Ron Klain Likes His Job
There’s a fake Ron Klain memo buried in this pile; see below for that.
But first, this is the most oddly compelling video you will see today:
Second, for a brief moment Tuesday, an email I received tempted me to permanently discontinue writing Wide World of News.
Once you read the email, you will understand my initial reaction:
However, if enough of you become paying subscribers or contributors today, I just might change my mind and continue this daily work.
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Now, on with the fake Ron Klain memo!
****
TO: JRB
FROM: Ron Klain
DATE: July 13, 2022
RE: This is us.
I hear you got some rest on the flight to Israel.
That’s great.
I’ve never felt so close to you -- or more alienated from you.
In some ways, we are in exactly the same place in our careers.
But, at the same time, we are diverging.
Let me explain all of this by telling you a story.
A generation ago, two young and ambitious men came to Washington from the provinces, without family connections or great wealth. Both earned a series of increasingly visible positions, and each achieved the unusual status of being considered a rising star within the Democratic Party in each of several consecutive decades.
From the start, for all their success, both men basically always aspired to the brassiest rings on their respective career paths.
The principal wanted to be president.
The staffer wanted to be White House chief of staff.
History will record that, in the modern era at least, no other person went as long from the moment of yearning for either slot to achieving the goal.
It took them both decades, but they got there, right at the same time, after numerous failed attempts.
And, now that we both got what we each wanted, all anybody wants to talk about is how bad we are at our jobs – and insisting that we give them up.
In just over a year and a half, I feel we have been in the foxhole together, successfully dealing with unfathomable challenges: the pandemic, inflation, legislative challenges, abortion, guns, China, Putin, and so much more.
Our critics, notwithstanding, as my Twitter account has documented with the care of a Carl Sferrazza Anthony book, we have achieved great things together.
But/and here is where our paths diverge, and where my feelings of alienation come in.
I’m killing myself to get your through this term and reelected to another – and you are increasingly listening to those who are calling for my head on a pike.
Yes, it’s easy to make the chief of staff the scapegoat for some of the bumps and potholes along the road that we have hit.
Have I returned every donor call?
No.
Have I rubbed some members of Congress and cabinet folks the wrong way at times?
Yes.
Am I bit fatigued at times working these kinds of hours on behalf of you and the American people?
Sure.
But am I more of the problem than part of the solution?
As you would say, sir: C’mon, man!
For you, I’ve caught more spears than Samantha Stark.
Yes, the June consumer price data coming out this morning will be brutal, but my operation pre-spun the announcement, pointing out to the media that the new numbers will be old and overtaken by the drop in gas prices that has already occurred.
And we will be sure to get this new information out there to the press:
The worst oil-supply crisis in decades is showing tentative signs of easing as flagging economic growth weighs on demand for crude while sanctions on Russia are having less impact on oil production than expected, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday.
The Paris-based agency cut its forecasts for oil demand for this year and next. Historically high prices for a barrel of oil were putting off consumers while weakening global economic growth—itself a product of high inflation and central-bank policies—was undermining demand, it said in its closely watched monthly oil-market report.
Meanwhile, U.S. and Canadian producers were leading an increase in global output, while sanctions on Russia’s oil industry were having less of an effect on its production levels than initially expected. (Wall Street Journal)
As for the Middle East trip, I think we have hopes right where we want them to be; the press is already lowering expectations down to ankle level.
Check out how your pals David Sanger and Peter Baker frame it up in the Times:
President Biden left Washington for a four-day trip to the Middle East on Tuesday to try to slow down an accelerating Iranian nuclear program, speed up the flow of oil to American pumps and reshape the relationship with Saudi Arabia without seeming to embrace a crown prince the C.I.A. believes was behind the killing of a prominent dissident who lived in the United States.
All three efforts are fraught with political dangers for a president who knows the region well, but returns for the first time in six years with far less leverage than he would like to shape events.
His 18-month long negotiation to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal has ground to a stop, stymying the diplomatic effort to force Tehran to ship out of the country most of the nuclear fuel it is now enriching to near-bomb-grade levels.
Signs of our lack of leverage are everywhere.
Putin announcing on the eve of your departure that he will meet with Erdoğan in Iran next week. And this Wall Street Journal story makes your Saudi stop even more grim:
As President Biden prepares to visit Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich kingdom is closer than ever to Russia and has no plans to disengage from Moscow or help Washington by pumping more crude, Saudi officials said.
The burgeoning partnership between Russia and the Saudis, rooted in their vast petroleum production capacity, has upended an oil-for-security arrangement between Washington and Riyadh that has lasted nearly half a century and been a central fixture of the post-World War II international order.
And as best we can tell from the coverage, the media does not care one nit about our getting Maher al-Agal.
As for what’s going on with your job….
I know you are VERY unhappy with the coverage of the latest polls, with stories suggesting you are the lamest of ducks and shouldn’t run again.
Trust me, sir, when I say, that these stories could be MUCH worse than they have been, given what the polling shows and given the anecdotes about your interactions with members of Congress and others that we have kept out of the papers.
We trotted out Mike on the record for Peter Baker and tamped down the notion that you have lost a step. We have gone hard on the notion that only you can save the nation from another four years of Donald Trump. And we have quietly and firmly pushed back on these various governors who are dreamily eyeing the 2024 early voting states on the working assumption that you will keep your current job only slightly longer than I will keep mine.
But we are boxed in.
By saying only you can beat Trump in 2024, we are setting the party up for a problem if, by some miracle, you don’t run again. And by having The Veep as your heir apparent, we have put our team in a very tough position, since we all know there are almost certainly no circumstance under which she will win the general election in two years.
If not you, and not her: who??
Which means: YOU.
I know you want us to turn all this around, take the attention off of doubts about your running again, and turn the press focus to, say, Mitch McConnell’s blocking of the China competitiveness bill.
On that point, we have to face the grim reality: Senator McConnell is rarely held accountable for even his most brazenly cynical move.
However, I think you are not giving me (and the team!) enough credit for dealing with negative press about the First Family.
So many people signed off on Dr. Biden’s Latino remarks, and none raised objections about the “breakfast tacos” line. I know it has put her in a bad position, but we think the story is pretty much contained. I will watch that account even more closely going forward.
We also have kept the latest round of Hunter stories from jumping the tracks to wider coverage. And we think we are close enough to the midterms now that any prosecutorial decision will wait until after November. Which is good, to have it put off (no news is good news….), but we are already gaming out how to balance any post-midterm developments there with an announcement of the reelection campaign.
Complicated stuff.
Complicated stuff that only a chief of staff who knows you so well, who works so hard, who possesses a unique understanding of power, politics, policy, and the press could pull off.
We are going to turn this around together.
Win back the support of young voters!
Stop reminiscing about the beauty of working with segregationists in the Senate!
And end all this speculation about your job security!
But, for me to effectively accomplish all that, I need to not feel like a lame duck chief of staff.
I know you keep being told I am acting more like a prime minister and principal than a staffer.
I just isn’t true.
Replacing me would add to your problems, creating the impression of more disarray, and giving the job I’ve always craved to someone who could not hold things together the way I do every day.
Keep me and I will get your job approval numbers up, inflation down, and the pandemic out of the headlines.
And I will get your renominated and reelected.
Now that we both have the jobs we have always wanted, let’s not either of us have to give them up.
Shalom.
****
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