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Ron Klain: The Hardest-Working Mr. Smith in Washington
President Biden’s White House Chief of Staff makes it look easy. It isn’t.
Joe Biden’s White House Chief of Staff is proof that Mr. Smith can still go to Washington and make a difference.
It isn’t easy to get there, of course, as anyone involved with the Biden campaign can attest. Long hours, constant fire-alarm fires, and learning to successfully campaign when all manner of past successful campaign strategies have been effectively deep-sixed by Coronavirus, are only a few of the challenges the Biden campaign staff faced.
Plenty of people, on the left and right, didn’t think they could do it-Democratic Party megadonor Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama protege Deval Patrick, and now-former President Donald Trump not least among them. The Biden team was tested, underestimated, and tested again.
“Hang in there until after South Carolina,” Biden’s campaign team told Democratic voters after disappointing finishings in the first primaries. And indeed, what a difference a day made. After a very timely endorsement by the venerable Rep. James Clyburn, and a rallying primary win in South Carolina, Joe Biden sailed to the nomination.
Against the odds of defeating an incumbent president, against the challenges of campaigning without in-person events, against the…