White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein speaks during a television interview in the White House driveway March 1, 2022.
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White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein speaks during a television interview in the White House driveway March 1, 2022.
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Biden’s Chief of Staff Ron Klein prepares to leave the White House after two years in which the administration scored several key legislative victories, but has been forced to leave the White House for two years by Congress and the Special Counsel. before the impending investigation.
of new york times Other news outlets reported Crane’s imminent departure just hours before the unusual revelation that the Justice Department searched Biden’s personal belongings at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, for more than 12 hours and found more classified documents. reported.
It’s not clear who Biden will succeed his longtime adviser, Klein, after his State of the Union address scheduled for Feb. 7.
Crane was a strong behind-the-scenes manager who helped protect and advance the president’s agenda. helped Democrats defy the odds and maintain control of the Senate in the midterm elections.
His victory came despite the president’s own stubbornly low approval ratings. Crane’s leadership has been speculated at times, especially after a tumultuous withdrawal from Afghanistan, amid sustained high inflation.
Mr. Crane’s resignation comes as the president considers whether to fulfill his intentions of seeking a second term. It also comes as the White House prepares to face a series of congressional probes by the Republicans who now control the House. From the personal issues of Biden’s son Hunter to the immigration crisis at the US southern border.
Also looming is a special counsel investigation into classified Obama-era documents found in Biden’s personal files. The White House has been criticized for its uneven publicity on the issue, even though Biden has defiantly said he has “no regrets” over how the matter was handled.
Crane walks to the South Lawn of the White House to attend an event celebrating the confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to Washington’s Supreme Court on April 8, 2022.
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Crane walks to the South Lawn of the White House to attend an event celebrating the confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to Washington’s Supreme Court on April 8, 2022.
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Crane Advised Biden on Midterm Election Strategy
Chris Whipple, who has studied White House chiefs of staff, said Klein stands out as one of the most successful in recent history.
“The head of the White House usually takes full responsibility and gets no credit for what the president does,” Whipple said. “It has to do with work.” The Battle of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House“Ron deserves a lot of credit for what happened.”
“His greatest asset is his relationship with Joe Biden,” Whipple said. “You have to be able to work closely with the president. You have to be able to manage him. And it’s a very nice balancing act. And I think Ron Klein was able to do that.
One of those moments was ahead of the 2021 midterm elections when Biden wanted to “go anywhere and talk about essentially everything” to help his party win. , Klein and Biden’s political team persuaded the president to focus on a limited list of states and two main issues: reproductive rights and threats to democracy by “MAGA Republicans.”
Whipple said of the email he received from the chief of staff at 1:16 a.m. after it became clear that the Democrats had fared better than expected, and that Klein felt vindicated by the election results. said. “We may not get along as well as everyone thought,” Klein said in the email.
Ron Crane walks with Democratic Senator Joe Manchin to see President Biden sign the Inflation Control Act into law on August 16, 2022.
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Ron Crane walks with Democratic Senator Joe Manchin to see President Biden sign the Inflation Control Act into law on August 16, 2022.
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There was a time when Klein almost quit
The Chief of Staff’s job is all-consuming. “There’s a reason the average White House secretary tenure is 18 months for him,” Whipple said.
Whipple said Klein wanted to step down from the presidency in October 2021 when President Biden’s push for a “build back better” agenda seemed to have failed. Biden was on his way to the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow empty-handed when Whipple visited Crane at the White House.
“Ron told me at that point that he was exhausted and was thinking of leaving. ‘That’s how relentless, grueling and exhausting the job is.’
But Klein’s wife Monica Medina, a senior State Department official who works on the climate and environment portfolio, persuaded him to stay, Whipple said. I said I had concluded that we needed to meet.
How Crane kept the train running
Klein, 61, is from Carmel, Indiana. He is known to sleep very rarely, but he doesn’t drink coffee. Since his favorite Coke TaB is no longer manufactured, he prefers Diet his Coke. And he’s always tweeting, explaining that Twitter is his “hobby.”
“One of the roles of the chief of staff is basically to catch the javelin thrown by the president,” says David Cohen, a political scientist at the University of Akron who has studied this role.
“And one of the reasons Ron Klein uses Twitter is to protect the president, defend him, and promote him.”
Klein is widely respected in Democratic circles but is often vilified by right-wingers, with some Republicans calling him “Prime Minister Klein.”
Crane himself has dismissed these accusations. In a Summer 2021 podcast interview, he claimed to be a “staff person.”
“My goal is to help organize the staff and move it in a direction that will help the president to be effective. Sway.
But Klein’s most effective attribute, Cohen said, was simply “being a train conductor and making sure the train runs on time.”
“It’s a less admired job because it’s essentially a process manager type of job. But if the process doesn’t work and things don’t get off the ground, it can be very disastrous for the president.” Cohen.
Leakage was less in the Crane era
Crane was seen as a stable and traditional chief of staff after serving four years and four chiefs of staff in the Donald Trump administration.
He was also known for running tight ships with limited leakage.He worked for nine former Chiefs of Staff, from 1995 to 1999 for President Al Gore, from 2009 Having served as chief of staff to Biden’s two vice presidents until 2011, he was more prepared for the job than anyone else.
He worked for Biden for decades and began his political career as an intern in Biden’s Senate office.
And his political experience was aligned with the administration’s immediate priorities when he entered the White House: the dual task of tackling the coronavirus pandemic and economic recovery.
In 2009, Crane served as then-Vice President Biden’s chief of staff, tasked with helping oversee Obama’s massive stimulus program. Then, during the 2014 Ebola epidemic, he was a key figure in President Obama’s White House.
Shortly after taking on this new role, in the spring of 2021, he helped introduce the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. He helped Democrats invest in infrastructure, support veterans, and pass laws to encourage semiconductor manufacturing. But perhaps his greatest legislative achievement was Democrats passing what is known as the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature plan to invest in climate change and health care.
