How’s the 2024 transition going? With Max Stier 

Valerie Boyd: Today on Transition Lab, we’re pleased to welcome our very own Max Stier. 

Max has served as President and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service since founding it in 2001. Before partnering with Sam Heyman to create our organization, Max gained invaluable experience on the inner workings of the federal government, serving on Capitol Hill, as a clerk for the Supreme Court and in the Departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development. Under his leadership, the Partnership has evolved from a small startup to the only nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to building a better government and a stronger democracy. 

In 2016, the Partnership formally launched the Center for Presidential Transition as the premier nonpartisan resource for presidential candidates and their teams as they prepare to begin a new administration or a second term. Today, we’re thrilled to have Max with us for a conversation about the history of the Partnership, the lessons we’ve learned about presidential transitions over the past two decades and the status of President elect Donald Trump’s second presidential transition.  

Max, thank you for joining us. 

Max Stier: Valerie, thank you for having me. It’s great to have you on board as the director of the Center for Presidential Transition. And the whole team has done just amazing work, exceptional work. So, very fun to see you’re having a real impact. 

Valerie Boyd: So, let’s start at the beginning. In 2008, what led you and the Partnership’s leadership team at the time to create the Center? 

Max Stier: So, the story is pretty straightforward and classic as far as I’m concerned. And the center really started because one of our colleagues Katie Malague, currently a public servant, yet again asked me the question: what are we doing about the presidential transition? 

This was in 2008. We started in 2001 as an organization and to be honest, I had given it zero thought. We had not seen a changeover administration up until that point. And I looked at her and said, that is a wonderful question. What do you think we should do? And that led to a deep dive in the 2008 election cycle where we attempted to understand what the state of play was, and what actually might be helpful from the perspective of the Partnership and our work, and led to a report that we called ready to govern right at the end of the 2008 election. And 

it set the traces, the foundation for all the work to co me on preparing for presidential transitions. What we really learned was that it was a process that was akin to Groundhog Day. 

No one really was learning from prior examples, and this was a vital fundamental process that could be done a lot better. And we felt that we had a way of making it better. 

Valerie Boyd: What I didn’t realize when I was serving in the white house in 2008 and working on the transition process, was how unusual it was in the context of modern transitions. We saw President Bush editing the briefing memos for his successor by hand, on his own and investing personally in that process. What did you see in 2008? How did the work of Presidents Bush and incoming President Obama affect your thinking about transition planning? 

Max Stier: Well, I think first and foremost, as you said, it was a different era in terms of both sides being cooperative, the incoming and as well as the outgoing. I do think that you know, former President Bush and in particular, his chief of staff Josh Bolton approached this with an intense desire to make sure the handoff was everything it possibly could be. 

And I think it was really driven by 9/11. I, I think that in my own head, I divide the world and transition from pre 9/11 to post 9/11, because I think 9/11 demonstrated to our leadership in our country how we were constantly at risk even if we didn’t know it. We were, that the world was a very dangerous place and that the transition was the point of maximum vulnerability. 

So previously transitions, the value of doing it well was really about the ability of an incoming administration to achieve its campaign promises. And that’s obviously very important, but nothing is more important than keeping us safe, and I think former president Bush was motivated by that. He directed his team, Josh, and everyone else around them to approach this with an incredible seriousness and they, you know, without any legislative requirements really set the ground rules for how it should be done going forward. And frankly, legislation that we helped pass later on was really about simply making what George Bush did required by law. 

So, the hard lifting was done by Bush and his team. That’s for the outgoing. For the incoming, the big lesson for us was that it was very difficult to to, to incentivize campaigns to do the early and scaled transition planning that was actually necessary to be ready on day one, because they faced a dilemma. 

It was the right thing to do, but it also put them at political risk because they could be accused of measuring the drapes celebrating early. And you know, one real fundamental rule in politics when you’re running for president is you don’t do anything that jeopardizes your chance of winning. And even former president Obama faced this, because President, or rather Senator McCain in his campaign, one of his communications persons came out and actually attacked Obama for the preparation work that he was doing pre-election.  

So, the 2008 cycle, there was a lot of good things that happened, especially by President Bush and the work that he did as an outgoing president, but it also taught us what needed to change for the incoming candidate to be able to be protected and incentivized to do the right thing. 

Valerie Boyd: So, that’s a good segue into talking about the next transition in 2012. And I have to say, you’ve talked about Josh Bolton. I think what we’re going to do in this episode is talk about some of the heroes that we’ve worked with who have really built up the body of knowledge. So, Josh is one. Let’s go to 2012 and talk about how the activities of the Romney team contributed to our thinking and agenda. What did you see then? 

Max Stier: Sure. And I will say that like, it’s a good proposition when you think about heroes. Josh Bolton is certainly you know, top of the list, and and his role in originally ensuring that the outgoing Bush administration, did an exceptional job at making sure everything was available for the incoming Obama administration. 

A second hero which is Ted Kaufman, who was a long time staffer for Joe Biden. His chief of staff, maybe his best friend. And very early on, he understood how important this was, and he became the primary champion for Joe Biden. For legislative reform in the Senate, as he filled out the term of you know, then in going Vice President Joe Biden who had been a senator. 

So, second hero for sure is Ted Kaufman, because he’s the person who really picked up the baton to make sure that legislation moved forward to improve the process. And then a third is Mike Leavitt, who ran, as you just gave an entry point to the Mitt Romney effort. And the Mike Leavitt, Mitt Romney work was easily the best in class in terms of pre-election transition planning. 

They did it with an incredible seriousness. Now again, they had the benefit of the legislation that Ted Kaufman championed, which moved the data support for transition planning from what it had historically been after the election to after the convention. And that provided the congressional cover. 

For campaigns to do the right thing to prepare early and not fear in the same way that they would be attacked for doing so, I can’t claim that that was a complete protection, but it really did change the ballgame. And Mike Leavitt ran an exceptionally early well organized and thoughtful effort in preparing Mitt Romney. As he himself would say, the ship never sailed. Obviously didn’t win the election in 2012, but what he did do was change the expectation, raise the bar in a very very powerful way about what you do need to do to prepare for potentially becoming the president elect. Which was something that was not done nearly as well previously. 

Valerie Boyd: Yeah. A few weeks ago, we talked to Lanhee Chen and you could hear from him the, the discipline and the energy that they put into everything. And we were able to talk to governor Leavitt a few weeks back before that. So, I continue to encounter people in this work who worked on the 2012 effort and are just so proud of that. 

Not just as one of the best transitions setting standards, but also one of the most organized projects they’ve worked on professionally overall. 

Max Stier: Yeah. And, you know, the other thing to realize is that this is not book knowledge, this is like people knowledge. And Mike Leavitt really equipped an entire generation of very, very capable people from the Republican Party to understand how to do this and do this well. 

And that included Chris Liddell and Lanhee Chen, as you just mentioned. And Steve Preston and many, many others who were part of that process. And, and we need that. We need a cadre of people who understand not just from a theoretical perspective, but from a practical experience perspective, how you do transitions well. And I would say anyone who worked with Mike Leavitt got the master class. 

Valerie Boyd: I love that. Equipping a whole generation of future leaders to manage this. I’m going to steal that and keep using it. Okay. So, this brings us to 2016. I love to talk about how the center started in 2008. But really a lot of our flagship products and work came out in 2016. 

And I have some ideas of what you might say here, but I want to ask you, what are you most proud of from that cycle? What went really well? 

Max Stier: Well, I think this has been a, it’s been a build all along. So, as you noted, I mean, 2008 was a year where we made a little difference, but what we really did is understand what needed to happen, and that was fundamental to our ability to actually invest in the right places 2012. We were deeply involved with the Romney effort, and that was the first time that you saw a really disciplined, incredibly effective pre-election effort. And 2016, you know, one of the really wonderful things to watch was the way in which you had both campaigns, the Clinton campaign and the Trump campaign again, pre-election do an exceptional job. So, this is the first time where you saw the expectation set across the board that pre-election scaled. You know, publicly transparent to some degree, efforts were the norm. 

And you also had the, the carry on of in the case of the Obama administration paying it forward, a recognition that what they had received from the Bush campaign, or rather the Bush administration was something that they owed the next team coming in as well and they were very keen on making sure that they at least met the very high bar that the Bush team had put up in trying to assist who was coming next in to, to be ready to govern on day one. 

I will say that every cycle carries its benefits and also challenges and plainly, one of the unfortunate aspects of the 2016 cycle was, while the Chris Christie team did an exceptional job with Rich Bagger and the whole group in pre-election transition planning, that all fell apart post election and we saw the consequences of that at the front end of the Trump administration. 

But you did ask me what I’m most proud of, and I will say the one thing that stands out above and beyond all the things I just mentioned, is the fact that we were able to bring together at the Pocantico facility, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Had made it made it available to us for the prior two cycles in 2008, 2012 the Rockefeller estate to bring together all the relevant parties so that they could learn from each other and learn from experts about how to do transition planning. 

And it was a pretty remarkable gathering when you think about it. In 2016, it was the spring of that year, we had all the remaining candidates on both Republican and Democratic side together in the same room. That meant we had senior representatives of the Cruz campaign, the Kasich campaign, the Trump campaign and then on the democratic side of the Clinton campaign and the Sanders campaign. 

And it was a moment of watching everybody in the room together. One of the individuals said, everyone has left their swords at the door. We’re all here to make sure that whoever is president is actually ready to govern us all because we all have something very important at stake. And I will say that my heart swelled and it still does to this day to, to have heard from people who are outside that room fighting vigorously to actually be either the nominee, or ultimately the president elect. 

But they all understood there was something bigger and more important that was at stake. And that whoever was president was the airline pilot for us all. So that to me was a remarkable and important moment. And I, I hope we get back to that again. 

Valerie Boyd: Max, I’m so glad you mentioned that because I feel proud of that from 2016 and I wasn’t even personally involved at the time. But as you said, it’s just such a powerful thing to take the teams of five candidates who are in the fight of their lives and bring them together around the larger purpose of how important it is to be ready to govern. 

One more thing that I think about that many people associate with the 2016 transition is the book Michael Lewis wrote to describe the important work happening in federal agencies, and how important it is that they have time to bring incoming leaders up to speed before a new president’s team is responsible for things like nuclear security. 

Did Michael start working with you in 2016 on the fifth risk or later? 

Max Stier: So that’s a really good question. I will admit that my own memory is very faulty and I would expect that it had to have happened after certainly the election and probably the beginning of the year. So, we might have been looking at the front end of 2017. And as you say it was quite a wonderful venture with, with Michael because he is, I think, the preeminent documentary of our of our times seas. In terms of non-fiction storytellers, I don’t know anyone better than him, and he is remarkable at his ability to take complex sometimes issues that might not facially look super interesting and make them extraordinarily interesting. And he did that with our government. And he is, you know, intent was to do the deep dive into a set of agencies that most Americans know nothing about. 

With the idea that he was getting the presentations that the career workforce had put together in those agencies. That the Trump team stepped past and really sharing why Americans should care about what happens at the department of energy and the department of agriculture and the department of commerce. 

And he is just such an extraordinary storyteller, that I think he sold over a million books and an awful lot of people read that. And we’re like, yeah, we really need to care about what’s happening in our government. We need all Americans to understand the same thing. And there, there is no better communicator around that than Michael Lewis. 

Valerie Boyd: I don’t think I’ve told you that I read that book when I was interviewing here, and the last chapter on Art Allen at the Coast Guard brought me to tears. We just, we all know so many federal employees who are equally committed to the critical missions of their agencies, and Michael really brought that to life. 

Max Stier: Absolutely. And in Michael, you know Art Allen was from our Sammies program. Michael has become a huge supporter of that too and, and his, “Who is Government” series that he really spearheaded with the Washington post is phenomenal. 

He’s really taking this on as a, an issue because what he’s, he says, he’s a storyteller. And he says, he feels like the, you know, a bank robber that broke into the bank vault and grabbed a bunch of cash but left all the gold bullion behind and is astonished that more writers and journalists haven’t told the stories of government civil servants because there’s such rich material there. 

So, and it’s not again, the individual stories are powerful and the collective about what it, what it signifies is obviously fundamental to our democracy and to our ability to just prosper as a country. So, we need that storytelling. 

Valerie Boyd: Yeah, so I want to ask you more about how meaningful this work is to you, but I will follow the narrative thread of talking about what we’ve learned in each cycle because we’re almost to the present day. So, let me ask you a little about 2020 where my predecessor here at the center for presidential transition, Dave Marchick referred to it at the end of the cycle as the good, the bad, and the ugly. What did we learn from 2020? 

Max Stier: Well, obviously you’re getting the, we’re talking the abbreviated version here, cause there’s an awful lot of learning in all these places, but, I think they’re good. You know this better than I do. You’ve got at least three important constituencies. One is the incumbent president. The second is the career workforce. And the third are the challengers. We haven’t talked much about the career people who are so fundamental, but what the good was the, the challenger in this instance. And it was the Biden Harris team in particular. 

We talked about Ted Kaufman earlier being the lead champion in the Senate on transition reform. Well, it just so happened that he also then became the chairperson of the Biden effort to, to run the transition, you obviously could not pick a better person.  

Someone who cared about transition planning, knew about transition planning and had the extra special quality of being best friends with the candidate. So, could make sure that the transition actually got the attention that it deserved. The transition made the first best choice, which was to bring in Jeff Zients, an extraordinary leader in all respects in government and in private sector. And between Ted and Jeff, you had a really extraordinarily powerful, dynamic duo running the transition and they did a phenomenal job and it’s worth reminding folks that this was actually during the pandemic. So, it was the first virtual transition that had to be done. 

There was many, many challenges that they had to overcome and they did it. So, you know, as good as the Romney effort was, and it was, and they, the, again, the Kauffman, Zients stuff was built on top of. That effort did not extend from the election to inauguration. And so there was a lot of open turf to figure out how to do things better in a different world. 

And, and that’s the good. I don’t know how to distinguish necessarily between the bad and ugly. But I think, somewhere in those two categories, you would have to look at what happened in terms of the outgoing administration and their unwillingness to, to do the same thing that President Bush and then President Obama had done, which is to really help the incoming president in every way possible. And that delayed the Biden Harris team’s ability to get the information they need needed to be ready to govern on day one. So, that’s the bad and ugly, as far as I’m concerned. There were interstitially people who stepped up and did do the right thing. 

But overall, there were a lot of places where the cooperation was missing. And that put us all at risk that it was this is a place again, like I talked about in 2016, that should be outside the realm of politics, because this is about our democracy, our society, and our well being. 

Valerie Boyd: That, you know, I love how you took that question. 

And you talked about the different players because we’re here to support the federal agencies, the candidates and the incumbent administration in the, in the process. And that was a great question. You made a good connection there. 

Dave was also talking chronologically about the good part of 2020 was how Chris Liddell in the Trump White House kind of followed all of the best practices, as you said, he’s another one of the heroes of, of this process. And then one more thing we learned from 2020 is just how much still relied on norms and traditions instead of law. So, I want to say when I talk to people about my life, my job, the thing that connects that people understand most about the center is they’re fascinated to learn that almost nothing existed in our nation’s history in law about the presidential transition process. We had in 1963, the Presidential Transition Act, providing some funding to presidents elect after the election, but really not much in the way of codifying information sharing. 

So can you talk a little about that effort to work with heroes like Ted Kaufman and Mike Leavitt to make changes in the law. How did you get started on that effort? 

Max Stier: Certainly. And look, I think your point about the absence of law is one that we’re actually seeing a lot right now where much of the way we function has been a process of norms and tradition as opposed to legal requirements. And we’re paying the price for that in many ways. And unfortunately, I fear that there’ll be, there’ll be other examples that are, that are uncovered in the near term that will show gaps when our system is challenged and need for further legal structure. But our theory of change at the Partnership is really built on this idea that there’s an interplay between both sides. 

Operating well within the system and changing the system to enable better operations, and it’s really a synergistic or dialectic between them. That occurs where you have our best effort to collect best practice within the existing system, and to improve upon that by finding bright spots in different places, and then identify things that need to change about the system, the law and then try to enact those and then come back to the operating cycle and see, did that work? Are there new challenges? And then return to the system. So, it’s, it’s a cycle between that impact on the operating side and identification of system barriers, and improvements there that then enable better operations and on and on and on. 

The transition work I think is the best example of what we have in, in terms of succeeding in doing that. And as you know, every cycle that we’ve done and transitions, we’ve tried to put together a guidebook. Again, under the existing rules about how to operate most effectively. 

Then we’ve done a retrospective about what worked, what didn’t work, what needs to change. And part of that’s been identifying legal change that needs to happen. And then we go back the next cycle with a new operating manual. So, the first report we did on ready to govern was divided in that way. Statements about here’s how under the existing rules you shop, right? And these are the rules that we we would love to see changed, including this idea of providing support for challengers pre-election so that they were incentivized and protected to do the right thing and prepare early.  

So, as I noted, it helped an awful lot to have an ally in Ted Kaufman, and Mike Leavitt was, you know, likewise very supportive on the Hill, had lots of relationships with people. This became a nonpartisan or bipartisan issue. And we’ve seen every cycle, improvements to the process itself. Coming out of 2020, we had a legislative fix for the ascertainment issue that did not come up this this past cycle but if it did, I think the right choice was made about how to address it and we’re going to need to do that every cycle going forward. 

I mean, the world changes, we learn different things and the system needs to keep up with that. So, part of the point of the Center for Presidential Transition is to create a learning system. It’s all about continuous learning that happens on a four year cycle. And it has been, I think, transformational in the way we see transitions done in our country. 

Valerie Boyd: So, as we talk about how to improve and how to learn for the next cycle, we should spend just a minute on what the candidates have done well in, in the cycle. And we shouldn’t forget that for most of 2020, Joe Biden was one of the two major candidates. Do you want to reflect on any high points that we’ve seen the Biden Harris or Trump teams do? 

Max Stier: Well, look, I think on the Biden Harris side or even just on the, so on the incumbent administration side, I do think that they have, you know, a Attempted to be as constructive as possible. 

And they have worked with the Trump team to try to get to agreements with the justice department and the white house itself and GSA in every way possible. And I think that kind of commitment to trying to make it work is incredibly important. 

You know, you got to call out what is, there’s no doubt that the Trump team has walked past most of the architecture and the norms of transition planning in ways that I think are damaging to the system and put at risk certainly. Even our country, it’s encouraging that you’ve seen movement lately about agreements with D. O. J. And the White House. We’re not all the way there yet, but time matters, and it’s a hard enough job and the best of circumstances. 

So, I think that the real stars, however, have been the career civil servants who have done all the things that they need to do despite the incredible atmospherics that are going on. And they have you know, put that aside and, and done their, their duty and we are lucky to have them in government. 

So, to me, that’s a big lesson that we need career civil servants always to be able to manage this process. And I think, coming out of this, we’re not out of it yet. There’s going to be a lot of learning about what has been norms that really should be a statutory requirements. And I think this cycle, we will have a lot to say about how to improve the system. And I’m hoping not only that we get to say it, but that it gets done. 

Valerie Boyd: I can’t go on without just agreeing vehemently with your point that the federal civil servants have done such important work. It’s been one of the high points for me this year. Seeing how they’ve prepared faithfully to serve whoever the American people chose in this election and and really the opposite of the rhetoric that is leveled against them. But you brought up the improvements that that we see a need for. There’s a lot of talk right now about ethics plans and background investigations. 

As you said, we’re in good shape because the White House MOU and the DOJ MOU were just signed in the last week. Why are these processes important for good governance and transparency? 

Max Stier: So, the reality of this is that the process is all about making sure that the team coming in to run our government is ready to do so on day one there. There is, there is no grace period when you’re running our government. We live in an incredibly dangerous and fast paced world. So, you need people who are fully prepared to govern and day one is, as you know and as you’ve worked on, one of the great challenges is that even when the the incoming team does everything that they need to do, you have to deal with a horrifying process of the Senate. And confirmation that has gotten a lot slower and more difficult to get leaders in place.  

So, there are some core principles that I think that are truly fundamental, and that is, number one, these jobs are jobs that are intended to have people in them who are looking out for the public interest. 

We have our leadership model of what leading in government should involve. And it’s based on the foundation that as a leader in government, you are a steward of the public good. And that is true for career civil servants, and it is especially true for political leaders. So, in thinking about that, we need to think about making sure that the people who are selected to run significant positions in government have both the character and the character focusing again on the public’s interest and the competence to be leaders for the public good. 

And you know, the processes of background checks by the FBI of financial conflict resolutions by the office of government ethics, that is all intended to ensure that indeed we have leaders that have the right character and competence to run these significant Agencies and or organizations that have such a large impact on the well-being of Americans, so that is really what’s at stake. 

I think the core purpose of our government is to keep us physically safe. There’s so much more that we look to for our government and in order for us to get it. We need leaders who are exceptional people. Exceptional in their ability to both deliver great results and to deliver it for the right reasons. 

Valerie Boyd: I wanted to agree with your point that good leaders prevent corruption and waste.  

They, they lead to government efficiency, which makes me just want to ask about how you have dedicated your life to an effective government. So, I want to ask what this means to you personally to what do you see the government looking like over the next four years? Like, what’s next for the partnership and how we continue our work of making the government better between now and the 2028 cycle? 

Max Stier: So, I don’t think I’ve ever dedicated my life to anything. I think we make our choices about what we do really year to year, maybe two years, whatever. This has been something that has kept my engagement and, and energy because it actually has been a job that has morphed quite a bit over the time that I’ve been doing it. 

And the problems change, and I know my general view is you know; I have a limited number of years on this planet and don’t know how many of them they’re going to be. And I’d like to leave the world a better place as the results of my work efforts and, and my personal efforts too. So, that is fundamental to what I think is important. 

I also am a big believer in investing in the road less traveled, and unfortunately, this has been that. Not very many people have focused on this as an issue, but I think that means that there’s more opportunity for, for impact. You know, you asked the question about the next four years and I’m worried, and I’m worried because I do think that this fundamental question about the purpose of our government has really been put in play in a way that I have never seen during my lifetime. 

And frankly, I don’t think we’ve seen for you know, for many, many, many, many years. I am a big believer that the world is influenced not controlled by what we do in it. And I feel called upon to continue the work that I’m doing in a different way to try to make the case that we do need people with competence and character leading our federal agencies. 

And that ultimately, the public good is the purpose of our public institutions. So, I think that’s going to involve supporting civil servants. We talked about how fundamental they are to the transition process. The truth is they’re fundamental to every process in government. So, supporting them in this different and more challenging world, I think, is of great value. 

And then engaging the public, because I think one of the critical things we’ve learned at partnership over the last, you know, three or four years is how important the relationship between our society and our government is to a healthy government. And part of that is ensuring that we have a public that believes we have a trustworthy government and a trusted government. 

And in today’s environment, it will mean hopefully a public that better appreciates why having a civil service that is apolitical and that is based on merit is actually the way they will get a better return on their investment, and that our democracy will be more vibrant and stronger. So, that’s what I am intending to focus on, whether it’s, you know, two years or four years or longer, I have no idea, but I think it is a important North Star for us, the Partnership for some time to come. 

Valerie Boyd: That’s a beautiful note to end on. I think we all can agree that we need a trustworthy government and that we want a public that, that is invested in its success. And even though you reshaped my last question about what this means to you, I’m really glad to have asked it because it is wonderful to hear how this work changes over time and keeps you motivated. 

So, we talk about presidential transitions every day, but I’m glad to have ended on this point about what it means to you today and moving forward. Thank you for taking the time to talk to our audience today. 

Max Stier: Thank you. I’m really appreciative again of all the good work you Valerie, and the whole Center team has done. You are making a big difference, and I’ve enjoyed the conversation, so thank you.