Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina Former Sen. CHRIS DODD knows JOE BIDEN has hit a bumpy patch in his presidency. “It's been a tough spell, obviously,” he told West Wing Playbook. “Look, I think he's made good decisions and obviously the execution [of] decisions is a — it’s a problem...People exaggerate how many issues a White House, any White House, can handle simultaneously. And the fact that he’s handling five of them — any one of which would be overwhelming in terms of White House's ability to grapple successfully with it — makes it difficult.” Despite the myriad challenges, however, Biden is making time Friday to go to, of all places, Storrs, Connecticut. And he’s doing it for Dodd. The president will head to the University of Connecticut for a dedication ceremony for the Dodd Center for Human Rights, which had previously been named the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center after Chris’ father, a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials who later became a senator. The board of trustees voted in August to change the name to incorporate both Dodds. The decision to attend the event is a sign of how influential Dodd remains with the president and his inner circle. The Connecticut Democrat, who is now a senior counsel at the powerful D.C. firm Arnold & Porter, helped lead Biden’s vice presidential search last summer. And he was part of an unofficial delegation, along with former Deputy Secretaries of State RICHARD ARMITAGE and JAMES STEINBERG, who traveled to Taiwan at Biden’s request in April to send a “personal signal” of the president’s commitment to the Chinese-claimed island and its democracy, Reuters reported at the time. While he does not have a formal role in the administration, he is part of a loose collection of former colleagues and family that the president still consults — a privy council assembled from his nearly five decades in Washington. “I’m an old friend who’s available if he needs me to talk about something,” said Dodd, who served alongside Biden for 28 years in the Senate. He added: “I'm certainly friends and we talk occasionally, but to suggest some sort of informal adviser — a lot of people like to be, I don't quite call myself [that].” White House officials say that Dodd hasn’t been centrally involved in any one issue but he is one of the few people outside the building who can call any of Biden’s senior advisers The relationship between the 77 and 78-year old Irish-Catholic career politicians began in the 70’s, with Dodd winning election to the House two years after Biden arrived at the Senate. Dodd eventually became an active member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a panel Biden chaired for much of the 2000s. The duo became even closer during the 2008 presidential campaign when they shared gallows humor about their sputtering campaigns (Dodd moved his family to Iowa, to no avail) and rolled their eyes at the fancy charter jets used by their competition. “Flying back [from an event], our opponents Secretary Clinton and President Obama each had their G-5’s, I think it was, and we had a little prop plane to fly us around in,” recalled Dodd. Their career arcs diverged at that point. Biden was tapped as VP, and Dodd returned to the Senate where he helped lead the effort for financial regulatory reform but also became engulfed by accusations that he’d received preferential home loans (which he denied). But the mutual admiration remained. In November 2009, Biden described Dodd as “the sharpest tool in the kit,” and, “my single-best friend in the United States Congress." A few months after TED KENNEDY died, Biden anointed Dodd as, "The single most gifted legislator in Congress, now that Teddy Kennedy's gone.” In the run-up to 2016, Dodd was also one of the few Democratic powerbrokers encouraging Biden to jump in the race against HILLARY CLINTON, according to Biden’s memoir. Communications director KATE BEDINGFIELD, who had worked with Dodd at the Motion Picture Association of America, was advising Biden at the time. And Biden advisers still note how Dodd was an enthusiastic campaigner during the 2020 primary. Dodd remains bullish on the longer-term prospects for his friend’s ’s presidency, despite his current rough polling (which, ICYMI, CHRIS CADELAGO and LAURA BARRÓN LÓPEZ dug into over the weekend).“In time, when people look at the underlying decisions, he's on the right track,” Dodd insists. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you ROBERTO BERRIOS, senior confirmations counsel? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. | 
