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The House of Biden

News and notes on the latest innerworkings and shifts in Bidenworld: Zients tea leaf reading, the complexities of the Dunn-Bauer dynamic, and the resurgence of a campaign foe.

Jeff Zients, a centimillionaire-ish former private equity executive and Biden’s Covid czar has taken over as Biden’s chief of staff.
Jeff Zients, a centimillionaire-ish former private equity executive and Biden’s Covid czar, has taken over as Biden’s chief of staff. Photo: T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images
Tara Palmeri
January 24, 2023

For months, Joe Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain has been telegraphing that he was planning to leave the White House—he was exhausted, wanted to spend more time with his family, etcetera, and he’d also managed to reclaim the narrative after a legislative flowering and the auspicious midterms. Of course, Biden famously abhors change and prefers insularity, so this had become one of the longest drawn-out personnel selection processes in recent political history, a hallmark of the president’s reputation for indecision.