| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. President-elect Joe Biden has selected Ron Klain to be White House chief of staff, to fairly widespread acclaim. Klain was once a staffer for Biden on the Senate judiciary committee; since then, he's worked for a number of Democratic big shots, eventually serving as Biden's vice-presidential chief of staff during the rollout of the recovery act, and then as Barack Obama's Ebola czar. He's well qualified for the job, and seems to be well regarded by party groups and even by some Republicans (which is why I said Biden should choose him!). Also presumably happy? Dwight D. Eisenhower. The White House staff, in its modern sense, only goes back to Harry Truman's presidency, and for a long time there was a serious partisan disagreement on how to run what was practically a new branch of government. Eisenhower, drawing on his military background, introduced the idea of a chief of staff and a highly structured organizational chart. Every Republican from Richard Nixon through George W. Bush followed his lead. Truman had used a much looser set-up, basically emulating Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency. Democrats tended to follow Truman's example at the beginning of their terms, with either no designated chief of staff or (as with Bill Clinton) a very weak one. But over their presidencies, they gravitated toward the Ike model. The argument seemed to end in 2009, when Barack Obama began his presidency with Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, only to have Donald Trump govern — or fail to govern — in the old Democratic style. It's no surprise that Biden will follow Obama's lead. Indeed, it's hard to give him all that much credit for selecting the most obvious candidate and organizing his presidency in the most obvious way — except that we've just been through an administration that got the easy things wrong all too often. So credit Biden for ignoring any temptation to do something dramatic or unexpected. Selecting a chief of staff is the single most important personnel call that Biden will make in setting up his administration. Get that wrong — as Ronald Reagan did when he chose Don Regan in 1985 — and a president invites all sorts of problems. A good chief of staff functions as both an extension of the president and as someone who can compensate for the boss's weaknesses; see, for example, Reagan's original choice, James Baker. All presidencies are subject to infighting, staffers who care more their own profiles than about the president's success, and various other crises and disputes. A good chief of staff will minimize the downsides. Of course, we'll have to see if having the right experience and reputation will actually yield success for Klain. But to the extent that restoring normal, boring, competent governance was one of Biden's key promises, he seems to be on the road to fulfilling it. 1. Erica De Bruin at the Monkey Cage on what a coup is and why it matters. 2. Rick Hasen on Trump's attempts to overturn the election result. 3. Dan Drezner on presidenting in the 21st century. 4. Richard E. Meyer speaks with Lynn Vavreck about the elections. 5. Katie Keith on the Obamacare Supreme Court case. 6. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Ramesh Ponnuru on Trump's miserable post-election performance. 7. And Nate Silver on the polls. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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