My book on the Obama stimulus had a bunch of stories about @RonaldKlain, who managed it really well in his sane, efficient, beleaguered way. Some are very relevant for his new job; some are just fun. I'll share a few... 1

Most of Obamaworld initially assumed a jobs bill would be great politics, but Klain was worried even before Obama took office. 2

He thought: Obama is blaming the financial crisis on overleveraged banks and overleveraged homeowners--and our solution is for government to spend a trillion dollars of borrowed cash? He told Larry Summers in 12/08: "This is going to be a hard thing to message." He was right! 3

Klain was less prescient about the stimulus plan to dribble out tax cuts through reduced withholding instead of writing Americans checks with Obama's name on them. Obama's economists thought people would be more likely to spend the $ if they didn't know they had received it. 4

But that was like sending flowers to a romantic interest without signing the note. "The political theory was if you do the right thing, and you get results, that's good politics," Klain told me later. "In retrospect it just seems stupid." 5

Also relevant: The stimulus killed Klain's hopes for bipartisanship: "It was a real wake-up call. When R's can't support tax cuts & infrastructure they've always supported in the past, that's a pretty strong sign they're not going to support anything with Obama's name on it." 6

I loved Klain's response to @JaredBernstein's proposal to put 750,000 Americans to work on a National Inventory of Structures: "You're kidding, right?" Jared went into a long explanation about how they could create a geocoded database of all the nation's buildings. 7

Klain is wonky but not quite that wonky. "What are you trying to do to us?" he groaned. "I think we could sell a plan to build buildings. We cannot sell a plan to COUNT buildings." There was no National Inventory of Structures. 8

Alas, Klain was also in on the decision to send Obama to visit a high-tech solar company called Solyndra. "Sounds like there are some risk factors, but that's true of any innovative company POTUS would visit," he wrote to Valerie Jarrett. "It looks OK to me..." 9

His defense of the risk is relevant, too: "The reality is that if POTUS visited 10 such places over the next 10 months, probably a few will be belly-up by election day 2012, but that to me is the reality of saying we want to promote cutting-edge, new-economy industries." 10

Anyway, Jarrett agreed. "There is an inherent risk in highlighting a company before they have a track record." To which Klain replied: "Or even after they have one :-)" The emojis, reprehensibly, were his. 11

Klain was also a key force pushing the politically disastrous Obama/Biden 2010 "Recovery Summer." The idea was to highlight all the infrastructure work getting started. "If you look at what we said, we were right. The construction #'s went way up! But we still got lampooned." 12

Klain's political instincts are not always perfect. He had an elaborate theory about how high-speed rail would be awesome politics, and Rs like Scott Walker, John Kasich and Rick Scott would pay a brutal price for killing projects in their states. It wasn't and they didn't. 13

But Klain is a dedicated public servant and an excellent, effective, beloved manager. He rode herd on thousands of stimulus projects that weren't as shovel-ready as they were supposed to be - the story of the "Biden Bridge" on pp. 253-255 is pretty classic. 14

I'm partial to the stimulus, of course, but I guess it's worth mentioning that Klain also helped save the world from the Ebola pandemic, which also seems relevant. Afterwards I did a long Q&A with him about the power of government. 15 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/ron-klain-what-the-white-house-did-to-fight-ebola-114325

Anyway, he's smart, competent, experienced, well-liked, and Biden trusts him. He is neither a wild-eyed liberal nor a Pollyanna about GOP cooperation. His political instincts are debatable but he's more about managing the staff than trying to be a chief. An excellent pick. END

Oh and if you want to read the book, there are also a ton of fun stories about a guy named @JoeBiden: https://www.amazon.com/New-Deal-Hidden-Story-Change/dp/1451642334