White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain on Twitter

Speaking of the Biden administration, I’ve been greatly enjoying the Twitter feed of chief of staff Ron Klain. He’s put his personal account (@RonaldKlain) mostly on ice, and primarily tweets from the official @WHCOS account. He’s very good at Twitter — I began following him early in the campaign.

Klain’s use of Twitter is a fascinating contrast with Trump’s. For many of you, I’m sure, there are nothing but bad connotations when it comes to the use of Twitter from the White House. But Klain’s use of Twitter strikes me as nearing the canonical ideal of how Jack Dorsey might have imagined Twitter being used by, say, the White House. It harks back to the early days of Twitter, when the prompt was “What are you doing?” Except Klain is tweeting not about what he, personally, is doing, but rather what the administration is doing. What they see as their accomplishments, drip by drip, and what issues they deem their highest priorities. (COVID vaccinations, decreasing the spread of COVID, and economic stimulus, I think it’s fair to say in that order — but all three of them are inexorably related.)

Following Klain is of course in no way a substitute for reading news coverage of the administration. Of course Klain is biased — he’s the White House chief of staff. But just as it’s important to follow news coverage and analysis from outside observers, it’s useful to see what the Biden administration itself — unfiltered — deems important. Klain’s Twitter feed is an hour-by-hour log of what they see as their accomplishments and what they see as important.

★ Monday, 15 February 2021