Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Alex | Email Eli | Email Lauren In the first months of his presidency, JOE BIDEN vented his frustration about Vice President KAMALA HARRIS, telling a friend that she was “a work in progress.” According to an upcoming book about the Biden presidency obtained by West Wing Playbook, “The Fight of His Life,” word got back to him that second gentleman DOUGLAS EMHOFF had been complaining about Harris’ policy portfolio — which her allies felt was hurting her politically. “Biden was annoyed,” wrote author CHRIS WHIPPLE, who obtained extensive access to Biden administration officials while writing the book. “He hadn’t asked Harris to do anything he hadn’t done as vice president — and she’d begged him for the voting rights assignment.” Biden wasn’t alone. A senior White House adviser vented that “[Harris’] inner circle didn’t serve her well in the presidential campaign — and they are ill-serving her now.” The new details of the tensions between the vice president and the president are among the many revelations in the book due out on Jan. 17 that traces the highs and lows of Biden’s first two years. “I think Biden's presidency is the most consequential of my lifetime,” Whipple said in an interview. “His legislative record is comparable to LBJ’s and he's been underestimated every step of the way. But it's also been a tale of two presidencies –- the first year and the second year. “What makes this such a great story is that Joe Biden and his team really turned it all around, I think,” he said, citing the administration’s response to Russia’s war against Ukraine and the resuscitation of the Build Back Better package. Whipple previously wrote a well-reviewed history of White House chiefs of staff, “The Gatekeepers.” His new book features extensive interviews with Biden’s current chief of staff, RON KLAIN, whom he credits with “patient, nose-to-the-grindstone stewardship.” The book also includes quotes from others in the president’s inner-circle, although Whipple acknowledges the White House approached the book with its usual wariness toward reporters. “It was tough, because, as you well know, this is the most battened-down, disciplined, leak-proof White House in modern times,” he told West Wing Playbook. His interviews with top senior staff were done on deep background, with quote approval, he said. And Biden and Harris only agreed to answer questions submitted in writing. (Whipple wrote that Harris declined to answer a question he sent about “turmoil and morale problems among your staff going back to your time as California attorney general,” and a question asking about her worst day as vice president.) Despite such pre-conditions, Whipple’s book is plenty revealing. White House spokesperson ROBYN PATTERSON said in a statement: “We respect that there will be no shortage of books written about the administration containing a wide variety of claims. We don’t plan to engage in confirmations or denials when it comes to the specifics of those claims. The author did not give us a chance to verify the materials that are attributed here.” Here are some of the revelations that caught our attention: Ricchetti’s disappointment about not being chief of staff After Biden chose Klain as chief of staff, STEVE RICCHETTI, counselor to the president, confided to a friend: “I love Ron like a brother. But I think I’d have been the better choice.” Trump’s letter to Biden DONALD TRUMP followed a tradition carried out by several of his predecessors and wrote Biden a letter before leaving the Oval Office. Biden’s reaction? “That was very gracious and generous…Shockingly gracious.” Panetta vs. Klain The book captures Klain’s anger at the public and private critiques of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan by LEON PANETTA, the former chief of staff to BILL CLINTON who also served as CIA director and defense secretary under BARACK OBAMA. Panetta compared the exit to JOHN KENNEDY’s handling of the Bay of Pigs, and he told Whipple he wondered “whether people were telling the president what he wanted to hear.” Klain shot back after being shown those comments. “Joe Biden didn’t pay a trillion dollars to these people to be trained to be the army. He wasn’t out there saying for years, as Leon was, that we had built a viable fighting force. Leon favored the war. Leon oversaw the training of the Afghan army,” he told Whipple. "He was CIA director and defense secretary when many of the Afghan troops were trained. If this was Biden’s Bay of Pigs, it was Leon’s army that lost the fight.” Afghanistan blame game Whipple wrote that Biden “felt let down by his briefers” when it came to Afghanistan. The book includes several on-the-record interviews with top officials pointing fingers at one another over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
- Secretary of State TONY BLINKEN said that the fundamental problem was that “the worst-case prediction for the failure of the Afghan government and the security forces, throughout the spring and into the early summer, was eighteen months–plus … Throughout this whole process there was an intelligence assessment that proved to be wrong: that the Afghan government and security forces would remain in place and hold on to the major cities well into the following year.”
- When CIA Director BILL BURNS was asked if he thought the results stemmed from an intelligence failure, he told Whipple: “I don’t believe it was. I think we and the intelligence community did an honest, straightforward job of pointing out the frailties — of the Afghan political leadership, especially, but also the Afghan military and the increasing momentum of the Taliban.” All of this, Burns said, was communicated to Biden, Whipple wrote.
- That prompted a senior White House aide to hit back. “Bill can point to things that said, ‘it’s possible that X will happen,’ right? In a twenty-page document, ‘it’s possible that X will happen’ in one line,” the senior aide told Whipple. “But the overwhelming weight of the material provided to the president was that the Taliban would take these rural areas quickly, and it would be a long time before they would launch an assault on major cities, let alone Kabul itself.”
- And then MARK MILLEY, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the 18-month worst-case scenario wasn’t what he recalled. "The intelligence I saw predicted months,” he said. “So we leave the country in August — and in a reasonable, worst-case scenario it’s a Thanksgiving, Christmas, January time frame when things fall apart. I think the intelligence was very, very good. The one exception was that no one predicted 11 days."
Klain reads West Wing Playbook! On Election Day this year, ELI and ALEX reported a story for West Wing Playbook that included administration officials critiquing Klain’s performance. Whipple reports that at 1:16 a.m. on election night, as it became clear Biden would defy the pundits (again), Klain sent him an email: “Maybe we don’t suck as much as people thought… Like maybe the nattering negatives who dumped to POLITICO were wrong!” Maybe they were! Call me, maybe? We’d love to talk. Regardless, thank you for reading, Mr. Klain. Athompson@politico.com if you want to chat! MESSAGE US — Are you HARIS TALWAR, the White House regional communications director? We want to hear from you. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.
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