The Bill Clinton comeback

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Sep 29, 2022 View in browser   By Alex Thompson and Max Tani Presented by Welcome to POLITICO's West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Lippman. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Alex | Email Max  The White House is partying like it's the 1990's. Increasingly, important players in BILL CLINTON's White House have been or are becoming the most powerful people in JOE BIDEN 's. Biden has prioritized familiar faces with decades of White House experience to fill his innermost-circle rather than bringing in a new generation of Democratic players. "There's really no reason a guy like Biden should be going on blind dates," quipped DOUG SOSNIK, who served with many of Biden's top aides in the Clinton administration. Sosnik noted that both the Clinton and BARACK OBAMA' s White House skewed younger than Biden's — but that wasn't always a positive. "If you go back to when Clinton first took office, it was a real problem for Clinton because you only had a handful of people who had worked in the White House," he said. Biden's closest advisers — chief of staff RON KLAIN, his top deputy BRUCE REED, and presidential counselor STEVE RICHETTI — all had multiple senior roles in the Clinton administration. Biden's longtime senior advisor MIKE DONILON worked for Clinton's 1992 campaign. Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN was the head of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. Many of these individuals are Biden lifers. But since his inauguration, Biden has also brought in other longtime Clinton hands with less overt ties to him. GENE SPERLING, Clinton's National Economic Council director, is now a senior adviser to Biden charged with implementing his signature American Rescue Plan. Biden's staff secretary, NEERA TANDEN, was a policy adviser for HILLARY CLINTON in her husband's administration. And most recently, Biden brought in JOHN PODESTA, Clinton's former chief of staff, to be a senior adviser for clean energy innovation and implementation. The notable exception within Biden's inner circle is senior adviser ANITA DUNN, who did not work for Bill Clinton, and who worked for BARACK OBAMA in his 2008 campaign against Hillary Clinton. In the 2000 Democratic primary, she was a top aide on BILL BRADLEY's campaign when he challenged Vice President AL GORE. A White House spokesperson pushed back on the premise of this story. "Every administration employs staff who served in earlier administrations," said ROBYN PATTERSON . "All of the individuals listed served in the Obama Administration, as well. The President is proud to have built the most diverse White House in American history." Some administration officials have been frustrated by Biden's reliance on the so-called Old Guard and believe it has made it difficult to recruit and keep new blood. Podesta's hire this summer came as a particular surprise since some in the administration and the White House had assumed that ALI ZAIDI would completely own the White House's climate portfolio after the departure of his boss, GINA McCARTHY. He now has her title of "national climate adviser" but Podesta will also have a significant part of the climate portfolio. Naturally, some Clinton officials view Biden's preference for Clinton veterans as shrewd, especially given the president's focus on trying to get things through Congress. "Anyone who worked in the Clinton administration had to deal with a pretty complicated matrix to get anything done with the Republicans in Congress," said JAKE SIEWERT, who held a number of posts in the Clinton White House including press secretary. "It's natural for the president, who knows a lot of them from that period, to turn to those folks." Many of the Clinton veterans Biden has tapped are considered more pragmatists than ideologues. As a result, the Biden administration has taken a different approach from the Clinton administration on issues like trade, debt, and welfare. A spokesperson for Clinton said the former president would "politely take a pass" on talking to West Wing Playbook. Both Clintons have occasionally dipped their toes in the political waters recently. The former president lobbied Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) on Build Back Better (aka the Inflation Reduction Act) and gave a pep talk to Biden this past May, as POLITICO reported this week. Beyond her new Apple TV show and regular media appearance, Hillary Clinton has spoken privately with Vice President KAMALA HARRIS and will appear with her Friday at the Democratic Party Women's Leadership Forum Conference, according to an invitation obtained by West Wing Playbook. MESSAGE US — Are you JOHN PODESTA? Email us at westwingtips@politico.com and we may publish your comments. A message from the American Petroleum Institute: New technology is cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Learn more.   POTUS PUZZLER This one is from Allie. Which president formally established the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day? (Answer at the bottom.) The Oval MONEY MONEY MURDOCH: President Biden will travel to New York City next week to attend a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Raising money for Senate Democrats isn't that big a deal for the head of the party — though this will mark the largest event the president has done for the committee this cycle to date. More interesting is the host for the evening. JAMES & KATHRYN MURDOCH will open their homes for the attendees, according to a copy of the invitation we obtained. The Murdochs supported Biden during his 2020 run and spent heavily during that cycle. But James comes from a family of media tycoons that, well, have been unsparing in their coverage of Democrats and the administration. Biden himself reportedly called RUPERT MURDOCH the "most dangerous man in the world." The event, which will be on Thursday, was first reported by Punchbowl. The others scheduled to attend include Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER and DSCC Chair GARY PETERS.  TRANSCRIPTION POLITICS: In remarks on her trip visiting the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea, Vice President Kamala Harris slipped up Thursday, saying the U.S. "shares a very important relationship, which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea." In a transcript of her remarks emailed by the White House afterward, "North" was crossed out. But in the WhiteHouse.gov transcript, the word "North" was deleted completely. In past instances of misspeak, the White House website's transcripts have included the mistakes and the corrections. We asked the White House about it but they declined to comment. BRIEFING BREAK: After taking flak during Wednesday's press briefing over how she spun the president's gaffe involving a deceased House member, KARINE JEAN-PIERRE got a breather. The press secretary almost always holds a briefing when Biden is in town, but there was no briefing scheduled on Thursday — and no travel on the president's schedule. A White House official said a press briefing was "never planned for Thursday due to the President's schedule, and as always, we coordinated with (White House Correspondents Association) to determine the briefing schedule." BESTIES: Florida Gov. RON DESANTIS often refers to the president mockingly as "Brandon." But the political snark is gone — at least for now — as DeSantis moved into crisis mode to help Floridians affected by the devastation of Hurricane Ian. In a tweet Thursday morning, Jean-Pierre noted that Biden spoke with the governor to discuss the federal response to the hurricane. The president later in the day said he would "go to Florida when appropriate to survey damage," Reuters' JARRETT RENSHAW reports. Political observers noted that DeSantis was once an opponent of hurricane aid, denouncing federal support for Hurricane Sandy when he was a member of the U.S. House. Our MYAH WARD has more. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This op-ed in GQ by second gentleman DOUG EMHOFF about the importance of reproductive rights following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer. "I'm trying to channel this anger into action, but the first thing I thought about was my daughter Ella, who's 23, and her grandmother Barbara, who's 81," he writes. "Think about it: My 81-year-old mother is somehow going to enjoy more reproductive freedom for the majority of her life than my daughter. That's just not okay. And I'm going to do everything I can for as long as I can to make sure that gets rectified." WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ: A price check showing the national average gas price has gone up, according to PATRICK DE HAAN, also known on Twitter as @GasBuddyGuy, who is often retweeted by White House officials when prices are low. Twitter   SUBSCRIBE TO POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don't miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY.     THE BUREAUCRATS A DIPLOMAT FOR PLANTS: The State Department announced Wednesday that MONICA MEDINA has been nominated to serve as a special envoy for biodiversity and water resources — the first role of its kind as the Biden administration strives toward ambitious climate goals. Medina currently serves as the department's assistant secretary for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. She also is married to Klain. WaPo's DINO GRANDONI and VANESSA MONTALBANO have more details. PERSONNEL MATTERS: RAYSHON PAYTON has been detailed to the White House to be the senior confirmations counsel in the Office of Legislative Affairs. He most recently was an attorney adviser in the Office of Legislative Affairs at the Department of Justice. Agenda Setting STUDENT LOAN SCALE BACK: The Biden administration scaled back its student debt relief program for people who received federal student loans from private companies over concerns the industry would challenge it in court, our MICHAEL STRATFORD reports. The Education Department updated guidance on its website about the matter Thursday. The administration had previously said that those debt-holders would have a path to receive the administration's relief of $10,000 or $20,000 per borrower.   A message from the American Petroleum Institute:   What We're Reading Biden Administration Readies New Sanctions Targeting Iran's Oil Exports (Bloomberg's Annmarie Hordern) Senators Press Pentagon for Answers on Rash of Overdose Deaths (Rolling Stone's Seth Harp) Biden Advised to Declassify Full Intelligence Report on Khashoggi Murder (WSJ's Dustin Volz) How Progressives Can Win The Long-Term Fights They're Losing (HuffPost's Jonathan Cohn)   HAPPENING NOW - MILKEN INSTITUTE ASIA SUMMIT : Go inside the 9th annual Milken Institute Asia Summit, taking place from September 28-30, with a special edition of POLITICO's Global Insider newsletter, featuring exclusive coverage and insights from this important gathering. Stay up to speed with daily updates from the summit, which brings together more than 1,200 of the world's most influential leaders from business, government, finance, technology, and academia. Don't miss out, subscribe today.     POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER On May 9, 1914, President WOODROW WILSON made the second Sunday of May Mother's Day "as a public expression of love and reverence for the mothers of our country," according to the National Archives website. A CALL OUT — Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it. Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein. A message from the American Petroleum Institute: CO2 emissions in the U.S. are among the lowest levels in a generation thanks to innovative tech and partnerships across the country. Learn more.     Follow us on Twitter Alex Thompson @AlexThomp Maxwell Tani @maxwelltani Allie Bice @alliebice   Follow us

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