It was given as a starting point. Before the midterm elections, the case even seemed settled. On Saturday, the New York Times announced that Ron Klain may resign from his position following Joe Biden’s Feb. 7 State of the Union address to Congress. While the president will soon announce his intention to run again, or not, for 2024, Ron Klain might be tempted to once again support his “boss.” But the White House is said to have begun the search to find a successor.
Custom dictates that after the middle of the legislature the president in office renews his closest collaborators. If the government of Donald Trump has been marked by an incessant rotation within his team in the White House, that of Joe Biden has been characterized by its exact opposite. “The group of people around him has been very solid, a legacy of the Obama model, says Célia Belin, director of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). No scandal or going off the road. With a very broad delegation of powers, thus allowing cabinet members to decide and execute without receiving a tweet from the presidency to the contrary. »
The most emblematic of all, and the most discreet, apart from his presence on Twitter (between 30 and 40 tweets a day and nearly 600,000 followers), was Ron Klain, political marathoner from Washington. The Indiana native, a Harvard law graduate with high honors, served under Vice President Al Gore from 1995 to 1999 and Joe Biden under President Obama from 2009 to 2011. He holds the record for longest-serving chief of staff in democrats camp the balance sheet “saw” of Joe Biden, according to Célia Belin’s expression, is also his. A follower of the politics of small steps like its president, Ron Klain weighed heavily in the fall of 2021 in the negotiations in Congress for 1 billion dollars for the renewal of the country’s infrastructure.
One of the toughest in the democratic galaxy
When he is chosen by Joe Biden, as of November 11, 2020, no one is surprised. Klain, a chubby face with a round body, has a reputation as one of the stalwarts of the Democratic galaxy and one of the most loyal of the inner circle of Biden boys. But the one who will become the central pawn of the presidential chess, however, had a doubt. He remembered a phrase, Biden’s when defining himself: “I’m the only Irishman who doesn’t hold a grudge.” When, in 2015, Hillary Clinton embarked on the party primaries for the White House to succeed Barack Obama, Ron Klain offered her all his help in preparing the first debate between Democratic candidates.
The former first lady crushes her competitors. His performance is such that it prevents Vice President Biden from launching his campaign in turn when he was still hesitant. Klain assumes it hurt Biden, to whom he owes almost everything in his rise. ” It’s kind of hard to have played a part in taking down Biden. I’m sure I died for them”he wrote then, alluding to the Biden clan, in an email revealed by WikiLeaks leaks and reported by journalist Chris Whipple in his book published this week in the United States,The fight of his life: Joe Biden’s White House (Scribner, not yet translated into French).
Reason on the one hand and instinct on the other
Obviously, therefore, the Irishman preferred to forget. Because deep down these two people know each other by heart. They are compared to an elderly couple who have been married for forty years. One gets straight to the point while the other procrastinates . “Okay, now we have to decide A or B”, Klain might say. And Biden to answer him “And what about C or A and a half? », says Chris Whipple again. Reason on the one hand and instinct on the other, the duo complement each other perfectly. Despite their friendly proximity, he calls his leader “Mr President” where “sir”. He finds nothing wrong with it. They say the only thing that annoys her about her chief of staff is that he talks at full speed.
What will Ron Klain finally do? Last year, according to Chris Whipple, he had already considered giving up the apron, but had given up saying “that he couldn’t leave Joe Biden in a mess”, just before the mid-term elections. Will he again embark on the adventure of power when the next two years are at risk of being hampered by the Republican opposition that has become a majority in the House of Representatives? And if so, will his quiet, bipartisan approach work with the two powerful Trumpites elected, Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green (Georgia) and Lauren Boebert (Colorado)?“It will be complicated, Analysis by Celia Belin,because they are now part of the all-important commission to monitor the activity of the government, while Joe Biden comes out momentarily weakened by the sequence of confidential files found in his home in the state of Delaware. »
Source : Le JDD
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