included in the Inflation Reduction Act that passed in 2022.
“My experience taught me that we just had to stick with it,” Klain said. “We had ideas that were popular.”
At morning staff meetings, Klain reminded the team not to get too pumped up by a good headline or be plunged into despair by a bad one, Terrell said. And as a “historical, political, number junkie all rolled into one,” Klain would help others contextualize the moment they were in, she added.
“One of Ron’s many great skills is his ability to recognize it’s important to manage the hour by hour, and also the longer-term strategy, and longer-term arc,” said Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council.
Another top Biden adviser, Anita Dunn, described Klain’s managerial style as “leadership by example in terms of an absolute refusal to quit and continually looking for different ways to get things done.”
“His sheer determination not to lose is a political trait that really does keep a building going during the tough times,” Dunn said.
‘Best plans’ don’t always work
But perseverance and determination weren’t always enough.
The White House, for example, tried hard to pass voting rights legislation.
“We tried every single avenue and path, and we just didn’t have the votes,” Klain said. “Sometimes, the best strategies, the best plans, being in the right – which I believe we were on voting rights – doesn’t get the job done.”
Klain is particularly proud of Biden’s handling of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – pulling together international allies, getting critical equipment to Ukraine to stymie the invasion while avoiding major damage to the U.S. economy.
“I think that’s going to be looked upon as one of the most difficult things we’ve accomplished and something I’m super-proud of,” he said.
Praise and criticism
Chris Whipple, who wrote a book in 2017 on White House chiefs of staff and a recently published book on the first half of the Biden administration, considers Klain “in the elite group of the best chiefs in history.”
“You get all of the blame for things that go wrong and none of the credit for stuff that goes right – although I think people are recognizing what a great job Ron Klain did,” he told USA TODAY. But Klain still has his critics. In Whipple’s latest book, “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House,” he quotes Andy Card – one of President George W. Bush’s chiefs of staff – saying Klain was “playing more the role of president than chief of staff.”
Some viewed Klain as a micromanager, Politico reported last year.
Klain and other top aides dispute such characterizations.
While the president always wanted to know what his chief of staff thought, Klain made sure others were able to convey their opinions to the president, said Jen O’Malley Dillon, the deputy chief of staff. Klain would also present a recommendation to the president that was the team’s consensus, “even if it was not in line with where his head was,” she said.
“At any hard turn. Ron was the one that instilled confidence in all of us to know that we were on the right path,” O’Malley Dillon said.
Ron Klain’s future plans
“My experience taught me that we just had to stick with it. We had ideas that were popular.”
Ron Klain
As for what’s next for Klain, he said he has no immediate plans beyond catching up on his sleep.
Unlike when his daughter got married last year, Klain won’t have to squeeze his son’s wedding in April into an overpacked work schedule. The trips he has been making to Indianapolis since December to be with his ailing mother will get easier.
“I would not be here if not for her,” Klain said. “Neither of my parents finished college. And it was my mom’s absolute determination that I go away to school, become a lawyer. She was the one who really drove that and pushed that and stood behind me on that. I owe it all to her.”
But Klain said he learned a lot about fatherhood from Biden – in part because his own dad, the owner of a plumbing supply business, died shortly after Klain’s first child was born.
“He’s just openly affectionate and openly devoted to his family. He’s not afraid to say ‘I love you’ to members of his family, in front of other people,” Klain said. “Seeing that approach to parenting that isn’t like the machismo father but someone who really wears his heart on his sleeve really influenced the way I’ve approached my relationship with my sons and my parenting overall.”
Working for Biden on and off for the past 36 years has, Klain wrote in his resignation letter, “defined my life, both personally and professionally.”
Final hours at the White House
In his final hours at the White House Wednesday, Klain conducted his last morning meeting with Biden, this time joined by Zients. They talked about the previous night’s State of the Union address and what immediate items Klain was handing over to Zients.
The prolific tweeter turned over his chief of staff Twitter account to Zients – after assuring “Twitter friends and foes” that they haven’t heard the last of him.
“I will be on Twitter,” Klain told USA TODAY. “I promise you that.”