Biden picks his Big Three

 From this evening's POLITICO

******************************

BIDEN’S BIDENS — At the beginning of the Trump administration, there was one big question about a White House staff composed mostly of newcomers to government who were serving a complete novice: Who are the adults in the room?

For Joe Biden’s White House, staffed at the highest levels by old-timers and serving someone with nearly five decades of government service, the question is the opposite: Who are the kids in the room?

President-elect Biden announced his chief of staff, two key senior advisers and a bevy of supporting White House personnel this week. The big three are chief of staff Ron Klain, senior adviser Mike Donilon, and counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti. These are the same men who steered Biden to victory in the primaries when a lot of their contemporaries were snubbing them, saying that they were too old and too out of touch to win a presidential nomination fight in the modern Democratic Party. Klain had a public profile and is active on Twitter, but Donilon and Ricchetti have been nearly invisible.

There will be two dynamics to watch for next year. One is whether they manage the natural tension that develops between the leaders of any modern organization and has been a source of friction in every recent White House. Klain and Ricchetti were finalists for the chief of staff job and Ricchetti, according to three Biden advisers, was disappointed he wasn’t chosen. The second is whether they form a united front against other factions in the administration. There will surely be younger and more progressive pockets of personnel, especially on the economic team. Donilon is a message specialist. Ricchetti is known as a centrist and for his relationships on the Hill. He is likely to be the person Republican senators call first. Klain is a process nerd and probably the most prepared chief of staff in history, having done the job previously for two vice presidents.

In recent history, when a new White House gets in trouble politically, as it inevitably does in its first year, there have been three main sources for the problems: inexperience, ideological incompatibility and turf wars — sometimes all three.

Jimmy Carter populated his White House with allies from Georgia, and their inexperience in Washington helped in his undoing. Bill Clinton’s first White House team was heavy on Arkansas buddies, including Mack McLarty, his first chief of staff. They were eventually replaced by more seasoned Washington hands.

The first Reagan White House was famous for the turf wars between the so-called Big Three, Ed Meese, James Baker and Michael Deaver. That structure, and the accompanying intrigue, was recreated in the George W. Bush White House in 2001 with the triumvirate of Karen Hughes, Karl Rove and Joe Allbaugh.

Barack Obama’s White House was notable because it was light on Chicago pals — he was never a governor with a big staff and coterie who wanted to accompany him to Washington — and heavy on Washington talent. In the crisis year of 2009 the biggest fights were ideological: How big should the stimulus be? How much of his original health care plan should he sacrifice to get a deal in the Senate? Should a climate bill embrace nuclear energy to win over the right?

Biden has created another triumvirate model. Like their boss, Biden’s big three are not ideologues and they are not inexperienced. They ran Goldilocks campaigns in the primary and in the general election, finding and sticking to the ideological sweet spot in both races (a public option over Medicare for All, keeping illegal entry into the U.S. a criminal offense, reform the police rather than defund the police). They have all worked in previous Democratic White Houses at the highest levels. You could call them Biden’s Bidens.

Their natural rivals will be the staffers joining the administration who have not been part of the Biden inner sanctum, a notoriously difficult place to penetrate.

“It's a mix of the people who have been with him for a very long time and people who he only met recently,” said Anita Dunn, one of his close advisers who decided to return to private life rather than join the White House staff.

In Biden’s White House, the “kids” won’t always be young — they will be the representatives of his party’s ideological and demographic diversity. A lot of Biden’s success next year will depend on how well he does integrating the old and the new.