This week’s episode of Transition Lab features three leaders from the Partnership for Public Service. One is special guest host Loren DeJonge Schulman, a national security expert who spent 10 years at the Defense Department and National Security Council, most recently as the senior advisor to National Security Advisor Susan Rice during the Obama administration. Currently, she serves as the vice president of Research and Evaluation at the Partnership. Joining Schulman is Max Stier, the Partnership’s president and CEO, and David Marchick, director of the Partnership’s Center for Presidential Transition, who previously held several positions in the Clinton administration and worked as an executive at the Carlyle Group. In this episode, Stier and Marchick discuss the Center’s work, their concerns about the 2020 transition cycle and why transitions have improved in recent years.

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Max Stier discussed why the Partnership launched the Center for Presidential Transition.

Stier: Transitions were historically Groundhog Day exercises. There was no learning system, no resource that someone could go to and learn how to do this better, [and] no guidebook. …Pretty much every campaign understood that job number one was to win the election [and was] not willing to invest significantly in any effort that jeopardized that work. Campaign leaders would not do transition planning for fear that they would be accused of measuring the drapes.


Stier explained how transitions have improved during recent election cycles.

Stier: Every cycle, the knowledge base has gotten larger and the transition preparation has gotten better. It really begins in 2012 with the Mitt Romney transition. The “Romney Readiness Project” led by Mike Leavitt and Chris Liddell … moved the ball forward in a very dramatic way. …They were willing to raise the flag that [transitions were] something that was not to be done in the dead of the night. …In 2016 we saw not just a single challenger doing this kind of aggressive transition planning, but we saw the entire field thinking about that.


Loren DeJonge Schulman asked about the center’s recent transition work

Stier: We created, with the help of the Boston Consulting Group, a playbook for agencies to understand how they should best prepare. This last cycle, we recognized that there was also a transition that took place between an incumbent president’s first and second term. In each cycle, we build on what we know and help make [transitions] better.

David Marchick: We did a lot of work to understand the change between a first term and a second term. …If you look at the top officials across government, almost half of them half leave between the day the president is sworn in for a second term and six months later. …We’ve [also] had a much more significant public education campaign about the importance of transitions. …This podcast, for example, [has] been downloaded 50,000 times. That’s incredible how kind of a geeky subject like transitions could be of interest to a broader population.


Stier and Marchick discussed their biggest concerns about the current transition cycle.

Marchick: The peaceful transition of power—as [filmmaker] Ken Burns talked about on our podcast—is one of the bedrocks of American democracy. …So, obviously, talk [by President Trump] about not recognizing the will of the American people is troubling. …I’m hopeful that the rhetoric will tone down, but it makes everybody nervous. …[My second worry] is just the small things: will technology work, will security clearances be granted [and] will the Senate be able to act with speed to confirm people.

Stier: The biggest worry for me is making sure that whoever is president next is ready to govern on day one. …The lift is so large that it is scary to think about what’s required. That, to me, is the core issue here: will the next leadership team be ready to address [our] … complex problems immediately?


Stier explained how career employees help ensure smooth transitions.

Stier: We have a government that is largely run and staffed by career professionals. Someone like Dr. [Anthony] Fauci [from the National Institute of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] is a prime example of someone who has spent his career developing an incredible expertise and then serving the public over many, many decades. …The nature of the government’s authority to deal with the problems that we have today requires fewer political appointees, so that we have more expertise in decision-making roles. I think the most important thing that a new political team—or any political team—can do is to connect well with the career workforce.


Marchick described how future administrations might organize better transitions

Marchick: What’s happened with the evolution of the [Presidential Transition Act of 1963]… is that a lot of the post-election activities were moved to pre-election. …I think that more of post-election activities … can be accelerated in the same spirit. I [also] think that there can be more money. Right now, a transition costs somewhere between $8 to $10 million. …Having more money earlier will give the candidates the ability to hire people, give them healthcare and have a professional staff leading up to the election.


Stier outlined some steps that new administrations can take to govern effectively from day one.

Stier: I think investing, first and foremost, in people who understand large organizational management issues [is critical]. …There is a tendency for administrations to bring in lots of smart policy people. They already exist in government. You don’t actually need them. You need people who can deploy the resources—that amazing career workforce— against the problems of the day. Point number two would be to build a relationship very early on with the career workforce—recognizing that it begins the transition [and] that the agency review process is really an onboarding experience for a new administration. Third would be to work across the silos. One of the big issues that exist are that today’s problems don’t respect the legacy lines that make up the formation of our government. Something like the pandemic or any other big issue … actually requires many agencies, a relationship with Congress, inter-governmental activity [and] public-private relationships. And I think that modernizing the rules of government will be fundamental here as well. …The last major reform of [federal] talent rules was over 40 years ago. We still have a pay system that comes from 1949. …We need to truly invest in a more modern government if we’re going to deal with the problems of today and tomorrow.

 

On October 2, the Center for Presidential Transition, the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, and several presidential foundations and libraries hosted a virtual conference called “Talking Transitions: Perspectives for First-term and Second-term Administrations.” The event included former government officials, journalists and scholars to discuss managing presidential transitions during national crises.  

This week’s episode of Transition Lab features one panel discussion from this conference. Participants included a who’s who of former federal leaders and transition experts: Stephen Hadley, a longtime foreign policy specialist who served as George W. Bush’s national security advisor; Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s second-term homeland security advisor; Barbara Perry, a renowned historian and the director of presidential studies at the Miller Center; and John Podesta, a chief of staff for President Clinton who later chaired the 2008 Obama transition. Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council from 2009 to 2012, moderated the discussion. Conversation topics included how administrations address national security threats, share intelligence and enunciate long-term policy goals during presidential transitions. They also discussed the role of Congress in facilitating smooth transfers of power and how COVID-19 will affect the 2020 transition.  

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John Podesta described weighing long-term policy goals against the country’s immediate needs during the 2008 Obama transition.

“Clearly, President-elect Obama had a lot on his plate. He had made some big promises to the American people [when running for office]. The first thing we ended up doing was trying to make a down payment on those promises through the [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009]. …But you also have to simultaneously be thinking about the big promises of the campaign. Number one was the commitment to try to create healthcare for all. …You have to decide what your priorities are.”  


Stephen Hadley recalled helping the incoming Obama administration respond to a national security threat just before the 2008 inauguration. 

“Right before inauguration … we had gotten intelligence that there was a potential threat to the inauguration itself. So that Saturday morning, we had the FBI director come in and brief both the existing and incoming national security teams…, what we knew about it, what we were doing about it, and then had kind of a roundtable discussion. …That’s the kind of thing you can try to do in a transition to put the new team in a position to … handle the responsibilities [of office].”  


Lisa Monaco discussed how new administrations receive intelligence during presidential transitions. 

“Before the election, the notion of sharing information [and] sharing intelligence [is] entirely a product of convention. There’s no dictate. …After Election Day, there is a provision in a law that was passed after 9/11, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, that requires the president-elect … to get some form of the president’s daily brief. [This enables a president-elect to understand] what the threats are [and] what the state of big strategic issues are so there can be that smooth handoff.”  


Monaco and  Hadley discussed how Congress can help facilitate peaceful transfers of power.  

Monaco: “I think another thing that the legislature can do is … memorialize and instantiate in statute best practices. We have the transition act that was passed … to instantiate some of the best practices that the Bush administration [employed during the 2008 transition]. …Building on lessons learned and memorializing them … can be a very, very helpful role for the legislature for future transitions.” 

Hadley: “The most important thing that Congress—particularly the Senate—can do is speed through the confirmations of Cabinet officials for the new president. Get the president’s team in place so the president can start [his or her] administration.” 


Barbara Perry discussed how bipartisanship can help new administrations address national security threats.  

“Russell Riley [co-chair of the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program] and I [did an interview] for [a] Bush 43 project with Dick Gephardt, who was the House minority leader [from 1995 to 2003]. After 9/11, he’s speaking to … the president and he says, ‘Mr. President, the most important thing now is that we all trust one another. This is about life and death. Our first responsibility is to keep the people safe. …We cannot play politics with this.’ …Obviously it was related to terrorism, but I certainly think now in this matter of life and death with COVID, we have to keep our eye on that.” 


 Podesta described how COVID-19 will impact this year’s post-election transition for a second-term Trump or first-term Biden administration.

“You’re not doing classified briefings on Zoom. …[But] the biggest issue … is building the teamwork that’s necessary to … create a culture that’s going to work together effectively right from the get-go. …If there’s a new incoming team, creating that culture inside the White House and within an administration is just going to be more challenging.”  


The panelists described how transition teams and new administrations can develop innovative solutions for the public good.  

Monaco: “People in government should never forget that they are not the sole source of wisdom on a set of issues. Having a productive way of collaborating and getting information from the private sector to draw upon innovative ideas outside of government … is absolutely invaluable.” 

Hadley: “I think innovation is great, but there are a lot of ideas out there. The trick is figuring out, politically, what are the ideas whose time has come and are salable. So part of it is new ideas and innovations, but part of it is having a political strategy.”  

Podesta: “I think presidents usually don’t think about performance nearly enough. And the public, quite frankly, is skeptical about whether government can actually deliver. So I would advise that the administration—and whoever’s leading it—to pay more attention to that. …At the end of the day, it really [is about] implementation. That has to be number one.” 

 

Stephen Hadley held key national security positions in three Republican administrations before working on the George W. Bush transition in 2000-2001 and serving as Bush’s national security advisor. Kurt Campbell is an expert on East Asian affairs who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, and co-authored, “Difficult Transitions: Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Presidential Power.” In this episode of Transition Lab, Hadley and Campbell join host David Marchick to discuss their experiences during presidential transitions and their concerns about the potential fallout from 2020 election. They also offer advice to Joe Biden’s transition team and those planning for a second term for President Trump.

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Marchick asked Hadley how national security transitions have changed since the 1970s.

Hadley: “There’s been enormous improvement. …I came into the office the day after the [1976] election and I went to my file cabinets where I had all these classified papers. …They were all empty because these [had] become presidential records and [were] taken off to the presidential library. [Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security advisor] showed up with no documents, no paper and no staff. …I think we’ve gotten a lot better at developing the art … of transitioning from one administration to the next.”


Marchick asked Campbell to describe his transition into the Department of State after the 2008 election.

Campbell: “The State Department has it down to a science. You’re assigned a young officer, you’re checked in, he or she brings you readings every day [and] you have careful meetings you go through. …You talk a little bit about what’s expected in terms of what your role and mission would be. …It had a quality that was a little bit like going through orientation, but I found it extraordinarily interesting.


Hadley explained how he worked closely with President Clinton’s national security team during the 2000-2001 transition to the Bush administration.

Hadley: “…We took [National Security Advisor] Sandy Berger’s terrorism group … and basically said, ‘Stay on, be part of the Bush administration, keep doing what you’re doing to defend the country. We’re going to probably relook strategy and take some different approaches, but in the interim, keep doing what you’re doing to keep the country safe.’ I think that is important so that you’re not standing down a capability in a transition, but you’re able to continue to do those operational things where the country might be vulnerable.”


Hadley described the relationship between political appointees and career employees in a new administration.

Hadley: “Political employees are supposed to intermediate between the political agenda that has come out of the election, and the expertise and judgment that is inherent based on the experience of the permanent government. …It’s not that the deep state is subverting the political appointees. They’re supposed to actually live in a certain amount of dynamic tension. That’s how our system has been designed. I think it’s served us well, but … is not understood well by a lot of Americans today.”


Hadley and Campbell discussed their concerns about the 2020 transition

Hadley: “I think … China [and] Russia don’t want to do anything that looks like they’re intervening in our election in a decisive way … I do worry about once the votes are in. …It looks [like] we’re going to be in a period of fairly extended uncertainty as to who has actually won this election with a lot of contested lawsuits and contested ballots being recounted. …I’m more worried about a country trying to take advantage of us during that kind of period.”

Campbell: “I tend to agree with Steve. …You don’t realize how much of our transition is built on a degree of goodwill. When [Jim Steinberg and I] wrote [our] book, the worst that we could imagine was something like the Iran hostage crisis, the Taiwan Strait issue. But I think the real issue this time is not the threat externally.”


Marchick asked Campbell and Hadley to offer advice to Democrat Joe Biden’s transition team and those planning for President Trump’s second term.

Campbell: “Simpler is better. The key [for Biden] is to… focus on the right people. Build your teams. Make sure you understand what you’re trying to achieve. Have a few general policy aspirations laid down, but understand that really detailed plans that stretch out beyond what the eye can see are unlikely to be valuable to the incoming team.”

Hadley: “If the president is re-elected, I would say, ‘Mr. President, you were elected to be a disruptor in chief. …Your second term is an opportunity to be a builder in chief. Don’t be afraid to change personnel, to bring in people who can help you build on the foundation of the first term.’ For the Biden team, I would say, ‘Don’t think that you’re coming in and writing on a blank sheet of paper. You’re going to have a lot of the same problems that your predecessors had. There are a lot of good things that your predecessors did [that would] be smart [to] build on and make … your own. Don’t be afraid to do that.”


Michael Froman has had an extraordinary career. After serving in the Department of the Treasury under President Clinton, he became the head of personnel for the 2008 Obama-Biden transition team and later served as a White House deputy national security advisor and as the U.S. Trade Representative. In this episode of Transition Lab, host David Marchick asks Froman for an inside look at the world of vetting, selecting and appointing key presidential personnel. They discuss how Froman got involved in transition planning, the lessons his experience holds for future administrations and President Obama’s personnel strategy.

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Marchick asked Froman how he got involved in the 2008 Obama-Biden transition.

Froman: “I had known President Obama from [Harvard] Law School. …And when he became senator, a group of us whom he had known either from law school or other places had helped … hire some of his initial staff. …When he decided to run for president, I offered to help him with the transition, in part because I wasn’t planning on going into government and thought that I could make a contribution by helping him with the personnel process.”


Marchick asked how potential nominees for President Obama’s Cabinet were selected.

Froman: “We’d look at the national security team, the economic team, the domestic policy team, the environment team and come up with lists of names of people who could fill potentially multiple positions. The approach was more to look at teams rather than individual positions. It wasn’t so much having five candidates for one job, but more of having 15 candidates for a handful of jobs. …It was more going out and looking for as many qualified, diverse candidates as possible so that the president would have maximum opportunity to … [put] together the Cabinet that he wanted.”


Marchick asked which personnel decisions took priority.

Froman: “His first decision was not a Cabinet position. It was the position of White House chief of staff and he chose Rahm Emanuel, which also then helped further the process because Rahm was very focused on both the Cabinet and the White House staff. …Because of the global financial crisis, there was a particular momentum for getting decisions around the economic team.”


Marchick asked whether the campaign staff jockeyed for jobs in the administration after the 2008 election.

Froman: “There certainly was an element of that, but people were actually engaged in pretty good behavior. …People [on the] campaign … of course had hoped to get into the administration, but there weren’t a lot of sharp elbows … [President Obama] had not been in Washington for years and years, and he didn’t have a list of a thousand people that he needed jobs for. …He was really quite open to meeting whoever was the the best candidate for the job.”


Marchick asked how successful candidates approached the vetting process for a position in the Obama administration.

Froman: “People who came in and said, ‘I am the greatest expert in this area, I have served the three of the last Democratic administrations and I am clearly the most qualified person for this position. Where do I fill out my employment forms?’ didn’t tend to [do] very well. …The more successful approach was to make clear that you were low maintenance; that you wanted to serve; that there were a variety of positions that you could envisage yourself doing; that you were not insistent on necessarily being the top person in any agency; [and] that you were willing to play whatever role the president-elect felt was appropriate.”


Marchick asked what lessons future administrations should take from the slower rate at which President Obama filled Senate-confirmed positions after his first year in office.

Froman: “One of the lessons of that is that it’s better to have somebody who is doing personnel during the transition into at least the first year of the administration—maybe into the first two years of the administration. Having that continuity would have been better in retrospect.”


Marchick asked why President Obama wanted to build a diverse Cabinet.

Froman: “The president had made clear he wanted an administration that looked like America, and we were committed to having a diverse Cabinet and sub-Cabinet … So one of our areas of focus was ensuring that the slates [of potential nominees] were as diverse as possible—whether it was racial diversity, ethnic diversity, gender diversity, among other attributes.”


Marchick asked Froman to discuss the advice he would offer presidential transition personnel planners.

Froman: “When you’re picking a team of Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officials, one should be thinking about who [we are] putting in the pipeline who could succeed the Cabinet, and how do we make sure that they get the support and the training … to fill out their attributes so that they could step up be Cabinet officers as well. The one thing we don’t do terribly well in the federal government compared to some of other organizations, including in the private sector, is [think] about succession planning [and] how to prepare people to step up into the next position.

John Dickerson has covered Washington politics for more than two decades as a reporter for Time, Slate Magazine and CBS News. He previously hosted Face the Nation, currently works as a correspondent for 60 Minutes and is the recent author of “The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency,” which examines the complex challenges faced by our nation’s chief executives throughout history. In this episode of Transition Lab, host David Marchick spoke with Dickerson about his experience covering presidents, why presidents often struggle with their transition to the White House, how we should view the presidency and how Joe Biden and Donald Trump would govern if elected in November.  

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Marchick asked Dickerson for his take on President Trump’s recent refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the 2020 election.

Dickerson: “My very first reaction is that the American system is founded on a structure. And that structure is the peaceful transition of power. You mentioned that [John] Adams and [Thomas] Jefferson were friends once, then became bitter enemies. But Thomas Jefferson said, ‘Whichever of us wins this presidential contest, the country will be okay.’ …There was a norm that he felt it was necessary to speak to. That idea of a peaceful transition of power is one of the things that makes America great.”


Marchick asked Dickerson about why presidents sometimes struggle with their transitions into office.

Dickerson: “John Kennedy said, ‘I spent so much time getting to be president. I wish I’d spent more time learning how to be president.’ …And when you talk to people who have worked in White Houses … they all say, ‘You walk in and you have all these plans, and you think it’s all going to be going one way, and then it absolutely is not as you expected.’ …Everything just starts flowing and you’re just in a constantly reactive mode. So the sooner you can get started thinking about what the set of challenges are going to be, what your organizational structure is going to look like, [the better].”


Marchick asked Dickerson if Joe Biden would need time to settle into the presidency and learn to manage the executive branch.

Dickerson: “He would kind of know where things stand, and he would have the reflexes and the sense of how the place is supposed to work better than anybody since George Herbert Walker Bush. …But Biden would need time just getting [his] team in place. …It takes a little while, once people are in their jobs, to get a sense of what you need because you’re reacting to events [and learning] how the various players work in their jobs. So while Biden would certainly start with a real head start, that period of acclimation is still really important.”


Marchick asked Dickerson if he thought President Trump would approach the presidency differently if reelected for a second term.

Dickerson: “I’m not quite sure. … He’s not a fan of systems [and] he’s not a fan of process. His turnover has set records for both the number of people in top spots and the serial turnover in those top spots. Nobody I’ve talked to or interviewed in any walk of life says that is a good way to run a railroad. And it doesn’t seem that the president is suddenly going to snap into believing in the benefits of structure, the benefits of patience and doing things by a system. So I think it would be the same kind of … challenges that we’ve seen in the first term.”


Marchick and Dickerson discussed why we should set more realistic expectations for presidents.

Dickerson: “I think the reason I wrote [The Hardest Job in the World] is to change our expectations about what a president can do. …To stop putting the president at the center of the American system for everything; to not think of the president as a celebrity who can behave like an action hero and get things done; to put more pressure on Congress to do what it needs to do. …The president leads an organization. It is not an office of one person. And the more we focus on the idea that it is an organization and that you have members in that organization who play crucial roles, powerful roles, roles that contribute to the improvement of American life, [the more] we may just think about the presidency differently and pay a little more attention to those other parts of the job.”

Agency review—the process of informing new administrations about the work of the federal government’s various departments—is a critical aspect of presidential transition planning. In this episode of Transition Lab, host David Marchick speaks to Lisa Brown, co-chair of agency review for the 2008 Obama-Biden transition team. Marchick and Brown discuss how this process works, why it is so important and the critical role played by career staff.   

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Marchick asked Brown why agency review is vital to presidential transitions.

Brown: “When [presidents] actually start governing on Inauguration Day, [agency review teams help ensure] they are ready to hit the ground running….The agency teams collect … critical information that the [president-elect] and his or her senior key advisors need to make strategic policy [as well as] budgetary and personnel decisions.…You don’t want gaps when one president leaves and another one comes in….You want to make sure that when the new [administration] comes in, they have the information they need to handle the crisis of the day.”


Marchick asked  why career staff are so important to the agency review process.

Brown: “If you’ve ever worked in the government, you realize how critically important career employees are. They are in these agencies [and] they’re the ones who know how to get things done. You need them to be your friends. You need to be collaborating with them. The worst thing that you could do during agency review is to go in and alienate the career staff because you will find that it is much harder to get things done when you take office.”


Marchick asked  how career staff tend to view agency review teams.

Brown: “I have found that career employees are professionals and they are accustomed to a change in political administration….They care about the mission of their agency. They care about the work that they’re doing. So they do want to partner with you to get that work done.”


Marchick asked Brown about her experience working with the Bush administration in 2008.  

Brown: “President [George W.] Bush and his team in the White House really set the tone … for collaboration. They wanted to ensure that it was as seamless a transition as possible. This was after 9/11, so they had a real sense of responsibility to the country.”


Marchick asked Brown to discuss what she learned from spearheading agency reviews after the 2008 election. 

Brown: “You need to anticipate demand for your work product quite early. The pre-election work that you do is vital….Post-election, you really do want to get people into the agencies very quickly so that you get that information fast to inform policy and to inform the personnel, particularly [during] confirmation hearings….Really think about how [to] best integrate policy teams with the agency review teams….I think you really want people [on the agency review teams] who are … familiar with the president-elect’s policies…..You [also] have to think about [creating] a structure with enough redundancy that your critical work continues … [even if] … somebody [takes on] a new role.” 


Marchick asked Brown to describe how Joe Biden should handle the agency review process if he wins the election, but has an abbreviated transition.

Brown: “[A shorter post-election transition] puts a premium on engaging people who have worked in the government before. That is not to say that you don’t want fresh blood when you actually enter office on nomination day and after … You absolutely want a mix of new people and previous experience….Democrats have been out of power for not yet four years. There’s a lot of knowledge that people have that will still be relevant.”

Since launching in January 2020, Transition Lab has offered a close look at the world of presidential transition planning, featuring in-depth interviews with those who have organized, led and written about some of the most notable transfers of power in U.S. history. In this episode, host David Marchick shares the most important takeaways, poignant stories and surprising moments from these interviews. Utilizing episode highlights, presidential recordings and historical news clips, Marchick takes us back in time–from the 1930s to the present–to illustrate how transitions work, why they are important and the lessons they hold for both today and tomorrow. Topics discussed include the importance of good staffing; why transition teams and campaign teams don’t always get along; how successful transitions breed successful presidencies; why bipartisanship during a transition matters; and how administrations try to learn from the missteps of previous transitions. Transition Lab is the official podcast of the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that strives to make our federal government more effective, innovative and responsive to the people it serves.  

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Marchick talked to Martha Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, who discussed why Harry Truman’s transition plans–the first to be organized by a sitting president–went awry.

Kumar: “[Truman] thought that it would be good to have both sides come into the White House. It was during the summer of 1952 in August, and he invited [Democratic presidential nominee] Adlai Stevenson and [Republican presidential nominee] General Eisenhower to … get briefed by the CIA … individual Cabinet members and White House staff. Eisenhower was not in favor of doing it. So he wrote [Truman] back turning down the invitation. Truman was very unhappy and … wrote, ‘I am extremely sorry that you have allowed a bunch of screwballs to come between us. You have made a big mistake and I’m hoping it won’t injure this great Republic.’”


Marchick talked to two top policy advisors in the Carter administration, Stuart Eizenstat and David Rubenstein, about the distrust between the Carter transition and campaign teams.

Eizenstat: “David and I were heading the policy staff of the campaign. And unbeknownst to us until about a month before the election, Jimmy Carter had a parallel policy planning group for the transition…”

Rubenstein: “You had people fighting over jockeying or positions and you couldn’t really prepare that well for the new administration because people didn’t really know who [was] going to get what jobs.”

Eizenstat: “Yes … because you had these parallel structures, because you had this clash, it took up an enormous amount of time.”


Rubenstein and Eizenstat also discussed how poor staffing, including Carter’s initial decision to serve as his own chief of staff, hampered the administration early on. 

Rubenstein: “Carter was obsessed with getting the Cabinet done. The White House staff? [He said], ‘Well, staff people are not that significant. Who cares about staff? We’ll deal with that later’… He didn’t really feel he had to have very powerful people at the White House staff because in his view, everything was going to be in the Cabinet.”

Eizenstat: “He decided to be the opposite of Nixon. Nixon had [H.R.] Haldeman as the all-powerful chief of staff who blocked everyone from seeing him. So [Carter] decided he was going to be his own chief of staff.”


Ronald Reagan learned from Carter’s missteps. Before taking office, Reagan hired James Baker, a veteran of Washington politics who ran two Republican primary campaigns against the president-elect in 1976 and 1980, as chief of staff. Marchick asked Baker to discuss his surprising hiring. 

Baker: “I don’t think it will ever happen again in American politics where a president-elect will go to someone who has run at least two campaigns against him [and ask him] to be … their White House chief of staff … He was looking for someone who knew and understood how Washington worked.”


Importantly, Baker established a strong working relationship with Reagan’s transition director, Ed Meese, who had also expected to become chief of staff. 

Baker: “The next morning I met with the president and he said, ‘Jim I want you to be my White House chief of staff … but I want you to make it right with [Ed] Meese.’ And I said to [Ed], ‘Let’s figure out a workable way to divide up the responsibilities in the White House’…. My job was to make sure the trains run on time, and making the trains run on time meant I had to have authority over the congressional relations, press relations [and] political relations, and operate from the chief of staff’s office, which is the biggest office in the West Wing.”


Marchick also interviewed Mack McLarty, President Clinton’s chief of staff, who discussed why Clinton downplayed transition planning as a presidential candidate and explained how he repeated Carter’s mistake of selecting a Cabinet before hiring important White House staff. 

McLarty: “Governor Clinton had a strong feeling … that he did not want to be seen as an underdog candidate, or a younger candidate, who was already beginning to measure the drapes in the Oval Office. So his instinct was not to have a robust transition.”

McLarty: “You either have to [select Cabinet and White House staff] simultaneously or, perhaps even better, focus on the White House staff first and then quickly move the Cabinet.… There was just not enough work done before the election. And once you get behind, it just does not leave you any room to catch up.”


Marchick interviewed Clay Johnson, the head of the George W. Bush’s transition team in 2000, who explained why the president-elect was prepared to take office despite a delay in the official election results. 

Johnson: “He said, ‘I want you … prepare a plan for what I do when I win the presidency.’ This was in June of 1999. So it’s 16 months or so before the presidential election. I don’t think anybody’s started that early…. I [told] Bush that summer, ‘When we get to within a month or so from the election, I’m going to be encouraging you to pick your chief of staff. So you might be thinking about who it ought to be.’ And he did, [selecting Andy Card, one of the earliest chief of staff picks in U.S. history].”


Marchick also spoke with Stephanie Cutter, a spokesperson for the Obama-Biden transition in 2008, about why transition teams need to set aside partisan difference after presidential elections and continue to govern for the good of the country.

Cutter: “The Bush team couldn’t have been more helpful. We were working so closely in cooperation with them and they were being extraordinarily helpful to us because of the economic crisis that we were in. As soon as you move from a campaign to a transition, out goes the campaign rhetoric. It’s not ‘Bush’s economy’ this, and ‘failure’ that, it’s what are we going to do? It’s looking to the future. It’s putting real plans in place.”


More recently, Marchick interviewed Chris Christie, who chaired Donald Trump’s transition team from May 2016 until shortly after Election Day. Christie discussed how he relied on many of those who had run presidential transitions to prepare for a Trump transition and explained why a personnel shakeup of the transition team after the election hurt the administration.  

Christie: “I met with Andy Card, who along with Vice President Cheney ran the transition for the George W. Bush team. I met with Jim Baker, who was instrumental in the Bush 41 transition and in the Ronald Reagan transition. And I also met with a number of other folks who were involved around the periphery in those transition efforts … They said, ‘You don’t have a day to waste. The government is bigger and more complex than it’s ever been’.… [The Monday before Election Day], we turned over 20 volumes of materials to the Trump campaign, for them to be ready to begin to execute on Wednesday.”

Christie: “[Shortly after Election Day], Steve Bannon asked if I’d come see him in his office. So I went down to his office and … we sat down and … he [said], ‘ We need to make some changes.’ And I said, ‘OK. What changes are we making?’ And he [said], ‘You.’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And he [said], ‘Nope. Vice President Pence is now going to be the chair of the transition and you’re out’…. They still haven’t recovered [from Christie’s firing and transition leader Richard Bagger’s resignation] … because you cannot recover from the loss of all of that work. And even if they win a second term, they won’t catch up because you gave away that 150 days or so you can never get it back. And those are 150 very important days.”

Ed Meier and Richard Bagger ran the presidential transition teams for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, respectively, during the run up to the 2016 election. In this Transition Lab episode, host David Marchick spoke with Meier and Bagger about preparing to lead presidential transition teams, navigating strategic differences with campaign staff, shaping the public’s perception of transition planning and the results of the 2016 election. 

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Marchick asked Meier and Bagger about how they prepared to lead their respective transition teams. 

Bagger: “I got ahold of the transition guide published by the Partnership for Public Service, as well as the book that had been published by the Romney transition [team] following the 2012 election. Then I said, ‘I need to get together and meet with some people who’ve done this before.’ We had a full day meeting with the leadership of the Romney transition team … and then [we] met at the Partnership … to ask questions, get briefed and learn about the resources that were available.”

Meier: “I absorbed everything I could that had been written and … had a lot of conversations with [John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman], and also with others that had run transitions.… I was able to connect with the Romney folks and then also people from the [George W.] Bush transition and pick their brains and figure out kind of lessons [they] learned, what worked, [and] what didn’t work.”


Marchick asked Meier and Bagger about how they avoided the appearance of “measuring the drapes” before the 2016 election.  

Bagger: “There’s always been a concern … about ‘measuring the drapes,’ concern with candidates not wanting there to be a perception that they’re taking anything for granted.… I think the last couple of amendments to the federal transition planning laws make it clear that there’s a structure to do transition planning … I think that provides some context for why it is happening and helps prevent it from being interpreted as jumping the gun it before the election.”

Meier: “We kept our transition team very small … We wanted to keep it very low profile, keep all the focus on the campaign, and keep our heads down and get the work done.… We did not want anyone to call attention to themselves in the work we were doing.” 


Marchick asked Meier and Bagger about how they mitigated common tensions with campaign staff.

Bagger: “The people who are working 24/7 to get the candidate elected on the campaign wonder about this other group that’s planning a transition and whether they’re really sitting on the sidelines deciding who gets what jobs.… So that is why close collaboration and communication and recognizing that the transition works for the campaign is just a fundamental principle.”

Meier: “We kept the campaign fully in the loop on all the major decisions and we sought their guidance on all the major decisions.… We stayed in in lockstep, kept the campaign up to speed on what we’re doing [and] looked for guidance.”


Marchick asked Meier and Bagger about whether it was challenging to work in the same building while planning transitions for opposing candidates. 

Meier: “It wasn’t as weird as you might imagine. We really emphasized … that this was a real responsibility [and] that we were preparing for governing.… We weren’t sitting around trying to think of the next political hit to throw at candidate Trump. We were solely focused on how we were going to take the promises that Secretary Clinton was making [during] the campaign and implement those in the first 100 and 200 days of, hopefully, a presidency.”

Bagger: “I agree completely with Ed’s comments … We would meet together every month or so in the White House for the White House Transition Coordinating Council.… And I remember sitting in those meetings really being incredibly proud as an American to be participating in a system where an outgoing administration is … planning transitions for the competitors for the presidency during a very contentious election.”


Marchick asked Meier and Bagger about how they handled the influx of job seekers in the months leading up to the election.

Meier: “We steered everyone to the campaign and said, ‘ You want to get involved? You want a job in this administration? You want to focus on the transition? Well, go focus on the campaign first and help Hillary Clinton get elected.’”

Bagger: “One thing we tried to do was to prevent having people just hanging around the transition offices.… [We tried to ensure that] it wasn’t just a place where people could hang around and sort of like become part of the team.”


Marchick asked Meier and Bagger to reflect on how their work changed after Election Day and to discuss their reactions to the results.

Bagger: “We … started to execute on the plan of this sort of handoff from the transition planning phase to the transition execution phase.… Once it was announced, two or three days after the election, [that] Vice President-elect Pence would become the chair of the transition for the next phase and Governor Christie would be moving to a new role as a member of the transition executive committee, I decided that it was right for me to leave the role as executive director. The only reason I was doing the transition work was because of my relationship with Governor Christie … So it was appropriate that I sort of move out of that role and hand off as well to Rick Dearborn [the next executive director].” 

Meier: [We] realized we [hadn’t] really planned sufficiently for this eventuality: What happens if we lose? … I sent a message to our transition team who had stayed down in Washington because that’s what we asked them to do and said, ‘Don’t go into the office. Come to our house.’ And we took care of the beginning of the wind down … and we also just had a moment for us to just be there for each other emotionally…. It was definitely an extremely painful moment, but also a moment where you realize you can’t just cry.… You also have to take care of winding down this organization.”

Nancy Cook and Andrew Restuccia know all about presidential transitions. They currently write about transition planning and presidential politics for Politico and the Wall Street Journal, respectively, and previously collaborated on several transition stories during the 2016 election. In this Transition Lab episode, host David Marchick asked Cook and Restuccia about their experiences covering presidential transitions, the 2020 candidates’ current plans, the big transition storylines to expect in the coming months and the ways in which a sound transition strategy can make governing easier.

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Marchick asked Cook and Restuccia about their experiences covering Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s transition operations four years ago.

Restuccia: “The Clinton transition team … didn’t want to talk about what they were doing, partly because they didn’t want to be seen as measuring the drapes in the White House…. The Trump people saw themselves as sort of an underdog and, as a result, were not as organized in some ways, certainly when it [came] to whether or not people should talk to the press. As a result, we were able to make a lot of inroads with the Trump people pretty early on.”

Cook: “There was a real ragtag element to the Trump transition that made it sort of a gold mine to reporters…. The Trump people were just much more relaxed about grabbing coffee with reporters or talking about what they were up to.”


Marchick asked about the vetting problems encountered by some of President-elect Trump’s Cabinet nominees in 2016–2017.

Cook: “Someone would call  Trump or someone would say to [Vice President-elect Mike] Pence, ‘Oh, this person would be good.’ And then two days later, [Trump] would call them and they would have the job, or the person would go to Trump Tower and meet with [him] for 20 minutes and have the job. There was really no vetting of people’s backgrounds, potential conflicts of interest, [or] ethics.”

Restuccia: “We were the first really reporters to raise those red flags and [ask] what that could mean down the road [when] confirmation hearings started.”


Marchick asked how Trump’s transition affected his ability to govern.

Cook: “So many problems that the [Trump] administration has faced … [stem] from not really having in place–after [Chris] Christie [the head of the Trump transition team] was fired–a serious transition operation. [The team was] just sort of doing everything on the fly [and] … people [wanted] to stack the administration with friends. So many problems go back to the transition and the first few months of the administration.”

Restuccia: “Even after Christie was pushed out, there remained this group of people who were long-time, Washington-seasoned George W. Bush administration folks. A lot of them were really trying to put in place a structure…. There was this constant tension between those people trying to put together some sort of more formalized vetting process and the people in Trump’s inner circle who just didn’t find that to be a priority.”


Marchick asked whether Trump is now doing any second term transition planning.

Cook: “[The Trump administration has] ended up dealing with the pandemic and an economic downturn for the past several months, so they’ve been quite distracted. But I do think some [members of the Trump team] are very focused on [transition planning] … But it’s really going to be the president who will set the tone and determine whether or not hiring is efficient if he wins a second term. And then if he loses, he will really set the tone for what the transfer of power looks like.”

Restuccia: “One person [in the Trump administration] to watch really closely is Chris Liddell. He is a deputy chief of staff at the White House and leading the internal discussions about organizing the infrastructure around how [the Trump team is] thinking about a second term.”


Marchick asked the two journalists to predict the major transition challenges that Trump or a newly elected President Biden will face after the 2020 election.

Cook: “If Trump remains in power and wins a second term, then I think there’ll be a lot of questions about who serves in his second term and [how] they [are] vetted.… If Biden wins, there will be all of those similar questions about the transition … but [also] a whole other storyline that opens up about the Trump administration’s reaction to Biden’s victory and what they do in response. Do they make it easy for people to take power? Do they make it easy for Biden folks to access the agencies? Do they make it easy to give Biden people security clearances? There will be a bunch of questions that come up just based on how Trump reacts if he loses.”

Restuccia: “The really interesting story will be if Biden wins and what happens during those precious months between the election and the inauguration between [both the Biden and Trump teams].”


Marchick asked how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect transition planning for both Trump and Biden.

Cook: “I think COVID … has taken away some of [the Trump administration’s] attention from planning a second term, both in terms of the policy agenda [and] who could serve at the agencies or [in] the Cabinet. If Biden wins, [he is] going to walk into a White House [and] inherit … the pandemic. [He’s] really going to have to come in and hit the ground running.”

Restuccia: “Then there are just some day-to-day considerations, including [how to run a transition remotely]. How does that change the dynamic on the transition team? Does that affect communication? And will you even move into an office space that the government offers and staff it fully? [The pandemic] makes people question all of those things.”

Josh Bolten and Denis McDonough are well-versed in presidential transitions. As former White House chiefs of staff for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, respectively, they helped usher new administrations into office and prepare presidents for their second terms. In this Transition Lab episode, host David Marchick spoke with Bolten and McDonough about how they helped orchestrate successful transfers of power, fostered bipartisanship during those difficult times and helped set the standard for successful transitions today.

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Read the highlights:

Marchick asked Bolten and McDonough to identify a key aspect of a successful  presidential transition.

Bolten: “[Having] somebody who’s been deeply involved in personnel is an important element of transition…It was good to have someone [Clay Johnson, a long time Bush friend and former aide to Bush when he was governor of Texas] identified and in that role long in advance of the election and to have somebody who was really spending their time not focused on trying to win the election, which is what everybody else is focused on, but on what do you do after you win?”

McDonough: “You want somebody who’s close to the candidate, who has the trust of a candidate and can be discreet…and trust that…somebody is not going to try to be gaming the process…The idea of getting a good head start on [the transition] makes sense.”


Marchick asked Bolten and McDonough how the first-term transitions for former Presidents Bush and Obama differed.

Bolten: “We [had] that truncated transition [due to the delayed results of the 2000 election]…Imagine having just run the marathon and as soon as you hit the tape, somebody says, ‘Oh yeah, and there’s 10 more miles.’ So it was a pretty tired team that walked into the White House on January 20, 2001. [Also], I think in part because of the contested election, some of the young folks on the [Bill] Clinton team were bitter…There were really minor things…the W’s were missing from a bunch of the keyboards…I got to my desk in my office and nobody could reach me because my phone had been forwarded to a different number. We’re laughing now. We actually kind of laughed at them at the time.”

McDonough: “Josh really set the tone. The [2008-2009] transition was happening in a state of war and it was important to make sure that there was no slip from cup to lips in the context of the transition…I had…a sense of comradery, recognizing that [the Bush people were] handing off to a new team, but given the stakes of the affair, wanted to see [President Obama] be in a position to succeed.”


Marchick asked Bolten and McDonough how the Bush and Obama teams set aside their partisan differences during the transition.

Bolten: “[In 2008], Obama and [Republican presidential nominee John] McCain were fashioning their campaigns as ‘not Bush,’ and George W. Bush understood that and did not take it personally…It was kind of a political necessity for even the Republican candidate to be repudiating some of the Bush positions…We weren’t actually indifferent; we were rooting for McCain. But we stayed out [of political debates] on the president’s direction. He said, ‘Prepare a really good professional, smooth transition because this is the first transition in modern history when the United States itself is under threat and we have a national security responsibility here, and do the best possible job you can regardless of who wins this election.’”

McDonough: “President Obama felt that commitment from President Bush. As the president, you’re taking over this thing and there [are] very few people…who have been through it. And add to that…the age of Al Qaeda and the global terrorist threat that had struck us right here at home. So the fact that [President Bush] has kind of teed up a process by which to make [the transition] smoother is a very personal thing.”


Marchick asked Bolten and McDonough about how Bush transition team related to the incoming Obama team.

Bolten: “We went out of our way to demonstrate to the Obama team that we were playing it straight.”

McDonough: “Totally playing that straight. And there’s a kind of philosophical question and then there’s a structural question. Philosophically and temperamentally [the question is]: Is there a reason for us to trust these guys? Then there’s a structural question, which is are the agencies set up? Josh [addressed both questions]. He communicated his interest in an effective transition, but he also built a structure that ends up being the basis now for the statute that now requires a…civil servant, [a] non-political person in each agency who’s going to stay.”


Marchick asked Bolten and McDonough about the ongoing challenges of transition work and how the 2008 transition helped lay the groundwork for more success in the future.

McDonough: “I think this whole question of workspaces and computer infrastructure in this day and age is an important thing. Making sure that people are practicing good cyber hygiene…because we know that other countries are going to try to hack into the transition teams with 100% certainty.”

Bolten: “[The Obama team was] much better organized in 2016 than we were [in 2008] because we were still kind of fumbling with the playbook. Thanks to a lot of good work done by folks on the outside, including the Partnership for Public Service, by [2016], there are now statutory obligations and kind of a playbook. So as much as I appreciate the kudos being given to the Bush administration on the way out, I think what was done in the Obama administration [in 2016-2017] – and I hope what will be done at the appropriate time in the Trump administration – was much more organized and professional than [what] we were able to accomplish in 2008.”