He is the latest in a string of Jewish chiefs of staff to serve a US president.
But Ron Klain now finds himself under fire as Joe Biden suffers in the opinion polls.
Part gate-keeper, part human shield, the chief of staff is often seen as the second-most powerful person in Washington. With the presidency buffeted by soaring inflation, plummeting approval ratings, and dire predictions for the Democrats’ fate in November’s mid-term elections, the chief of staff – nick-named “Prime Minister Klain” – is feeling the heat.
He is accused of being overly attentive to the Democratic party’s left wing and alienating the moderates in Congress needed to overcome a stalled legislative agenda.
One Democratic member of Congress told Politico magazine: “The president was elected because we all thought he was going to be good at governing.
“He was going to govern from the centre, he was going to work with Republicans. And to have a chief of staff that apparently has decided that he’s going to be Bernie Sanders, I think that’s confusing. It’s just not helpful.”
Influential New York Times columnist Bret Stephens has urged Biden to restore his “flailing” presidency by returning to his centrist campaign message, and demanded Mr Klain should go. He wrote: “Ron Klain is a loyal assistant. But the president needs a chief of staff who’s a peer – what James Baker was to George HW Bush or Howard Baker to Ronald Reagan.”
Mr Klain recently responded to speculation his job may be on the line, saying: “I’m happy to be the person who takes the spears when things go awry or when people are critical.
“It is a grinding job, there’s no question about it. It takes a lot of stamina to do it. So we’ll see how long it lasts.”
But Mr Biden is known for his staunch loyalty and declared at a press conference last month: “I’m satisfied with the team.”
Mr Klain is but one of a number of Jewish Democrats – including the Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken; Attorney General Merrick Garland; Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security; Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen; and Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence – appointed to senior roles by Mr Biden.
“Enough for a minyan,” suggested a headline in The Forward on the eve of the president’s inauguration last year. Their appointments reflect the traditionally strong links between the Democratic party and the US Jewish community. Two of Barack Obama’s chiefs of staff – Rahm Emmanuel and Jack Lew – were also Jewish.
Two other Jews have held the most senior role in the White House, under Republican administrations: Kenneth Duberstein, who held the position during Ronald Reagan’s final year in office, and Josh Bolten, who took the poisoned chalice at the tail end of George W Bush’s presidency.
For all the criticism of his alleged coddling of left-wing Democrats, Mr Klain is closely tied to the party’s centrist wing. Indeed, he doesn’t hail from liberal New York or California, but the more conservative midwest: “I grew up in Indiana, with a decent-size Jewish community, but we were a distinct minority.”
The brickbats currently flying Mr Klain’s way contrast sharply with the plaudits which greeted both his appointment and the president’s successful first few months in office.
Mr Klain’s glittering CV – a stint working for Mr Biden when he headed the Senate Judiciary Committee in the late 1980s was followed by senior positions in the Clinton and Obama White Houses – suggested that the incoming president intended to rely heavily on competence and experience.
The vaccine rollout and the passage of the $1.9bn stimulus package during the president’s first 100 days in office were greeted as evidence of a newly functional White House after the chaos of Donald Trump.
Mr Biden told aides after the stimulus bill became law “we all know this wouldn’t have been possible without Ron”.
A landmark infrastructure package which won rare bipartisan support was also attributed to Mr Klain’s effectiveness as the president’s chief congressional hustler.
Republicans, too, recognised Mr Klain as what a flattering New York Times profile last summer termed “the essential conductor of administration business”. One Republican senator suggested: “He’s kind of the guy behind the curtain,” while aides to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell were said to have nicknamed the chief of staff “Prime Minister Klain”.
But all that praise is now a fast-fading memory. As one of Mr Klain’s predecessors in the role, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, Bill Daley, suggested recently: “It falls on him because he has the title. It goes with the territory. When it’s good, the credit goes with the president. And when it’s bad, the blame goes to you.”
