Staff changes are coming to the White House. Will Klain be part of them?

For the last several months, West Wing aides have quietly prepared for the next big transition point: the exodus of aides and Cabinet members that typically follows the midterm election.

Jeff Zients and Natalie Quillian, who oversaw the transition two years ago, have been talking to people at the Cabinet, deputy Cabinet and senior administration levels about their future plans. They’re preparing for departures and working with Gautam Raghavan, who leads the Presidential Personnel Office, to develop lists of potential replacements for the president to consider.

Several departures are expected to be announced after the midterms, although aides also envision many in the senior ranks to stay. But inside the West Wing, staffers are increasingly focused on one name in particular, a figure whose exit would amount to a seismic change in a relatively stable, cohesive working environment: chief of staff Ron Klain.

It was the process-focused Klain who came up with the idea to build a team to prepare for a major staff transition at the two-year mark of Biden’s presidency. And many credit him for the relatively little turnover — and drama — the administration has seen so far. After two years, President Joe Biden’s entire cabinet remains in place, reflective of an administration with the lowest turnover among senior staff in the modern era.

But there is growing concern among many of Klain’s loyal devotees that his own run in the job — already the longest ever for a Democratic president’s first chief of staff — could soon be coming to an end.

"People want him to stay, but staying for years in that job is almost inhumane,” said Jen Psaki, Biden’s first press secretary who left the post in May.

Among Biden's small inner circle of top aides, many of whom have been with him for decades, it is widely assumed that top advisers Steve Richetti, Mike Donilon and Bruce Reed will, as one senior administration official put it, "be there for the full four or eight years – as long as Biden is president." Those who are expected to leave include Council of Economic Advisers Chair Cecilia Rouse and Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry. Keisha Lance Bottoms, the director of the Office of Public Engagement, is expected to return home to Atlanta by the end of the year. And at least one senior adviser could depart for a senior role on Biden’s reelection campaign.

Klain’s future is less clear. 

“Of course, people are tired. I think this is a natural time for some transition,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, the deputy chief of staff, in an interview. “But I also think considering all that has been done and we've been able to get done, I think people are energized because they've been able to actually accomplish so many of the things that we set out to do."

But those who have filled the role recognize that the job, especially the way Klain approaches it, may not be sustainable.

"I can't imagine having a more stressful, more time-consuming job than the one that Ron has today,” said Erskine Bowles, who served as President Bill Clinton’s deputy chief of staff before departing the White House — only to return six months later for an 18-month run as chief of staff.

"There's no job I could compare it to in the private sector that deals with the breadth of issues you have to deal with on a daily basis,” he said.

Klain, known around Washington for his dedicated tweeting, continues to hold Biden's trust, several administration officials said. Inside the West Wing, there is a contingent of Klain fans and loyalists who see him as a generous, responsive and capable boss, eager to offer advice and counsel on policy, politics and messaging.

"I could spend 10 min with Ron and be ready to do the briefing,” Psaki said. “He's so ingrained in every aspect of the place. He's also a driver of moving things forward. Whenever he leaves, it will be a huge loss.”

There's no question that this president, who will turn 80 this month, relies heavily on Klain and the other senior advisors who've been with him for years. Three administration officials, who asked for anonymity to relay closely-held private conversations, intimated that Biden himself has urged Klain to stay.

Part of the thinking is that Klain is uniquely well-suited for an era of more intense partisan combat, should Republicans regain the House or the Senate. Beyond that, there is concern about whether his potential replacements — Zients is rumored to be among them — could match his political experience.

Some people close to Klain, who declined an interview request, are worried about his health and stamina given his around-the-clock approach to the job. He is often up at 3:30 a.m. checking — and tweeting about — gas prices, and still up at 10 p.m. doing occasional MSNBC hits from the North Lawn. He is a voracious emailer, sending notes at all hours, sometimes writing in all caps. He has also made time in recent months for weekly happy hours on his office patio with senior- and junior-level staffers.

But across the broader administration and on Capitol Hill, some officials and lawmakers working with the White House are privately eager for a change. Over the last two years, some have come to view Klain as a micromanager and grown frustrated with his certainty about his own political instincts as Biden’s approval rating has languished around the 40 percent mark.

More than a dozen administration and congressional officials who spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity described a chief of staff intent on managing the flow of information to the president and keeping a tight grip on power, advising everyone on everything and being involved in even the smallest policy and planning details. Whenever Biden is set to deliver a speech, one official explained, "Ron often has to see the [camera] shot beforehand.”

Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, denied that Klain ever asked for such a thing.

Although Klain is known for urging colleagues to chime in during staff meetings, he can be dismissive of differing views, including from high-ranking Cabinet officials. With Democrats bracing for a midterm drubbing, these officials increasingly blame him for several of the president’s missteps.

According to people familiar with the internal deliberations, Klain was the foremost advocate for Biden seizing on the July 4 holiday to hold an “Independence from Covid-19” event on the South Lawn. He rejected input from other members of the Covid team who were anxious about declaring victory prematurely, although Biden did include a qualifier, that his words were “not to say the battle against COVID-19 is over.”

Months ago, when it seemed like Biden's major domestic spending bill was dead in the Senate and long before the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, Klain was spinning a startlingly rosy vision of the looming midterms. He told allies that Biden Democrats could surge enthusiasm among the party's base by forgiving student loan debt and trying to repeal President Donald Trump’s Title 42 directive, which used the pandemic as the impetus for expelling migrants along the Southern border. Bates disputed that Klain felt this way. Biden, in the end, did both only to see each of his actions held up in the courts.

Some of the biggest criticisms directed Klain’s way, however, have been for his management of relationships with Capitol Hill. After much of Biden's domestic agenda was revived in August when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Klain repeatedly took to Twitter and cable TV to shower praise — on Biden. But when the deal actually came together, Klain and the White House had little awareness it was happening, according to three officials who recalled the events of mid-August.

Bates noted that Klain also praised members of Congress for the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and stressed that “a small group of senior White House staff remained engaged with both members throughout the process, at the President’s direction.”

Shortly before the deal was announced, Klain vented to another senior administration official in a phone call that he felt Manchin was out to get Biden and might even be considering a primary challenge in 2024, according to two people who heard about the conversation. The White House denied that such a call took place and, an official said, “was proud the White House led by Ron got a deal done with Senate Democrats including Senator Manchin.”

Over the summer and into the fall, Klain ignored colleagues who urged him to stop tweeting daily about falling gas prices. They worried that doing so implied that the administration was responsible for the cost of gas, which could — and eventually did —shoot up again before falling once more.

And a growing number of Democratic operatives have gone public in recent days with their frustrations that the president has focused too much on his legislative achievements and not enough on the issues galvanizing voters like inflation, immigration and crime. That has been a signature of Klain’s political approach: have the White House continually tout wins to establish a narrative of success. But some Democrats increasingly feel the approach comes across as tone-deaf and more resembles tactics of winning a news cycle than a long-term political strategy.

For all the gripes about Klain, even his detractors give him credit for the resume he has helped build with Biden — even if they think touting it makes for a hamfisted campaign approach. They note that he helped maximize the party’s two-year window to enact landmark laws to improve infrastructure, boost the tech sector, lower drug prices and combat climate change. And that he did it all with little margin for error and while keeping the White House drama free.

Those wins, they argue, are the work of a focused, unusually cohesive team, one that Klain above all built.

“I think that that's a testament to the president, and frankly, it's testament to Ron, too, because he's built that and kept that going through lots of ups and downs over the last two years,” said O’Malley Dillon.