Politico brings her back in a Magazine Profile…..
For more than a year, Democratic lawmakers and like-minded advocates have pleaded with Joe Biden to create a “gun czar” to address the epidemic of violence.
Each time, the president’s team pushed back with force, contending it has the perfect person already in place, someone with command over the issue and extraordinary access to the president himself.
That person is Susan Rice.
As director of the Domestic Policy Council, Rice leads a team of roughly a dozen staffers examining ways to push through modest gun reforms should Congress again falter, and explore new executive orders even if lawmakers succeed.
Her ascendence to the role of point person on guns marks the latest chunk of policy turf over which she has claimed jurisdiction, joining a sprawling portfolio that stretches from policing and racial justice to student loan debt, immigration and health care policy, including a prime piece of protecting abortion rights.
The scope of her fiefdom is as remarkable as how she managed to secure it. Having eschewed a public-facing role, Rice has relied on a combination of internal maneuvering and bureaucratic know-how to place herself at the nerve center of some of the fiercest debates roiling Washington. And she’s further cemented her status with the president in the process.
Rice and Biden meet multiple times a week. As the president prepared for his recent prime-time address on guns, she joined him on several occasions in his residence. Senior aides say Biden’s trust in her is so profound that she can see him whenever she needs to….
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In interviews with 21 current and 13 former White House and administration staffers, along with two dozen officials on Capitol Hill and from across the party and advocacy worlds, Rice is described as an underappreciated political operator, a pragmatist consumed with putting points on the board, and a process obsessed micromanager. She personally goes through and edits her staff’s typos in the memos they draft….
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Rice is tough and blunt, say those who have worked with her through the years. She is the opposite of a lofty idealist. One aide called her “a process perfectionist.” Others described her as overly rigorous, Socratic, and “really academic.”
“She’s no bullshit, you always know where you stand with her. She’s very decisional,” said a former White House official. “She just doesn’t really suffer fools.”
Compiling Rice’s so-called “decision packages” are a vivid illustration of her approach to the job. The thick documents have taken on quasi-legendary status inside the DPC. They lay out an issue, the policy background and where each Cabinet secretary stands on them. Rice has been known to personally log phone calls to the Cabinet to fact-check the documents and comb them for typos. Occasionally, she and her staff will go through as many as a dozen variations of the packages before signing off…
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It’s been on immigration policy — not student loan relief — where Rice has found herself most at odds with people inside the administration and the party’s liberal wing.