Michael Morell is a leading intelligence analyst with over 30 years of experience at the CIA, including running the agency. Before retiring from the CIA in 2013, Morell worked for six different presidents and served as former President George W. Bush’s daily intelligence briefer, including on 9/11. In this Transition Lab episode, host David Marchick joined Morell for a wide-ranging discussion about intelligence-sharing during presidential elections and transitions, foreign interference during presidential elections, and how the 2020 candidates can build strong relationships with the intelligence community.
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Marchick asked Morell why giving intelligence briefings to presidential candidates is so important.
Morell: “I think it’s very important for candidates for president to have…a rough understanding…of…what the main threats are to the country…(It’s) even more important that you don’t say something during the campaign that actually undermines the national security of the United States. I think the briefing helps candidates in both of those ways.”
Marchick asked Morell when presidential candidates begin to receive intelligence briefings and what they contain.
Morell: “Historically, they’ve been done in the immediate aftermath of the conventions. So when an individual becomes their party’s nominee, the briefing is offered to them…It’s an analytic briefing, so there’s no…operations discussed, no covert actions discussed, no sources and methods discussed. It’s simply what do we see as the threats…why do we see it that way…how those threats evolved and where might they be headed?”
Marchick asked Morell how briefings for a president-elect differs from those given to presidential candidates.
Morell: “In addition to getting the president’s daily brief, the president-elect is also getting…background briefings…(The current administration will) also bring in deep experts…to…talk to (the president-elect) in much greater depth about particular issues…The other thing that a president-elect gets…is a briefing on CIA’s covert actions….It’s important for the president elect to get this briefing…because on Inauguration Day, these covert actions will become the new president’s.”
Marchick asked Morell to discuss foreign interference in presidential elections.
Morell: “The biggest threat overall, without a doubt…is (that hackers would) actually get inside voting systems…It’s not so much about changing the tally at the end of the day. It would be about…having people show up on Election Day expecting to vote and having a poll worker tell them, ‘I’m sorry, you’re not registered’…The impact that that would have…on the way people viewed the election…would be a very, very, very serious thing.”
Marchick asked Morell how he would advise President Trump to cultivate strong relationships with the intelligence community.
Morell: “Number one, it is perfectly acceptable for you not to agree with what the intelligence community is telling you…But don’t take your disagreement and make it public…Leave it in the room and have a discussion about it…Number two is to appoint to the senior positions in the intelligence community, not politicians, but intelligence professionals, people who grew up in the environment of call it like you see them tell it like it is.”
Marchick asked Morell how he would advise Democratic presidential nominee Joseph Biden to cultivate strong relationships with the intelligence community.
Morell: “I think it’s very important that…a President Biden visit an intelligence agency, the DNI (director of national intelligence), or the CIA, very early on in his administration and let people know that he wants them to call it like they see it… that he knows that intelligence is not perfect…but that he will listen and he will take his daily briefing every day…I too would advise him… that… it’s important to appoint professionals, not politicians to those senior jobs.”
Mary Gibert has one of the most important jobs in Washington today, preparing the federal government for a possible presidential transition. As the federal transition coordinator at the General Services Administration, Gibert and her team are working closely with the White House, the campaign of Democrat Joseph Biden and the federal agencies. In this Transition Lab episode, host David Marchick speaks to Gibert about GSA’s responsibilities in the transition process, the support it will provide to the incumbent president and the challenger, and how the coronavirus pandemic has affected transition planning.
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Marchick asked Gibert about GSA’s responsibilities in presidential transition planning.
Gibert: “The GSA has a statutory role to provide services and facilities (for presidential candidates). In addition, we receive funds for a president-elect for staff travel and supplies. We also have an interagency coordination role. We provide inaugural support to our partners…That includes the military, the (National) Park Service, the D.C. government and the volunteers who actually plan the inauguration. We also plan the outgoing activities. There are funds for an outgoing president and vice president to provide approximately seven months of services, including office space and support to wrap up things within their offices.”
Marchick asked when planning for a presidential transition actually begins.
Gibert: “We start two and a half years out with our planning and our preparation. The statute lays out when we must do things, what must happen. We take that role very, very seriously. I would say to the American public, the federal government is in good shape. The planning is on track. Our budget is on track. Our activities are on track. We’re on schedule. We’re meeting all of our statutory requirements.”
Marchick asked how GSA remains nonpartisan during the transition process.
Gibert: “I think that’s one of the reasons why my position is designated to be a career position. The statute over time has become very clear about what must be done, who needs to do it and who needs to do it by certain points in time. If we have a transition, our job is to make sure everyone is ready…We have to do everything we need to do to make sure that the federal side of the house is prepared.”
Marchick asked whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected transition planning.
Gibert: “COVID has not impacted our transition planning. We haven’t missed a beat. We’ve kept up with all our statutory requirements. We’ve held meetings. Before (the pandemic), everything was large gatherings in-person. Now we go to Zoom and Google Hangouts. Our platform is different, but our ability to carry out the mission is not. One of the other key features that we provide to candidates…is a secure internet…through pre-election or post-election. They (the Biden team) will be able to operate wherever they are using the same suite of tools that we have within the government.”
Marchick noted that if Democrat Joseph Biden is victorious in November, he will want to send teams into the major agencies to gather information about their operations and policies. “Do you anticipate that being more difficult because of COVID-19?”
Gibert: “There is a memorandum of understanding that specifically addresses this particular topic should there be a transition (to a new president.) In this environment, (the agency reviews) will all just be done remotely…We will be addressing this with the agencies if they (the transition landing teams) want to come into the office…We don’t have a crystal ball to know what phase we may or may not be in, but certainly there will be an option for in-person meetings as long as it’s safe…We will also make sure that our agencies understand what they need to do to be prepared.”
Marchick asked if the Biden transition team will adhere to the protocols that President Trump has in place the West Wing, including daily testing and mask wearing, when they move into GSA office space in early September.
Gibert: “It is up to the Biden team. (They) get to decide what their rules of engagement are for anyone who enters that space. And of course, we will be providing them with what our guidance…and all the data and the things we use to make those determinations.”
Marchick asked why the GSA decided to put Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s transition teams in the same building before the 2016 presidential election, noting it created some awkward encounters among members of the two opposing teams.
Gibert: “We gave a great deal of thought to this…We made the decision fairly early on that we would house both of the candidates in the same space to ensure equity. And not only in terms of the amount of space, but the location and proximity.”
Presidential nominating conventions are a major moment for any campaign. Reverend Leah Daughtry and Maria Cino served, respectively, as CEO’s of Democratic and Republican conventions, and join host David Marchick on Transition Lab to discuss their experiences. The two women talk about the role of conventions in political campaigns, whether they give a boost to the candidates, and how the coronavirus pandemic will change conventions this year and in the future.
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Marchick asked about the purpose of political conventions and whether they still matter
Cino: ”At one point, conventions were really about rallying grassroots and energizing volunteers. It was traditionally driven by getting positive media and getting your message out. It gave you a springboard for the general election. I think today they’ve become perhaps less important. The nominees are decided beforehand, where at one time at conventions you were kingmakers. It has become…a necessary formality.”
Marchick asked whether conventions give a lasting boost to the presidential nominees.
Daughtry: “In 2008, we thought we had a good bounce (for Barack Obama). We had a great night at Invesco field, but then Senator (John) McCain announced Sarah Palin (as his running mate). The next morning it completely killed the bounce. The nation’s attention turned to the Republicans and the historic moment of having a woman on the Republican ticket.”
Cino: “In theory it was a great call. Unfortunately, that balanced out in about two weeks and it (the rise in the polls and positive public attention) went away very quickly…It was great to have the first woman on the Republican ticket. There was a tremendous amount of press, but it did not last very long given the fact that perhaps (Alaska) Governor Palin wasn’t as prepared for that particular role as we would have needed.”
Marchick asked whether the political party platforms are important.
Cino: “You go through a lot of pains because you’re trying to keep everybody happy, but in the end nobody’s happy and you have to produce a document…I’d honestly say that after that document is printed and handed out, if you ever look at it again, I would be surprised until the next platform is written. In my mind, the theory is great, but I’m not sure in practice that it makes a whole lot of sense.”
Daughtry: “It’s a great exercise in trying to create unity and a statement of values and principles, but in the end, nobody takes the platform to the halls of Congress and says, `Here’s your legislation.’”
Marchick asked Cino what she liked and did not like about planning a convention.
Cino: “The best part of the convention is probably more personal. I love working with young people. It’s a great opportunity to actually find a lot of very, very talented young folks…I also think it’s really great to get to know local officials in a city and get to know about the city. I think the least fun part is probably raising money and trying to make sure that you had the money to do what needed to be done, to get the arena in shape and put the program on that the candidate.”
Marchick asked how the pandemic will impact this year’s conventions and how this might set a precedent for the future.
Cino: “I think now out of necessity, this is an opportunity to look to the future. Do conventions have to be four to five days? Do they have to be in the same city, and do you have to bring all delegates and alternates to one location? I think that’s a positive…The media is not interested in covering more than maybe two hours an evening…Maybe we’ll have more impactful speeches, we’ll have better messaging and we’ll have the ability to maybe hear what’s most important.”
Marchick asked how the convention planners can create excitement and energy this year with a virtual convention?
Daughtry: “In any convention, no matter how many people are there, you’ve got the audience that’s in the arena and in the hall. Of course, there’s tremendous energy for the speakers who are there…But really in any convention cycle, the bulk of the people who are watching are in their homes, in their churches and their union halls…To that point, not much is changing in terms of the need to provide some exciting programming that will keep people glued to their devices. I think both sides have an opportunity to do something really exciting that will hold the viewer’s attention. It’s going to be all their own production and all on their messaging…Both sides have to put their best foot forward to give something to the American people that tells them how they’re going to lead in the next four years. I think people will watch and if the programming excites people, they will stay the two whole hours.”
Marchick asked Daughtry about her biggest convention nightmare.
Daughtry: “The biggest nightmare I had was the year that someone who thought they should have more (speaking) time and actually took more time. I was sitting in my seat on the podium watching this individual go off script. This particular person went over about 10 minutes, which meant we had to bump somebody and the person we had to bump was another elected official. And that person was really, really unhappy.”
Marchick asked Daughtry whether she had any pre-convention rituals.
“I like to go to the venue on Sunday night around midnight when it’s empty. No one is there except a couple of cleaning people and I just like to walk around. I walked through… all of the delegation sections and just try to get ready for the next day, but also remember the ancestors and in particular, Fannie Lou Hamer, who was not allowed to be seated as a delegate at our 1968 convention. I am grateful to the work that she did that made it possible for me so many years later, an African American woman, to serve as CEO of the same party that kept her out. It’s a testimony about how far a party has come and how the power of the people really can make change, including inside the political structure.”
Marchick asked about any memorable convention delegates.
Cino: “At one point I remember seeing two particular delegates on floor trotting around in elephant costumes.”
Daughtry: “I remember the man who was covered head to toe in buttons, and I just thought to myself, how long did it take you to do that? I mean, his entire outfit was buttons.”
Women are vastly underrepresented in leadership roles within the federal government and in national security fields. In this Transition Lab episode, Jamie Jones Miller, a former principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, and Nina Hachigian, a former U.S. ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, talk to host David Marchick about their own careers in government, how they handled uncomfortable situations and the importance of bringing more women into leadership positions. Both women are members of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security, an organization dedicated to improving gender diversity in the national security field.
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Marchick asked how Miller felt when she was the only woman present when decisions were being made.
Miller: “I was aware of it. I was aware I was the only woman in the room. That carries with it a certain burden. You want to perform well because you’re carrying the weight of all of the other women who want to be in the room and who should be in the room…And then I start to think about how I get more women…at the table. So I’ve made it. Great. I’m aware of it, but how do I open the door for others?”
Marchick asked how the women handled situations when male colleagues were dismissive. “How would you approach it to reduce tensions, but also stand your ground?”
Hachigian: “It helps to have some seniority and to be older. I wouldn’t suggest to younger women to just let it go…I think men don’t often realize what they’re saying can be offensive. It’s partly educating your colleagues to become allies.”
Miller: “It is not just the responsibility of the woman in the room to point that out or to correct the behavior. It is the responsibility of everyone in the room to build that culture of awareness and to point out behavior that is not appropriate and not productive or not welcome in the workplace.”
Marchick asked about the work of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security and how the organization hopes to get more women in important federal government positions.
Miller: We are compiling a database of women who are qualified for the most senior Senate confirmed roles. We want to be sure that we have a women of color. We’re also putting together advice about how (an administration) can hire diverse teams, some of the tricks of the trade. And I’m holding a series of webinars for women who are interested in advice about the appointments process.”
Marchick asked what the data show regarding organizations that have diverse workforces.
Hachigian: “The data show that diverse groups in leadership are more creative. They’re more innovative. They’re more likely to avoid group think. Women in Congress are judged to be as or more effective than their male colleagues, for example. And in the private sector, we have all kinds of data that show literally that firms are more profitable and that their turnover is less when there are women in management. But the point is that if you have different points of view to bring, you’re likely to get better results.”
Marchick asked about Mitt Romney being ridiculed during the 2012 presidential campaign for saying he had “binders full of women” when in fact he was making a concerted effort to find qualified women to serve in his Cabinet and other important government positions.
Miller: “Knowing what we know today, it is a best practice…to be intentional about finding a diverse slate of candidates. I have to give Romney credit for that. It sounds like there was the game plan and a process. Unfortunately I think `binders full of women’ became a quote that everybody seemed to be using and throwing around.”
Marchick asked Hachigian if she had advice for young women seeking mentors.
Hachigian: “Older people who have had some experience love to talk to younger people about their careers and really love to help. And so it really is just a matter of asking for some time to talk through your career, what you’re looking for in life and to ask advice and then just to keep up those relationships. That most often happened for me with people I’ve worked for and who I’ve kept in touch with, but it could be a professor or others.
Marchick asked Miller which parts of the government have done a good job promoting women and creating more opportunities and which have not?”
Miller: “Capitol Hill is a great place for women, especially today in that there are a number of congressional staff organizations dedicated to helping grow women professionally. My experience in the executive branch is limited to the Department of Defense. The most senior women in the department made a very concerted effort to get to know the younger political appointees and staff members, but those things were all led internally. We had to make those things happen.”
Marchick asked Hachigian about the opportunities for women at the State Department.
Hachigian: “I do think they’re trying, but as far as I can tell, the number of women in senior management hovers around 30%, so it’s not great. There’s no pipeline problem…People are entering the Foreign Service at about a 50-50 ratio. It’s just that they (women) fall out of the system for a variety of reasons. I think they’re trying, but we need to see more progress.”
Marchick noted that the CIA conducted a diversity study several years ago and found gender parity for entry-level jobs, but anemic numbers for those with 10 years of experience. He asked what causes women to leave.
Hachigian: “I think there’s a variety of reasons…It could be a sense that they’re not getting promoted and so they feel like this is a dead end. For some, they’ve encountered serious problems of harassment or assault. For some, it’s just being overlooked or not being heard. I think for some there’s the problem of balancing childcare responsibilities. There’s not good leave parental leave policies at all.”
Donald Trump‘s 2016-17 presidential transition was famously bumpy in part because the president-elect made a change in transition leadership only days after the election. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was chairman of the Trump transition team from May 2016 until shortly after Election Day, but he had done extensive preparation to help the new president be ready to govern. On this episode of Transition Lab, Christie tells host David Marchick how he planned the transition and where it went wrong, offers some advice for 2020 and ponders his own future.
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Marchick asked Christie about his experience with then-candidate Trump in 2016 regarding the need for transition planning before the November presidential election.
Christie: “He became convinced that he had to do this legally and he just tried to stay as far away from it as much as he could. The only time I ever really spoke to him about it…was on rare occasions where he read something in the news about the transition and he would then call and give me some reaction to it. Each time he called, he’d say to me, ‘Chris, you’re wasting a lot of time on this. You and I are both so smart, if we win this thing, we can do the entire transition if we just leave the victory party two hours early.’”
In recounting how he prepared to lead Trump’s presidential transition, Christie said he sought advice from Republican transition luminaries including Jim Baker, Andy Card and Chris Liddell.
“What they said to me is you don’t have a day to waste. The government is bigger and more complex than it’s ever been, and if your candidate wins, he is going to be the least well-versed in the intricacies of how government operates than any president of our lifetime. You’re going to have to have an even more detailed plan prepared for him to have him prepared in the 73 days…between the election and inauguration.”
Marchick asked Christie what he focused on during the pre-election transition.
Christie: “The first was to listen to what the candidate was saying on the campaign trail, and then give him a roadmap to achieve every one of the things…in either a 100-day or 200-day plan. First was laying out those individual promises…and then putting groups together who were expert in that area to be able to prepare white papers that would say how you get from promise to accomplishment.
The second big piece was putting together the landing teams and blueprints for each department in the federal government so that you would have a group of people who were qualified to go in there beginning the day after the election. The third piece was personnel…We were looking at Cabinet level, sub-Cabinet and White House staff….We did a lot of outreach to people in the campaign and people in the corporate world, people in the nonprofit world, to get recommendations. We then vetted people and put together an entire list of folks for each Cabinet and major sub-Cabinet position.
Marchick: “So you had done all this work, and everybody at the Partnership for Public Service and other places who worked with you said you did a great job. What was the impact of losing all this work?”
Christie: “The first term is almost over and they still haven’t recovered… In the beginning in the Trump White House, they were either lots of empty seats or (jobs) filled with lots of Obama holdovers (in places like) the National Security Council and…the departments. So you have people…who are hostile to the president personally, but he had just been elected and he wondered why he couldn’t get things done. it just has impacted this administration in every substantive way…Even if they win a second term, they won’t catch up because they gave away that 150 days or so that you can never get it back.”
Marchick asked Christie what advice he would give to the Democratic candidate Joseph Biden’s presidential transition team based on his own 2016 experience.
Christie: “Make sure that you do all the vetting you need to do on your landing teams way in advance (of the election). Decide early on whether you’re going to let any lobbyists be on those teams. You’re going to have to have really good people, smart, experienced people who are literally ready to go in the day after the election. Have all that stuff squared away and the rules laid out right in the beginning so that nobody can raise any issues that can trip you up…I don’t think you can ever spend enough time on personnel because in government, personnel turn out to be policy to a large extent.”
Marchick asked Christie about his plans for the future and if he sees himself holding public office again.
Christie: “I could see myself reentering public life at some point in the next number of years…I’m not going to be one of a hundred in the United States Senate, or one of 435 of the House. Not my style, not the way I would want to do things…I don’t have a crystal ball and you can’t tell for certain what opportunities will present themselves and whether you’ll be able to take advantage of those or not. But if I were a betting man, I would bet on the fact that I’ll have another opportunity in public life somewhere down the road.”
The Office of Presidential Personnel faces the herculean task of helping a president select about 4,000-political appointees at the beginning of a new administration and throughout a president’s four-year term. Jonathan McBride and Liza Wright, former directors of the PPO under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, respectively, join host David Marchick on Transition Lab to share their advice on how to land a political appointment and some of the challenges they faced managing the personnel operation.
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Marchick asked the two former PPO directors about the best way to apply for a politically appointed job.
McBride: “To put it in a frame of reference, in the couple of days after the election in 2008, 253,000 people submitted resumes into the resume database. That’s not including people that already had been submitting during the campaign…Being in the database is particularly important, but people who have worked on the campaign and built relationships and have had some visibility and are known to be expert on something (have an advantage.) Raising your hands through whatever connection you have to the White House is also a good thing.”
Wright: “I always tell people to do your homework…It’s so helpful if they have taken the steps to really research what positions in the government they’re interested in, that they believe they’re qualified for…I think the more they can kind of help the process, the better. Because, it’s like the flood gates open in the beginning of any administration and the PPO office is overwhelmed.”
Marchick asked if there are other ways to expedite the sometimes-lengthy appointment process?
McBride: “I would also visit the Partnership for Public Service’s (Center for Presidential Transition) website and find out about the things you can do in advance to prepare for the vetting process at different levels. One of the things you can do to speed your process is to have done a lot of work ahead of time, especially for Senate confirmed jobs. Having the paperwork and information available saves a lot of time because if you start that when you meet us, it adds a lot of time.”
Marchick asked the former PPO directors about the scope of the work and the difficulties they faced.
Wright: “When you’re in the White House, it is one massive succession planning exercise on steroids. Not only are you bringing in essentially 4,000 people within the first few months of (a new) administration, but you’re also having to plan because the people are not going to stay. The average tenure is around 18 months. By the time you are placing the first round of people, it’s not too much longer until you’ve got to start thinking about the succession planning exercise all over again.”
McBride: “We had just over 50 people working kind of full time in our personnel office, but we also had people distributed throughout the agencies called White House liaisons…By comparison, we hired about as many people per year as my former employer BlackRock did, and their HR department is over 400 people…I think if you want to be able to search the whole country and find nontraditional candidates and convince them to come in and serve their government,…you need a broader reach and you have to come up with ways to do it, and it’s hard to do that with 50 people.”
Marchick asked about the most difficult jobseekers they encountered and how certain approaches can backfire.
Wright: “There was one person that launched a campaign…I had literally 50 or 60 phone calls that were coming and letters being faxed in….One of my responsibilities was to handle the ambassadors. One time I had a husband and wife that came into the office and tried to pitch me on the idea of being ambassadors of neighboring countries… So, when I think about annoying, it just shows kind of a lack of judgment.”
While a new president must fill some 4,000 political positions, a second term president faces a high turnover of personnel, including in top-tier jobs. Wright talked about her experience during President Bush’s second term.
Wright: “I remember before the 2004 election I got called into the Oval Office and President Bush and I had a conversation with (Chief of Staff) Andy Card because there were about eight or nine Cabinet members that we were going to be replaced. That’s a lot. Two months before that election, we basically ramped up a kind of a transition effort. We had our lists ready to go so that right after the election we could…announce who those Cabinet members. We really treated it as a big transition…We went through all of the Senate confirmed positions.”
Marchick asked if the job brought any major surprises.
McBride: “The first [surprise] for me was the idea that on January 20th, somebody blows a whistle and everybody from the CEO to three levels down leaves an agency…It was really surprising to me how many people didn’t pay their taxes.”
The two former PPO directors reflected on some of misconceptions about their job.
Wright: A lot of people would say to me, `Wow, you’re the head of presidential personnel. You’re pretty popular.’ And I would say the exact opposite. Because at the end of the day, for every one position, there could be 20 or 30 plus candidates that all want the job…My mission was to find the very best people to serve this president who are the most qualified…It’s not always easy to do in such a highly political environment.”
McBride: “You are delivering way more disappointment than you are happiness in a job like this. There’s an added element because we put people through a rather rigorous vetting process. There are plenty of times when you have to call somebody up and explain that they’re not going forward in the process, but you can’t tell them why because the FBI, IRS, all these people are involved (in the decision-making process).”
George W. Bush had the shortest official transition in history at just 39 days, but secured more political appointees during his first year in office than any other modern president. Clay Johnson,who served as the executive director of Bush’s transition and later as director of the Office of Presidential Personnel, tells host Dave Marchick how Bush brought many of his personnel practices as Texas governor to Washington, how he started his transition early, solicited advice from seasoned Washington veterans and maintained a focus on planning for the new administration even the results of the 2000 election were in dispute.
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After the contested results of the Nov. 7, 2000 presidential election, the country had to wait for the Supreme Court decision on December 12 before recognizing Bush as the president-elect. Marchick asked Johnson how the transition team proceeded during this time of uncertainty.
Johnson: “On the day after the election, nobody knew how long it was going to take to resolve. We were just all standing at parade rest. We were shuffling papers, remembering what our goals were and just continuing to work on it privately. Maybe 10 days into it, (transition chairman and Bush’s running mate) Dick Cheney decided, and I’m sure he talked to the president about this, we have to assume we’re going to win this thing. We have to prepare as if we know we’re going to win it.”
Marchick asked Johnson who he turned to for advice on the presidential transition and what advice he was given.
Johnson: “(Former Secretary of State and Treasury) James Baker and (former Secretary of State) George Schultz were just invaluable people and they were so welcoming. The general direction that I got from them was to ensure you have clear definitions of success regarding what you want to try to accomplish and by when. (They said ) don’t go in looking for general things you need to do, but develop the list of things that you want to accomplish by specific dates.”
“We set specific goals…We wanted to be able to communicate that we are working hard to prepare to govern…We set targets for ourselves even before the election was thrown to the court. (Our goal) was to have the senior White House staff chosen by December 15 and the candidates [for Cabinet positions] selected by Christmas time.”
Marchick asked Johnson when George W. Bush began his presidential transition planning for the 2000 election and why he was picked as executive director of the transition.
Johnson: “He (Bush) said…I want you to prepare a plan for what I do when I win the presidency. This was in June of 1999. So it was 16 months or so before the presidential election. I don’t think anybody’s started that early ever before or after.”
“I was a known entity…and I had worked with the senior people in Austin. They knew that I was methodical, organized, systematic…and was focused entirely on the success of my 50-year plus friend. I had a nickname among the (state) senators. My nickname was the icebox or the refrigerator…I was not Mr. hail-fellow-well-met. I was not somebody that was going to be trying to glad hand people and curry favor. I had one client and that was the governor.”
Marchick asked how Johnson’s experience as appointment’s director when Bush was the Texasgovernor helped him prepare for his role in staffing the new administration, particularly by employingthe practice of Bush meeting weekly with the personnel staff to discuss potential nominees rather than going through the White House chief of staff.
Johnson: “It was very important. It’s the way we had done it in Austin…We had a system and he wanted it done exactly like that. And he realized he felt good about the time he spent on that…It was typically 25 to 30 people that he would review every week. And it took about 25 or 30 minutes. There was a real process: `What kind of person would we be looking for to fill this position? What do we want them to do? What kind of person is best prepared to do that? Do we want somebody who’s a manager? Do we want somebody who is a policy person? Did they have the basic human qualities, et cetera, et cetera.’ Then he’d say I agree and then we would move on.”
Marchick noted that Johnson advised Bush in the summer of 2000 to pick his White House chief of staff well ahead of the election, and asked why that was important?
Johnson: “It was key for the person who was going to be making the decisions and working with the president to pick the senior White House staff. If the chief of staff is asked to join the White House team on the day after Election Day, he or she is going to have to take a week or 10 days to put his game face on and you’re going to waste a week or 10 days. (Our goal was to identify) the chief of staff early so that he or she could be prepared to start working, to reach out to people and talk to people about coming in…as soon as the election is decided.”
Marchick noted that historically, sub-Cabinet positions have been a point of contention betweenCabinet secretaries and the White House, and asked how the Bush team handled this issue.
Johnson: “Everybody…advised us (not to) delegate to the Cabinet secretaries (regarding) the picking of all of their sub-Cabinet members…because it has never been successful. We were very clear with every Cabinet secretary that this would be collaborative. We had to both agree…That worked fabulously. I remember when I had my first meeting with (Secretary of State-designate) Colin Powell. I said, ‘Colin, I expect that 92% of the people you bring into the State Department are going to be people that you have worked with before and that will be fine. But there are a lot of people we will identify for you to consider, and maybe there are people you don’t know who should be in certain positions.”
James Baker worked on five transitions and served in four presidential administrations, including as White House chief of staff and Treasury secretary under President Ronald Reagan, and as secretary of State for President George H.W. Bush. Baker joined host David Marchick on Transition Lab to discuss his long and distinguished career on the national stage.
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Marchick: You spent basically five years trying to keep Ronald Reagan out of office, first when you were running Gerald Ford’s presidential campaign (in 1976) and then later running George H.W. Bush’s efforts (during the 1980 Republican primaries). Why would he ask you to be his chief of staff after you tried to defeat him twice?
Baker: “I don’t think it will ever happen again in American politics…I think it’s something about the broad-gauge nature of the Gipper. He was looking for someone who knew and understood how Washington works. You remember he was coming in right after Jimmy Carter, who was an extraordinarily bright person, but didn’t think he needed anybody in the District of Columbia to tell him how to do things.”
Marchick: You basically set the gold standard for being chief of staff. And now, because of your work, it is best practice for the chief of staff to have the authority to pick the (White House) staff and for the transition team to focus on the agencies.
“I ran the transition in the White House. And President Reagan gave me a carte blanche to hire the White House staff…He said, ‘I want you to get the best people you can get.’ I didn’t have to go through those central personnel.”
Marchick asked about the difficult 1988-89 transition from Reagan to Bush, noting that Baker described it as a “hostile takeover” because of the turnover in key personnel even though the transfer of power was from one Republican to another.
Baker: “It’s hard because you’ve got all these people you’ve been serving with. They’re all good Republicans and they expect to serve in another Republican administration, but you have a new president who needs to put his imprimatur on the government, which means you need new people because people are policy, and people have a tendency to get stuck in positions they have long advocated…It’s a little difficult because you have to go through and say, ‘Alright, we’re going to change you out.’”
Marchick asked Baker about his role as legal adviser for George W. Bush overseeing the recount of votes in Florida during the hotly contested 2000 presidential election against then Vice President Al Gore.
Baker: “We didn’t go down to Florida to win the election, we went down there to preserve the election. I think the Democrats made a couple of big mistakes. They didn’t realize that it was not just a legal contest, but a political contest and it needed to be treated that way. The other mistake they made was to insist upon recounts in only four Florida counties that were big Democratic counties. That gave us the moral high ground. Those were fundamental mistakes.”
Marchick asked Baker about his intense January 1991 meeting in Geneva with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in the months following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and whether that meeting was the most pressure filled moment in his government life.
Baker: “’I am not sure that it was the most pressure filled moment, but it was pressure filled. I began that press conference by saying ‘regrettably.’ And the minute I said, `regrettably’… and before I actually said another word, all of the wire service reporters jumped up and ran out of the room to file their stories because they figured that war is coming. It was a seven-hour meeting and I made it quite apparent that we were not there to negotiate down from a U.N. resolution: Get out or we throw you out. I wasn’t there and negotiate. I was there to implement. Of course, they wanted to negotiate it and we went back and forth…I was under no illusions that they were going to just pick up and leave.”
Marchick: “One of the things you’re famous for is preparation, focus and never being at a loss for words. Where does that come from?”
Baker: “My dad used to have a mantra of the five P’s: prior preparation prevents poor performance. He drilled that into me from the time I was a young man and it’s really stood me in very, very good stead throughout all the politics and public service. It also stuck with me in the United States Marine Corps, in the law school and in the practice of law because I was never one to try to wing it.”
The vetting process for individuals seeking a political appointment can be long and difficult. And the more senior the position, the more scrutiny appointees receive. Powerhouse attorneys Leslie Kiernan and Robert Rizzi have helped political appointees navigate the vetting process, and share their expertise with host David Marchick. They describe the appointment process, what might disqualify an individual and how the rules change with each administration.
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Read the highlights:
Marchick: “What are the most common issues that arise during the vetting process?”
Rizzi: “There are often tax issues that trip up nominees, classically nanny taxes. Those and other kinds of unpaid taxes are a constant problem. Taxes are complicated. People make mistakes. They find those mistakes during the vetting and that creates some significant issues.
One of the other problems that we deal with constantly is financial conflicts of interest. There is a criminal statute that prohibits financial conflicts of interest. Many of the investment products that exist today did not even exist when the statute was enacted. And so how those standards applied to these kinds of investment products is very, very complicated, and those are often significant impediments to nominees. The best thing that people can do…is to try to anticipate some of those problems in advance. Because once you get into the vetting pipeline, it becomes much more difficult.”
Marchick: “Laws around marijuana are changing state by state. How does this apply now when working for the federal government?”
Rizzi: “Drug use is tested under the national security questionnaire, which has detailed questions concerning different kinds of drugs…It’s interesting because when we have clients who are relatively young, they’re sort of aghast that these are the issues that they’re being questioned about.
The national security questionnaire focuses on federal law, not state laws. So even if marijuana use is legal in a state, that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem for the national security questionnaire…
What has changed to some degree is the lookback rule. In the Bush 40 administration, there was a general understanding that if marijuana had been used more than seven years earlier, it could be disregarded. The Obama administration shortened that look back rule. There is a view that there is some period of forgiveness and that it is something that can be overcome.
Kiernan: “It depends upon the position. I think that issues in that space also vary differently depending upon the committee [that is hearing the appointees’ confirmation]. So, it is something that, as Bob said, has evolved to some extent over time, but I don’t think that there is a single rule that governs this particular issue.”
In reflecting on her experience vetting appointees and helping people through the process, Kiernan said:
“I think it is incredibly important for candidates to be forthcoming in the vetting process. The worst place for a candidate to be is in a hearing where something comes up, and the candidate is being attacked for it. And either the White House or supportive senators are caught off guard. The idea that… nobody will find out is a very poor approach.”
In discussing the recent restrictions on corporate lobbyists, Marchick pointed out that since the Clinton administration, the view on lobbyists coming in and out of government has changed.
Rizzi: “Lobbyists had been a special target for a lot of the vetting issues that have come along. We haven’t really talked yet about the so-called ethics pledges that every administration since the Clinton administration has had, but those have special constraints on lobbyists going into government and… after they get out of government. I was just talking to somebody today about a lobbyist for what everybody would regard as a public interest organization who was banned from going into the government because of these restrictions.
Marchick: “Let’s say you were an advocate for the homeless… or some other disadvantaged group and you were doing the Lord’s work. If you happen to be registered a lobbyist, you were just ineligible under the former administration’s rules?”
Rizzi: “Yes. We used to sort of kid that… all of the people who had been lobbyists for Friends of the Earth couldn’t work for the EPA. That was true in some cases. That was a judgment that was made, and I totally understand why given some of the things that we’ve seen.
Marchick: You have said government ethics has become weaponized. What do you mean by that?
Rizzi: “When I speak about weaponized ethics, what I mean is that the government ethics system, which is basically a set of filters to decide who should go into the government and who should not… has morphed into a system of using the process to try to achieve policy goals…The idea is that if we can block certain individuals from going into the government, we can affect policy. So one of the ways of blocking people is by emphasizing violations of some of these rules. And obviously that’s quite destructive and it deters people from going into the government.”
Marchick: “What suggestions do you have to make the vetting process as smooth as possible should Vice President Biden win?”
Rizzi: During the transition, the biggest problem is the clock is running. There’s a limited amount of time to get everything done…I think they need to be much more ruthless about making decisions quickly. We call it getting fast to know, and that is something I think they’re going to really have to have to think about.
Abraham Lincoln faced the worst circumstances in U.S. history during his presidential transition, with seven Southern states having seceded from the Union before he took the oath of office on March 4, 1861. Historian Ted Widmer tells host David Marchick about Lincoln’s two-week train ride from Illinois to Washington, D.C. in February 1861, how this journey helped him find his voice, build public support, and set the tone for his presidency. He also described how Lincoln navigated around a plot to assassinate him in Baltimore.
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Read the highlights:
Marchick asked Widmer to describe the circumstances Lincoln faced after his November 1860 election as he prepared to assume the presidency.
Widmer: “Well, it’s a terrible transition…And Lincoln’s transition showed just how fragile our country can be at times. He’s elected on November 6th, 1860, and he has a very small share of the vote. He has only 39.8%…the second smallest plurality ever in our history. And then the South just goes ballistic. They start threatening to secede, and then they begin to actually secede. South Carolina is the first state to secede in December and then six other states secede. So, he’s way out there in Illinois and he can’t really control anything that’s happening back in Washington.”
Marchick: “There were several interesting things about Lincoln’s train trip (to Washington). He really didn’t give speeches during the campaign, but on this trip, he gave over 100 speeches. How did those speeches and his message affect what he would do as president? Essentially, this was his transition and he found his voice for his presidency.”
Widmer: “Over the course of the 13 days of speeches, he just keeps getting better. He gives a lot of them, a lot of impromptu speeches…And as he gets closer to Philadelphia, he begins to talk very beautifully about his memories of reading books as a young boy about what America stands for. And it’s about the brave men who fought in the American Revolution, but even more it’s about the idealism of this country and freedom. And all of it built up into a very emotional and very persuasive argument that America is better than slavery. That America really stands for a moral principle at home and around the world. And by the end of the trip, it’s only been 13 days, but he’s really pretty close to the Gettysburg address.”
Marchick: Can you just describe the crowds?
Widmer: “[There were] absolutely huge crowds in every place he went. In the large cities like New York, a quarter-million people…And in many cities, 50,000 to 100,000 people come out in small towns – often two or three times the actual population of the towns would be there. Everyone was coming in from the surrounding countryside to see him. People would stand by the track in farmland just for the chance to look at his face or wave to him when he went by. Some of that was fear, fear about where the country was heading and fear of a war that was imminent.”
Marchick asked Widmer how Lincoln used a bit of subterfuge on his journey to Washington after learning about an assassination plot.
Widmer: “He went on a secret, tiny train from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. And he got off that train in the middle of the night…and boarded the last train from Philadelphia to Washington that was going to go through Baltimore…what was called the seat of danger by the reports from the spies saying this is where you have to be really careful…And he got off at dawn in Washington… He just looked like a well-to-do Illinois farmer, sort of coming into Washington for the first time…The simple act of his arriving made his presidency possible…If he doesn’t make it, his presidency doesn’t happen and the North probably loses the Civil War, in my opinion.”
