Table Of Content
The staff of the various offices are based in the West Wing and East Wing of the White House, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and the New Executive Office Building. Senior staff, with high level, close contact with the President, have the title Assistant to the President. Second-level staff have the title Deputy Assistant to the President, and third-level staff have the title Special Assistant to the President.[2] These aides oversee the political and policy interests of the president. The president said the White House will host an official transition event next week to thank Klain and to welcome Zients back to the White House as chief of staff. President Biden formally announced Friday that Jeff Zients, the former White House COVID-19 czar, will replace Ron Klain as chief of staff.
White House Military Office
The news cycle is 24/7, and there are more platforms than ever. I do think it makes it more challenging for the president to govern and the chief of staff to execute policy, but it makes it all the more important that you have a chief of staff who understands the nexus between policy and communications. You have to be able to manage the administration’s message and make sure everyone is on the same page. Those orders were more than an annoyed attempt to keep the president’s schedule clear. Haldeman may not have known it, but as head S.O.B. he would make history, essentially creating the modern chief of staff. Part gatekeeper, part taskmaster, a chief of staff is the White House’s most put-upon power broker—an employer who must juggle the demands of all branches of government and report to the chief executive.
Obama administration 2008–2015
Almost all of the White House Office staff are political appointees of the president, do not require Senate confirmation and can be dismissed at the discretion of the president. Klain has served in the top role for more than two years and was a key adviser to Biden during the 2020 campaign. It has been long expected that he would leave sometime after the midterm elections, and the plan is for him to do so after Biden's State of the Union address early next month, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. In private conversations dating back to the middle of last year, Klain made it known that the job was exhausting, and he talked about departing around the midpoint of Biden's term, one person familiar with his views said.
Advisory board and corporate executive board
He is the president's closest adviser and the person he depends on to execute his agenda. He decides who gets to see the president, negotiates with Congress, and receives unparalleled access. Each chief can make or break an administration, and each president reveals himself by the chief he picks. Zients' first government job was in 2009, when he was made chief performance officer for the Office of Management and Budget for the Obama administration. He went on to serve as the director of the National Economic Council and assistant to Obama for economic policy. Mr. Biden has described Zients as an "expert manager," which is why the president brought him on to handle the administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ron Klain Expected to Step Down as Biden’s White House Chief of Staff
He’s not only the president’s closest confidant, but the president’s gatekeeper. He’s the honest broker who makes sure every decision is teed up with information and only the tough decisions get into the oval office. He’s what Donald Rumsfeld called “the heat shield,” the person who takes fire so the president doesn’t have to. He is who tells the president what people can’t afford to tell the president themselves.
In the article, the Journal questioned Pecker's relationship with Donald Trump at the time, Pecker says, adding it was published just days before the 2016 election. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., would not confirm or deny Klain's reported plans to depart. But he said that Klain has been an indispensable part of the policy successes Biden has racked up. Klain's exit comes at a critical time for the White House and presents Biden with one of his most difficult personnel challenges to date.
The following table details previous White House chiefs of staff since the role was created in 1946. We'll be in touch with the latest information on how President Biden and his administration are working for the American people, as well as ways you can get involved and help our country build back better. Skinner served as executive producer on several shows that place emphasis on female professionals in the sports industry, particularly the NFL. While Donald Trump sits in a Manhattan courtroom in his criminal hush money trial, a federal judge upheld E. Jean Carroll's defamation verdict and denied the former president's motion for a new trial Thursday.
“We have no announcement right now,” he told NBC News Saturday afternoon. Mr. Klain, a lawyer and veteran Democratic operative who first worked for the president-elect in the late 1980s when he was a senator, has been a sharp critic of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. "Ron has been invaluable to me over the many years that we have worked together, including as we rescued the American economy from one of the worst downturns in our history in 2009 and later overcame a daunting public health emergency in 2014," Biden said in a statement. Maybe not under this administration, but there almost was under Obama. To learn more about how the position came into existence, how it has changed over time, and what it means for the country today, Smithsonian.com spoke with Whipple about his research.
He does have more business experience than Klain, something that could benefit the president as he heads into the second half of his term. As the first departure among a stable core of senior advisers closest to the president, Klain’s exit is likely the first domino in a series of staffing moves to come. Advisers have long said a wave of them would likely come after the State of the Union on Feb. 7, with parallel moves as part of a campaign ramp-up. “His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again,” Mr. Biden said. An alumnus of the Obama-Biden administration, Klain had previously been Biden's chief of staff when he was vice president.
But when filled by competent people, it can make all the difference.
The next White House chief will need to fend off aggressive investigations coming from the Republican House majority while ensuring Biden remains a viable candidate for re-election. In a statement, Mr. Biden called Mr. Klain an “invaluable” adviser, noting in particular the work they did together during the economic crisis in 2009 and the Ebola outbreak in 2014. An earlier headline mistakenly said Ron Klain would be White House chief of staff in 2020. "He knows Ron and Ron knows him," said Rahm Emanuel, a former chief of staff to former President Barack Obama. "That trust level is essential. When Ron Klain goes up to [Capitol] Hill, everybody knows he's speaking for Joe Biden."
White House's first chief diversity and inclusion officer is leaving Biden's administration - The Associated Press
White House's first chief diversity and inclusion officer is leaving Biden's administration.
Posted: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Others, he said, were James Baker, who was chief of staff under Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; and Leon Panetta, who held the post under Democratic President Bill Clinton, Whipple said. Klain, as a senior adviser to the Biden campaign, was particularly instrumental in its coronavirus messaging. He recorded an explanatory video in front of a white board that ended up being one of the campaign's most popular videos on social media platforms as it transitioned to a mostly digital operation during the early days of the pandemic. "His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again," Biden added in the statement. This whole journey began with a phone call out of the blue with a filmmaker named Jules Naudet.
Klain, who was also Biden's chief of staff during his vice presidency, is credited with bringing a quiet discipline and order to West Wing operations, which have been noticeably free of drama. WASHINGTON — Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff who has steered President Biden’s administration through two years of triumphs and setbacks, is expected to step down in coming weeks in the most significant changing of the guard since Mr. Biden took office two years ago. When Emanuel was Obama's chief of staff, the administration had to deal with the financial crisis and the auto bailout.
Back in December, ten [former chiefs of staff] went to see Reince Priebus at the invitation of Denis McDonough [Obama’s last chief of staff] to give him advice, much the way they did for Rahm back in 2008. But [the success of the chief of staff] really all depends on the president at the end of the day. There’s almost nothing a chief of staff can do unless he’s empowered to do it.
A video of Mr. Klain lecturing Mr. Trump about the pandemic was widely seen during the campaign. WILMINGTON, Del. — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. named Ron Klain, a veteran Democratic operative and a decades-long confidant, to be his White House chief of staff Wednesday evening, the first step toward putting in place his administration’s senior leadership. At the end of the day, the problem, the challenge is fundamentally Donald Trump’s. If he heeds the obvious lessons of recent presidential history he will realize that he has to empower a White House chief of staff as first among equals if he wants to be able to govern.
