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You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Sunday Night Open Thread: Inside Baseball & ‘Biden’s Best Week’

Sunday Night Open Thread: Inside Baseball & ‘Biden’s Best Week’

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This post is in: 

Remember those halcyon days when stories like this would’ve kept twitter busy for a whole weekend?

i think it’s somewhat more likely that isolation meant he *wasn’t* getting handled the same way he was before than that bottling him away from the action meant people could execute on things, but it could go either way

if it’s the first one that doesn’t speak particularly well of Ron Klain imo

I think it’s plausible that a reason we’re seeing exec moves like the Remain in Mexico action is that people who normally couldn’t normally get access to Biden because of his handlers (Klain, or whoever, I don’t know) suddenly could get to him

could also be that a guy who’s been pretty FP-facing [foreign policy] overall getting grounded meant domestic stuff got more juice

also possible that making it so that a very gregarious Biden physically couldn’t press the flesh streamlined things like a lot

Inside the White House, NEERA TANDEN has taken a far more assertive role in determining what papers make it to the president’s desk than her predecessor as staff secretary, according to several people familiar with the dynamic.

That internal shift in the West Wing’s paper flow has earned her both fans and detractors.

Tanden’s advocates say that she has necessarily tightened up the process and sharpened the material that makes it to the Oval Office. That sometimes requires sending back memos and rejecting certain materials. A popular staff secretary – the person who handles the material the president sees — is not necessarily a good staff secretary, they argue.

Other current and former administration officials, however, see Tanden as a roadblock who is further slowing down an already lengthy decision-making process. “Oftentimes, we need to get a memo to the president very quickly — whether it’s from [chief of staff] Ron [Klain’s] direction or [deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed’s] direction, and then it will sit there for 12 hours and sometimes it will miss the [president’s] book that day,” said one former administration official.

The same person said they felt Tanden too often inserted her own policy and political opinions into a role that’s meant to function as an honest broker who determines what’s worthy of the president’s attention — and what needs more polish first. Others across the administration have been surprised she continues to be a frequent tweeter after her past posts led her to withdraw her nomination to head the Office of Management and Budget…

Tanden has annoyed people inside the West Wing mostly because of her success in asserting more control over the paper flow, according to two people familiar with the dynamic. Part of this is due to a perception inside the building that Tanden is on the same page as Klain, so appealing her decisions to a higher power is not usually fruitful, they said.

“Ron must really love her because otherwise I can’t figure it out,” said one baffled administration official…

In a statement, press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE called Tanden “a friend” and told West Wing Playbook that she “is doing the job that she was asked to do by the President and doing it well, ensuring that he has the information he needs every day. I have seen firsthand the trust and faith the President has in her as a member of his senior team.”

Through a White House spokesperson, Tanden declined an interview…

Reader Interactions

60Comments

  1. 1.

    WaterGirl

    Reading this post I kind of feel like I did in college when I accidentally signed up for a class that required 2 prerequisites that I hadn’t taken.

    This is particular makes not sense to me.

    i think it’s somewhat more likely that isolation meant he *wasn’t* getting handled the same way he was before than that bottling him away from the action meant people could execute on things, but it could go either way

    if it’s the first one that doesn’t speak particularly well of Ron Klain imo

    I think it’s plausible that a reason we’re seeing exec moves like the Remain in Mexico action is that people who normally couldn’t normally get access to Biden because of his handlers (Klain, or whoever, I don’t know) suddenly could get to him

    could also be that a guy who’s been pretty FP-facing [foreign policy] overall getting grounded meant domestic stuff got more juice

    also possible that making it so that a very gregarious Biden physically couldn’t press the flesh streamlined things like a lot

    Maybe all of this is responding to something I hadn’t seen?  But I just don’t get it.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    This is beyond Inside Baseball.

    ETA: If this is what the press is left with, no wonder they prefer presidents who commit a little light treason.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    Through a White House spokesperson, Tanden declined an interview…

    That’s all I needed to hear to become a fan.

  4. 4.

    planetjanet

    There is a far simpler answer.  The legislative effort was planned to produce results just as Congress goes on August recess and gear up the fall campaigns.  As they say, most people do not pay attention to elections until after Labor Day.  I am so tired of the superhuman narratives, that one man controls all things.  It is just lazy thinking to me.  I see an organization with a purpose.

  6. 6.

    Ken

    @Baud: It’s Inside Baseball as if the sports reporters were unfettered by team rosters, performance on the field, the rules of baseball, and possibly the laws of physics.

  11. 11.

    OverTwistWillie

    Beavis: Who is this fartknocker, anyway?
    Butt-head: He’s like, one of those dudes from the gifted class.
    Beavis: Those guys always, like, write words like this.
    Butt-head: Yeah, really. “The sails climb high in the garbage pail sky.” That’s stupid.
    Beavis: How come people in the gifted class are always stupid?
    Butt-head: Uhh…hmm. I dunno.

  13. 13.

    Starfish

    @Baud: Tanden has been burned by the press. They were ridiculous to her.

    The idea that Ron Klain cannot do his job is really bone headed, too. He has been working for Biden for many years.

  16. 16.

    James E Powell

    Part of this is due to a perception inside the building that Tanden is on the same page as Klain, so appealing her decisions to a higher power is not usually fruitful, they said.

    OMG! White House staff on the same page!

    And can we have the insiders who complain to Politico transferred to the White House Office of Shut the Fuck Up? I have a tip for them. You want your ideas heard & priorities given attention? Help Democrats win this election by being a team player.

  17. 17.

    WaterGirl

    @Starfish: I think the words the press is looking for are castrating bitch.  Poor Ron Klain can’t even do his job, he’s pu**y-whipped.

    That’s what they are saying, just not in so many words.

    Fuck them.

  22. 22.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Ken:

    It’s Inside Baseball as if the sports reporters were unfettered by team rosters, performance on the field, the rules of baseball, and possibly the laws of physics.

    QFT. Damn, that absolutely nails the Beltway Press Corpse.

    I’d nominate it for a rotating tag, but it’s a wee bit long for that.

  23. 23.

    Lyrebird

    @planetjanet:  I am so tired of the superhuman narratives, that one man controls all things.

    Agreed!

    Those sentences sure have a wet splashing soudnd to me, the sound of a writer fishing and fishing and fishing and not catching a darned thing.

    I am so thankful that Anne Laurie and BC and @WaterGirl: read that stuff and filter it here, because I have a hard enough time facing my day without more of that in my head.

    I wish the NYTPitchBot account was not so right on.  (Hat tip to the incredibly talented Doug J.)

    Pres. Biden deserves heaping boatloads of credit.  Does that mean he had 100% control over what week these things happened?  AYFKM?

  28. 28.

    PaulB

    “i have real questions about the relationship between Biden’s Best Week and Biden isolating for COVID”

    Personally, I have real questions about this person’s intelligence. And their desperate desire for attention by writing ignorant clickbait. I’m dumber for having read that thread.

  30. 30.

    LeftCoastYankee

    This stuff always reads like when you get invited to hang out with your significant other’s work mates, after some “drama” happened at work.

    It sounds bad and you make sympathetic noises, but in the end you don’t know “Lou” or “Kathy” and could care less who was a bigger asshole.

    Until your SO’s work mates decide “indecipherable work drama” needs to be in a national newspaper, and your realize they’re all assholes, and you’re kind of worried about your SO’s judgement.

  31. 31.

    HumboldtBlue

    @PaulB:

    I saw a meme yesterday or the day before that read something like — “I’m a mediocre white man who likes to play the devil’s advocate. I know nothing of black culture or the black experience, but here’s my column debating whether black folks actually have rights to be recognized. I get published three times a week.,”

  32. 32.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The vermin of the Village always have a palace intrigue angle on this sort of thing.  It’s one of the tells that they’re being ridiculously lazy.

  34. 34.

    James E Powell

    @WaterGirl:

    My question to any such staffers is, how can you not know that you are not supposed to talk at all, let alone talk shit about your team? Middle school children know that!

  36. 36.

    Omnes Omnibus

    You know how, at Thanksgiving, none of the food is ready, people are doing things with knives, food processors, and ovens, and then, almost magically the food is all ready and on the table just in time for the dinner?  Same fucking thing.

  37. 37.

    Frankensteinbeck

    That story about Neera Tanden has a tone I associate with misogyny.  It’s like someone hunting for a way to describe competence as a flaw.  It describes Tanden in terms of relationships and with the assumption that she has no right to make decisions of her own.

  38. 38.

    bbleh

    @Ken: A rich buffet of comments, but this one is about the closest to my feelings.

    I mean, W? T? F?  Are they SO without ANYTHING to write about, so DESPERATE to create some kind of Trumpian game-of-thrones drama about the Biden WH, that they have to dive this deep into sheer schizophrenic nonsense?

    Part of it is just laziness, of course — much easier to attract eyeballs with stories of plotting and backstabbing — but part of it is a serious lack of insight.  These well-paid Advanced Politics Knowers seem unable to perceive that this WH is different from the Trump WH.  Well-run.  Competent.  Not a sieve.  And not some opera buffa with a painted clown as the star.

  39. 39.

    James E Powell

    @bbleh:

    I recall that early in the Biden Era, there were reporters complaining that when they asked someone in the White House about a policy matter, they were directed to the person in charge of that policy matter. They insisted this was bad for some reason.

  40. 40.

    WaterGirl

    @LeftCoastYankee:

    This stuff always reads like when you get invited to hang out with your significant other’s work mates, after some “drama” happened at work.

    It sounds bad and you make sympathetic noises, but in the end you don’t know “Lou” or “Kathy” and could care less who was a bigger asshole.

    That is perfect!

  44. 44.

    WaterGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    You know how, at Thanksgiving, none of the food is ready, people are doing things with knives, food processors, and ovens, and then, almost magically the food is all ready and on the table just in time for the dinner?  Same fucking thing.

    I love this.  I was trying to figure out how to say “what, they think legislation just magically appears out of thin air”?  But I let it go.  Your comment is perfect.

  46. 46.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Omnes Omnibus: Sounds like one of the five exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration: “Your mother can’t produce food out of thin air, no one can. Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfigura[tion]… It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you’ve already got some…“

  48. 48.

    WaterGirl

    @James E Powell: Someone should have directed them to the Dilbert cartoon where the pointy-haired boss was talking to (don’t remember who) saying “I’m about to go into a meeting to discuss your project, is there anything I should know about It before I go into the meeting”?

    Reply to pointy-haired boss:  “Yes, you should know how stupid it is for you to be having a meeting about my project without me.”

    Something to that effect.  These people are lazy, incompetent idiots.

  50. 50.

    Ken

    @Omnes Omnibus: almost magically the food is all ready

    The one time I tried to manage Thanksgiving, we ended up eating six courses, not by design.  “OK, turkey’s finally ready, hope you didn’t all fill up on mashed potatoes an hour ago! Oh, it’ll be about another forty minutes for the stuffing.” So yeah, I’ll accept magic as an explanation.

  54. 54.

    moonbat

    That gibberish reads very much like: “Competent woman has opinions! How dare she?! AND she won’t kowtow to our need for palace intrigue! She must be EVIL!”

    They are so desperate for some sort of narrative that reinforces the “Biden is senile and other people are telling him what to do. Oh look! A woman of color! She must be the culprit!” Same kind of crap they used to say about Valerie Jarret.

    Seems like a lot of positive things are happening on her watch so more power to her as far as I’m concerned.

  55. 55.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Bernstein : “Girls delightful in Cuba. Stop. Could send you prose poems about scenery, but don’t feel right spending your money. Stop. There is no war in Cuba, signed Wheeler.” Any answer?

    Kane : Yes. “Dear Wheeler: you provide the prose poems. I’ll provide the war.”

  56. 56.

    Kathleen

    @WaterGirl: I’m with you, WG. I think it’s as simple as Beltway Propatainment Complex has been spreading lies of omission about what Biden/Dems have “not been doing” and are scrambling to explain why now they’re suddenly doing s**t because they’re too lazy and compromised to understand that the “sudden victories out of nowhere” have been in the mill for a long time.

  60. 60.

    Matt McIrvin

    Seems to me more likely the causality went the other way: peak “should Biden resign? See, he can’t even speak in public” chatter occurred while Biden was impaired by an undiagnosed COVID infection. The diagnosis was the beginning of his recovery.

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