Transcripts For CSPAN3 White House Chiefs Of Staff Discuss Presidential Crises 20240712

Next conversation was the chief of staff with four president s. They talk about 9 11, the 2008 financial crisis, benghazi attack, angle and the covid19 pandemic. From georgetown university, this is an hour and 15 minutes. I wanted to thank everyone for tuning in tonight, both here in the zoom chat, members of the georgetown community, but also the broader public who is following us on social media or other channels. This is a really timely conversation, i think, as we look at the world and the state of our politics right now, and the number of crises that were all dealing with, much of it falls at the doorstep of the oval office to be dealt with. And so to help us sort of sort through how president s think about this, we thought who better to convene than a group of former chiefs of staff who have been there on the front line, working arm in arm with the president of the United States, with the last four president s of the United States in tackling various crises. These crises have come in all shapes, sizes, and forms, whether were talking about military action, whether were talking about economic crises, terror attacks, natural disasters, or global pandemics. The guests on our panel tonight have seen it all. So were very fortunate to have them join us. Were going to jump into the conversation in a moment, but one piece of housekeeping. For those of you here on zoom, members of the georgetown community, youll see at the bottom of your screen a q a tab. Thats where you can go ahead and submit your question. Feel free to start submitting your questions now and throughout the entire program. Our team will be monitoring that tab, and about halfway through the progress, after ive had a chance to talk with our panel for a little bit, were going to invite you to join the conversation. So submit your questions of the tab below, keep an eye on the chat. Our team will let you know through the chat when were ready to call you up, and then youll get a chance to ask your question directly. And so, with that, i want to thank all of our panelists again. We talked about each of you, each of the president s you serve has to deal with very, very different crises. Also, each of the four of them, they had very unique and different leadership styles. And so lets just start there. From your perspectives, having seen them up close and personal, what are the most important Leadership Qualities a president needs in order to deal with crisis . Why dont we start with mack. First of all, im delighted to be with you, my fellow chiefs here this afternoon, and georgetown is special, because our older son, mark, graduated there in 1995, a true hoya, were proud of that. So im very pleased to be here today. I think in terms of crisis, in terms of president ial leadership, at least with president clinton, my sense was we had what tom brokaw used to call u. F. O. , unforeseen occurrence. Some people would kind of zoom in, totally unexpected. I think president clinton was, first of all, he would grasp that this was a serious issue, if not a potential or maybe immediate crisis, something that had to be dealt with. At the same time, he wanted to get the facts quickly and mobilize a plan to deal with that. And he had a good ability to keep a broader perspective to keep the broader agenda moving, because of each of the other very distinguished, accomplished families today know thats the essence of any white house. Youve got to keep the broad agenda moving forward while dealing with these issues. But i would say those are the real qualities that president clinton had in times of a major event or major crisis. Andy, how about from your perspective . Andy, i think youre on mute. The president has to be to be an optimist, not a pessimist, and has to have the courage to make decisions. If theyre a pessimist and they get up and make a decision that said follow me and things will get worse, no one will follow them. So you have to be an optimist and believe that youre making the right decision. But in making that right decision, understand that you cant do it alone. And if youre making a decision by yourself, chances are people will stop following you pretty soon. So optimism, having the courage to make tough decisions, and the courage to seek counsel and advice, and dont just ask an echo chamber to bounce back to you what youve already said. Make sure there are contrarians, people who will challenge you in the group, but have the courage to make that tough decision and do it optimistically so that people have the courage to follow you. You know, a president doesnt get to implement any decision they made. It must be implemented by other people. So they cant just make a decision and walk away from it. They have to make a decision, be optimistic about it, so people want to implement the decision and carry it out and help bring it, so that the results live up to the president s expectation. Denis . Thanks. Let me draw in mack and say its great to be with everybody. How are you reading me . You read me ok . Yep, youre great. Ok. Its really great to be with with andy and with mac and nick and i want to apologize in this public setting what i just did in privately for making them wait for me, so thanks, guys, for that, and apology. Id say four things about crisis, mo. One is you got to know when youre in one, and thats sometimes a challenge. Youve got to recognize what are the multitude of problems that any president can confront in any day or week is actually one thats a crisis. So you have to be cognizant of just how much damage a particular challenge will present, thats one. Two, you got to be really clear and communicate with the country what you know, and importantly, what you dont know. Youve got to make decisions, as andy says, the president doesnt get to implement the decision that he makes, and in fact, oftentimes hes trying to empower individuals to make decisions for themselves and so the challenges communicate to them the best available information. In fact, oftentimes hes trying to empower individuals to make decisions for themselves. And so the challenge is communicating to them best available information based on that really comes down to assignments for the chief to make sure that youre not playing a game of five year old soccer where everybody is chasing the ball down the field. In fact, youve got the field covered. Youve got the ongoing work against other challenges fully underway. But you also have the best available resources on the crisis. So those are the things id say, and again, its really good to be with everybody at georgetown there on the hill. Thanks, denis. Then well turn to our other Foreign Service alum, mick. Thanks mo. And it is really nice to be here, especially with the other folks from the university. Listening to everybody else talk, making some notes, and while all of it rang true, the part that i think speaks to me most, having been through what we went through, was the part about how the president processes information. It was and whoy said, if youre making a decision by yourself, youre probably making a decision that no one else will follow. Theres a corollary to that, which is if youre making a decision by yourself it increases the chances of making the right decision. Eye and i think if youre talking about qualities that a president or any leader has to have when youre in a crisis, you have to be not only able to process information from a bunch of different sources, but willing to do so. I think that a lot of us get in circumstances where were tempted to simply react to something in the way we think we should react as opposed to sort of step back say, ok, i need information from this source, this source, and this source. I think some of the things that denis just said is that you are able to sort or actually it was andy, to get folks contrarian to your natural position. So if youre dealing with foreign policy, for example, and your natural position would be, say, neo conservative, do you have somebody else in there giving you the other opinion or another angle on things . One of my favorite stories from history goes to the mistakes of the Kennedy Administration made in the bay of pigs, where they ended up in that classic example of group thinking, where everybody was thinking the same thing and ended up taking them down a road that maybe they would not have gone down if they had input from other sources. The processing of information, while always important to a president or any leader becomes extraordinarily important when youre dealing with crises, and you have to stick to the process the chief has created, and hopefully the president has empowered, to make sure that the president is getting all of the information they need to make the right decision. I want to ask each of you now to sort of put some of those into practice for us and shed some light on how they were put into practice and ask each of you. You each to deal with a multitude of crises, but im going to list one for each of you and ask you to take us inside the room, to the extent that you can. Take us inside the room and tell us, when crisis broke, and you had to tell the president , im curious of a couple of things. One, what was the first question he asked . Two, what were your initial marching orders . Over the next couple of weeks. And so, mack, im going to come back to you. You have to deal with a couple in the beginning, but i think a lot of people would be well served to remember that one of the very first you had things you had to do. You were in office for about five weeks when the First World Trade Center happened. You guys barely had time to find light switches. Talk us through that. When it happened, what was the first question president clinton asked to the best of your recollection and what were your original marching orders . I think you are right. Particularly when you are coming in a a new administration, you are so focused after the campaign on the president s agenda just been through a campaign your priorities are set. But you have to be aware that there is inevitably going to be these kinds of dramatic, shocking, unexpected events happen. And certainly the World Trade Center which happened only a few weeks after we were in office, that type of event. We were forced, unlike anybody was traveling general bush. We are in the white house when that occurred. We had to make sure that he was secure with the secret service and so forth. Secondly just trying to get the facts of what happened and report that to the president and a coherent manner. And i think it goes to what others have said you have got to make a broad circle outside the white house, in this case the fbi and Justice Department and other agencies. So i think when we first briefed the president , his first question was how many people injured or killed . What do we know about it . Who did this . Are there any anticipated followup concerns we need to address . What is the plan . That was basically his initial response. We were able to mobilize quickly in that regard. I cant remember the exact date, but i think in less than a week the fbi was able to apprehend those perpetrators of this very heinous act. In our case, that was an immediate issue that captivated us for 4872 hours. When we got things in place i think part of that is the communication. Exactly what dennis talked about, making sure you are communicating the facts, that you know what is happening, make certain you do not step over the line and get into conjecture. I think we were able to do that reasonably well. Again in our case, we had a quick resolution of the situation. Thanks mike. Andy, we all saw the moment that the president found out about the second World Trade Center tower being hit on 9 11 when he was in that classroom in florida and you had to walk to the frontend and whisper in his ear, and he had to sit there. When he came offstage, retreated to the room you had backstage, tell us about that. What was his first question and what were your in what were your initial marching orders . Lets back up a little bit, when he walked into the classroom, he had been told by the National Security advisor, navy captain who was in the situation room, she said sir, it appears a small twin engine prop plane crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in new york city. That is what he knew when he walked into that classroom. The principal walked into the classroom, i stood by the door, the door shut after he entered the classroom, i am standing there, that captain tells me sir, it appears it was not a small twin engine prop plane it was a commercial jetliner. A nano second later she says, oh my god, another plane hit the other tower, the World Trade Center. I stood at the door and i had to perform a task that had to perform, does the president need to know . Chiefs of staff deal with that all day long. Sometimes you hear something he should know, sometimes you tell them something and he worries about it, sometimes you are wrong and you dont tell him at all and you are in deep trouble. At this point i made the decision to pass on the information. I thought carefully about what i would say and what i whispered into his ear, all i said was, a second plane hit the second tower, america is under attack. I did not invite a question. In fact, i stood back from him so he could not ask a question. I presumed there was a boom microphone hanging over him and everything would be hurt so i did not want him to talk to me. Unlike matt walking into the oval office, i was not looking to have a conversation with the president. I passed on the information. I did not even know if he would get up or stay there. I was pleased how he reacted. He stayed there. He did nothing to scare those young kids, nothing to demonstrate fair to the media that would have translated to the satisfaction of the terrorists. I am also pleased because i got to go back into the holding room and get things ready for him. So what did he say when he walked into the room . First, what i said when i walked into the room, i said get the fbi director on the phone. Get a line open to the Vice President. Get a line open to the situation room. Get the crew back on air force one, we have to get out of here. To the secret service i said get ready to move the motorcade, we have to get out of here. Get some remarks ridden. He has to Say Something to them, but he cant say anything we do not know to be the truth. The president walked in, everybody glommed on the president the way they always do. First thing he said was get the fbi director on the phone, bob mueller. A days, but he was on the phone. You have to anticipate what the president needs and get it done. Then he was very focused. He called the governor of new york, the mayor of new new york city. He talked obviously to his National Security team, Condoleezza Rice and dick the nfc cheney. Team. I worked to be very disciplined. I decided i was going to be cool, calm and collected. The entire day and try to prevent people from getting him ginned up or emotionally engaged when it would not help. To make tough decisions. That was that moment. To his credit, he was outstanding at making decisions. He did not rush to make decisions, but he tried to make an informed decision. But he knew he had to make some decisions. The first time i remember grimacing is when he was speaking to the audience just before we went to go get in the limousines and leave. For air force one. I told to be careful with the remarks he opens his comments saying, i am going to have to go back to washington dc, and proceeds to tell them what was going on. I was upset because i knew we might not be going back to washington, d. C. I was a little mad at dan bartlett. I thought that he had written that remarks it turns out dan did not put in the remarks, the president just said he was going back to washington, d. C. The first significant argument i had with the president to on 9 11 was on air force one when he said we are going back to washington, d. C. And the pilots that i do not think you should go there. The secret service said we cant go there. We were not ready to go there and we had this tough argument. I kept saying, i understand you want to make that decision, i just do not think you want to make it right now. I kept repeating that. I understand you want to make that decision come i think it is too early. He kept saying, i am making the decision right now. I had to hold my ground and know that i was serving at the pleasure of the president , it was not my job to please him. Thanks andy. Dennis. In the final months of 2012 before the election and you then took over as chief of staff, president obama had to deal with a significant crisis with the attack in benghazi. Putting on your nsc hat, wondering if you could walk us through those initial moments and how president obama process that information. What his first questions were. And your marching orders. Thanks thanks. Each time i have had the honor to hear that story from andy, i am reminded at what a pro he is. What a remarkable bit of service he has done over the course of his life. But in particular those very difficult days on 9 11 and after. Andy, i want to say [indiscernible] i do remember that day quite well. It was september 11, 2012. I am walking to the oval where president obama and Vice President biden were getting ready for their weekly meeting with the secretary of defense in the joint chiefs. We were getting information developing from benghazi. You may recall that we were not quite sure what prompted the attack on our people in the first instance. And so we were both trying to get ground truth in terms of what was happening. But also start to develop information about motive for the attack and what it might mean for followon attacks both in benghazi but then again as against other facilities throughout the region. You recall that throughout 2011 and 2012, in the tumult of what was then called the arab spring, we had several of our diplomatic presence is in cairo, juba, damascus, under specific threats come under specific threats of violence. We were trying to figure out precisely what was happening in benghazi, but then also make sure we understood what was happening, and might be happening against other facilities in the region. This goes back to a point my next point will go back to a point that nick and mac and andy have made. Which is inasmuch as the president was sitting down with the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs, he was in a position then to give clear guidance, or as you say marching orders, to secretary panetta and to chairman dempsey. And so he made clear that he wanted to make sure we could get as much material and support as we could to benghazi. In most rapid fashion. And he expected the they would stay in touch with him for the rest of the night which they did and then which we took back to our National Security advisors suite, working with tom we set up the kind of interagency coordinating mechanism that each of the other three chiefs are familiar with. Which we then coordinated activity for the rest of that evening and into the next day. A perfect example of having imperfect information, having great connectivity with our people, but ultimately being under what our what our our military calls the tyranny of distance. In other words, how do we get the best information from the point of crisis, and how do we get best available resources to the crisis. That is what we worked on through the night. Mick, before we go to you i want to hearken back to something the dentist said earlier, which is one of the important things you need to do in crisis is identify when you are in crisis. Looking at the covid crisis we are dealing with now, what President Trump is faced with, unlike the other three examples we heard from their was not a single moment that was that it was clear america was under attack. This is something that had been percolating and escalating. My question to you is a slight variance from how i asked the other chiefs is, at what point did the Trump Administration know that covid had become a crisis and what was that initial information that President Trump demanded, and what were those initial marching orders . At that point. Its funny the say that because i was thinking exactly that when dennis was talking that the covid crisis crisis we didnt know it was a crisis at the outset. By the way the original question was what was the first conversation . I honestly do not remember the first time i talked with the president specifically about covid. It would have been sometime in january and would have been a list of five or six things we covered on a particular day. We knew something was happening in china, but there was no instance where a light bulb went on. And we said no k now we talk about this. We had imperfect information which i think is going to be a big part. When they write the history of covid and our response to it, that will be a big part of it. Early on, what we thought we were we knew we were dealing with a coronavirus. There have been others. There are two that folks on this call would be familiar with, sars and mers youre both coronaviruses. We had some experience with a. When we looked at china and we knew it was a coronavirus, we did not know much more than that. Keep in mind the chinese were not sharing information with us at the time. In hindsight, we did not have a lot of good information until late february. Love the time i got to italy. But early on, we knew it was a coronavirus. What we knowe about coronaviruss was what we knew about sars and mers. Which were extremely deadly in terms of their fatality rate. The flu is 0. 1 deadly in a given year. It looks like covid19 is some place around 0. 5 . Sars was 16 . Mers was 33 deadly. Even worse. That is a major difference. We had we thought we had another coronavirus that was really deadly but fairly hard to transmit. What we were doing early on was spending our time trying to focus on containing the disease and keeping it out of this country as opposed to mitigating it, which is what we are doing now. Containment is when you instill border checks, canceled flights and so forth. Mitigation is social distancing and masks and so forth. , and closing schools. If you ask the question in that continuum when we knew this was going to be different, it was sometime around late february. , it was in it italy and we started getting information about asymptomatic transmission. Up to that point, we had been doing screening. Early on in the process, we limited the number of airports you could come into from china. When you are at those particular airports, we would screening for symptoms. Were you coughing . Did you have a fever . That is how we know to do containment. I remember at some point along the time when the italian outbreak was in its first days, i came in and announced i think we have a problem with asymptomatic transmission. That is when its changed. In our minds. What we were doing was aimed at sars and mers, but now it was clear this was going to be different. I could give you the disease when i do not have a fever and i am not coughing, then screening for passengers at airports is almost useless. If youre looking for symptoms and you can get somebody sick without symptoms, you have got a problem. I do remember going to talk to the president and we went in as a group, which i thought was important. A lot of the stories you talk about and that iconic photograph it is the chief and the president. We always went in as a group on these big issues with the president because thats how he liked to take information. He wanted to pepper people with questions. When we sat down with him again, i cant remember the date, i said mr. President , this is going to have to change. He asked why . There is fauci and i think it was redfield who delivered this particular piece of information. I do not remember what the particular marching orders were. That is when we started talking about a Coronavirus Task force. By that time, we had already stopped flights from china. We kicked into higher gear in terms of preventing people from coming in. That is the one take i remember from that crisis, it was a slow, simmering thing. We were operating with Bad Information on what the disease was. We got that one piece of information that changed the way we were dealing with the crisis. That is when we switched from containment to mitigation. I do not know if that is question, but it goes to show not all crises are instantaneous. And you do not know it. Sometimes you think you have one and you dont. We had it and didnt know it for a variety of reasons. I have so many more questions on my list, but we are going to turn to the students in a moment. I am going to exercise moderators discretion and interject a little bit. Students, get ready, we are going to start coming to you. In a moment. Before we do that. I want to ask one last question, reflecting on something both dennis and mick said that is the challenges of dealing with changing and evolving information and how that poses a communications challenge during crisis for white house. As information changes, you get more information in real time. I suspect each of you have had to deal not just with changing information, but a changing message or narrative, or changing guidance youre giving to the American People. And the challenge that causes, i think, with the importance of communications in crisis. I am wondering if any or all of you would like to deal with that. How do you deal with managing the operational challenges ahead of you and communicating with the American People as information is changing . Andy . I see you jumping up. There we go, all right. Right after the attacks on 9 11, first it was the World Trade Center, then it, is a plane crashing into shanksville, pennsylvania. There was not a lot of information. There was expectation that other attacks were going to happen. People in hyperbole, watch out for this, watch out for that. That happened on day one. , but then on the subsequent days to the september 11, we also had anthrax letters being mailed around washington, d. C. And new york city. And then we had a white van with a sniper roaming the streets of maryland and northern virginia. And washington d. C. There was a lot of paranoia and Bad Information. The president was frustrated on, what is the information . What do we tell the people . Especially in the Greater Washington community, there was fear the people had at the president was trying to addressed that fear. But he didnt feel comfortable about the information we were getting. Another example, chiefs of staff deal with crises all the time. The question is, are they a real crisis . When people come hyperventilating into your office, is it a crisis . Jim jeffries is getting ready to switch parties and all of a sudden you have to deal with democratic leadership when youre trying to get something done and you have only been in office for five month. Or, when we we are down in mexico, the first trip to president bush took out of the country was mexico, and the military takes on a radar system in iraq because iraq had violated the nofly zone. That interrupts diplomatic and then you had the incident on island, an american plane getting bumped by a chinese plane. The chinese plane crashes into the water, the pilot dies. Our plane is damaged, it it flips over that flies into an island. Is this going to be a big incident with the chinese . Those all happened in the first 50 to 60 days of the presidency. You are dealing with crises all the time. Having the sense that you know you need get information is a chief of staffs job, to reinforce the need for people not to present information that they are not certain about. It does not mean you should not present the but not present it as a certainty but allow for people to find out what the truth is and make the decision the best you can around the truth rather than the expectation. Anyone else want to jump in on this . I just want to double check that you are hearing me ok. My connection is a little unstable. I think one of the really important things is structure on how you communicate. Because i think as how your question and visions and how andy said, information is going to change. You have to maintain your credibility with the American People to trust what you say, even when the best available information changes. Consistency is not what youre looking for. What you are looking for his fidelity to what you understand and fidelity to the best available science. For example. One of the things we would regularly do around a crisis is we set up a communications schedule. We made sure we identified the principal communicator on an issue. So on ebola, we would have a regular briefing led by medical professionals so that they could give directly to the American People the best available information informed by the science. We scheduled those briefings on a very regular basis so that the American People knew what to expect and that also forced discipline on the team and on the government to prepare the best available information for each of those appearances. What you would not want to do in a crisis is have the identified time and location for the scheduled briefing come and not be in a position to brief. Because because that would land a sense of further crisis to the American People. A sense that perhaps we are scrambling to get information, and therefore not credible in the presentation and the information we have. Having a very clear, transparent schedule for briefings, making very clear who the briefer would be and having those briefers operating in the context of a off of the best available science and having the best available scientists and doctors making the briefing. It lends a degree of credibility even when you are forced to dress to undress address a changing situation and are therefore forced to provide different information, even contradictory information. Go ahead back. Really quickly the you are trying is these crises degree of futility [indiscernible] it is imperative you not go too far into your information and leave yourself some room there. Another is to have strong communication, in this oklahoma, who was actually a crucial interlock are in that situation. Okay thanks nick i would love for you to get in on this too, but i i am going to find a way to connect this question to one of the incoming student questions. Let us us go to our first student. As we call on each of you i am going to ask you to introduce yourself, school, field of study, where you are zooming in from and your year. Then you can get your question. I am studying International Politics and i am zooming in from south florida. My question is sometimes Crisis Management strategies are divided along partisan lines as we have seen in the covid19 pandemic. Im wondering, how do you navigate partisanship disagreements in a time of crisis and manage the political impacts of making choices that do not align with your own partys messaging. Message . Anyone want to take a crack at that first . I am happy to take a first crack. I will try to beat andy to the punch. Andy is always willing to jump in. I practice the tendency to do that. [laughter] maybe this sounds anna, but as with all this can indication all you have is credibility. What you need to do is say what you know and be consistent with the best available data and science. The moment you are going to lose credibility is when you start saying one thing to one group, perhaps your partisans, and another thing to a different group, perhaps the opposition. If you find yourself in that position, you are not going to be able to i forget who said it but the problem with lying is its hard to remember all the lies. If you are trying to spin your understanding of the crisis for a particular audience, you are going to quickly lose track of the facts and you are going to quickly lose the trust and credibility with not only your party, but the American People. At the end of the day that is what youre trying to do. Communicate to the American People so they can take they can make the best decisions for them and their families based on the information you are giving. South florida is a perfect example given all the natural disaster, hurricane exercises you guys live through. If the governor or fema director or president gets in a position where he or she is giving one message to a particular audience for political purposes, and giving another message to a different audience, i think you will quickly lose the credibility that is so important to maintain your position as an effective leader. Let me ask a quick followup question. This is where i will pull mick in. It relates directly to the last question. The polling seems to show partisan divide in how people are viewing the crisis, the legitimacy of the crisis, the magnitude of the crisis, and of course the response of the government. I am wondering if you can reflect on that a little bit, and whether or not, going back to my last question, some of the communications, the unique Communications Style of this president. How that has maybe connected to this. Yeah. I was sitting here making some notes on partisanship and let us be candid. That is what the purpose of this is. Lets have a fair discussion. It is getting harder and harder to operate in a bipartisan fashion. I think one of the things you are seeing i have a theory and i could be wrong, but i have often believed one of the reasons our government is so divided is the nation is. The government is a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator. The country is not divided because the government is. The government is divided because the country is. I think social media plays a great role in that. It is hard to be bipartisan when everybody gets their news you do not turn on fox news for the news. You do not turn on msnbc for the news. You turn those on to be affirmed and what you already think the truth is to begin with. I have a private citizen house, where do i go to get good data . Being in the white house you get really good, firsthand primary data. The best in the world, but now i am a private citizen. Where can i go to get information that i think has not been filtered to draw it into a question . It is going to be hard. I would like to think if we had another 9 11, god forbid, we would respond in as bipartisan a way as we did in 2001, but it would be much harder to do so. Take 2001. All those fringe theories you heard about, those would be amplified. Those would be on social media. Thousands of people if not tens of thousands. It would filter itself into some network program. It is going to be more and more difficult to respond in a bipartisan fashion. It is one of the challenges. You and i have talked about civil discourse and the ability to not only disagree agreeably but share information and not go into a conversation and convince everybody. Lets have a conversation to see if you can be better at your own thinking. It is going to be a big challenge in your generation will struggle even more so then we did. Social media did not exist it did not play much role in the obama president clinton didnt have to deal with social media, and you imagine what that impeachment crisis wouldve been with social media . President bush didnt have to deal with social media. I apologize. But i think that is a real challenge we face as a culture. Thanks. We are getting close, and i want to squeeze in a couple of more student questions, so let us go to katie and toss this one to mac and andy. I am katie. I am an incoming firstyear. What role does media play in the crisis with Public Perception and how this has changed from old media, such as print, to new media Like Television and social media . I do not think there is any question that media plays a big role in crisis saw that back in the Clinton Administration many years ago. It was the first time the secretary said he would arrive at the capital and you knew more about what happened in the past 12 hours than even he did in some ways. It just accelerated the cycle and the old adage a picture is worth a thousand words. People see a situation developing, they identify with it, they are concerned about it, information goes out, and you have to deal with that. We had a different dynamic, but even then the news cycle was getting more accelerated and i think we had more retractions in 1993 then before. That has only accelerated weather in a time of crisis or political turmoil. You ask a very good question. I started working at the white house for president Ronald Reagan in 1983 and i remember at about 5 00 p. M. In the afternoon there would be an announcement over the pa system in the entire building and it would say, the lid is on. That meant no more news that day because all the reporters had to get ready for the 7 00 p. M. News and overnight and check in with the editor about sources. The white house staff went, phew, the day is done. Perfect. I watched that evolution during the Reagan Administration when talk shows came into being and cable news and they had to have new news all the time. The rules changed so journalism did not mean you had to have sources. You just had to have people with rumors. If you could get a good rumor and somebody responded, it was nerves with newsworthy. Social media has changed dramatically since george w. Bush left office. I do not know how to deal with it, but the greatest threat to democracy is mock rule. The mob is motivated by social media and some of the leaders are in government. They mobilize a network and that informs how government makes decisions. It is very important we learn how to have leadership that has the courage as my grandmother would say taste your words before you spit them out. If you are careful with your words as president , as chief of staff inside the white house, other people will be careful with their words. It is the hyperbole and emotionalism generated through the media today that causes people not to be objective in making decisions. It does influence congress because today, it used to be you would write a letter to congress and it would take a week to get there, read it, and then brief the member. Then there were phone calls and very few made it to a member of congress. They were screened through the staff. Tweets are sent to a member of congress immediately by a constituent. They read and say, i agree and send a response right back. Then they find out the original tweet was not necessarily true, but the greatest sin is to be a flipflop. Saying i agree with this and then change your mind. They get stuck on stupid. We have got a government today stuck on stupid. Objectivity is very hard for us to get through, but it is key to those of you who are in this generation. I am in yesterdays generation. This generation have the courage to be careful with your words and try not to make decisions based around an emotional response through a tweet. Be skeptical of a tweet and seek the truth and then make your decisions based around that. I did not mean to lecture you, but it is a different world and our democracy is going to be challenged. I am counting on you to have the courage to be a filter so that you are not driven by emotions. You can be informed by emotions, but our Founding Fathers said, let a separate the law from the people who make decisions so they will make decisions based on judgment and wisdom. The expectation was congress would exercise judgment, the senate would exercise more wisdom and challenge the judgment, and then it would go to the president and the president would make a decision. Yes or no. Now, emotions and not being called a flipfloper if you announced your decision and changed your mind, you violated the rule of politics. I would like people to be careful before they make their decisions so the exercise judgment, make an informed decision, and have the courage to teach other people what the decision should be. Sorry to sound like a preacher. My wife is a preacher. [laughter] i thought that was great. I hope they are still teaching plato at georgetown. He is right. You can go back thousands of years and there is warnings against mob rule. That is where social media is taking you. There is no more filter between the masses and the decisionmaking. And that was thank you i enjoy that very much. laughs we are getting really close to the end, but i want to get one more student question in if we can. Let us go to adeline. Ill idea im a rising third year. Student in the mastery of Public Policy at georgetown. Do you view part of responding to a crisis is the opportunity to bring about larger change and if yes, how did you try to act on that . Denis, do you want to take this one first . Yeah. Rod emanuel was our first chief of staff but he had a theory that he said, you dont want to waste a good crisis where you have the opportunity of the full attention of policymakers and the country to ensure that you can kind of make a big correction if the country in fact needs a big correction. That is how he, as chief of staff, and the president approached that period of 2009 and 2010 when we were managing through the Great Recession and try to ensure that we were learning lessons from that recession and what got us into it such that we were better positioned to avoid going back into recession based on the same reasons. That led to a lot of big legislation like the dodd frank act which marked an anniversary last week that related to regulation of our banks and nontraditional instruments in our banks like derivatives that had an impact on the recession in 2007 and 2008. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which sought to have private citizens have protection against the kind of tomfoolery in Financial Markets that put them at risk without the kinds of protection big banks and big investors had which surely contributed to the recession. And then ultimately, we had the Affordable Care act which tried to, in light of the number of people forced onto the private market having lost jobs as a result of the recession, we tried to correct some fundamental unfairness in the market. Things like women, because of gender, being charged more, preexisting conditions, not being able to buy Health Insurance on the market. Each of those presents an opportunity where if you are a serious policy maker. What can we learn, how do we correct what needs to be corrected so we do not find ourselves in a similar crisis as a result of things we could have changed when we had the opportunities . Thank you, denis. We are just about out of time. One of the things i really appreciate, and i think this conversation has demonstrated, is just how collegial the chief of staff club is and how much Mutual Respect there is for one another. In closing, i want to ask each of you, if you could, in sort of parting thoughts in a couple of sentences at most what advice would you give to the newest member of this club, mark meadows, as he sits there now and tries to work with President Trump in dealing with these triple crises of covid, the unrest around racial injustice, and a faltering economy . What advice would you give him and through him to President Trump as we continue through the summer . Let us start with mack and work our way down the line. First of all, chief meadows has served in the congress knowing the president before he assumed his role. I think that served him well. But i think really mo when you serve as chief of staff you have to somehow maintain your perspective. You have to maintain perspective in that idf cauldron of ideas of crisis decisions. Secondly, you have to remember you are there to serve the American People. You have to keep that fundamental thought before you. Finally you really have to keep your humanity about you. It is easy to lose that sense of humanity, that sense of respect. That sense of perspective. Those to me are the overarching themes you try to keep before you in a position which is a rare privilege. inaudible mac thank you. Andy . I want to thank you for hosting us and introducing us to the program and the students that had questions. Really appreciate being here. What a privilege it is to be with other chiefs of staff. I have tremendous respect for each of them as individuals, but also the service they have given. Number one, the document that hangs on the wall every one of us has has the United States of america, our name, calligraphy, the state we are from, served as chief of staff for the president of the United States. It is redundant because and its insecurity because it says you serve as the time being, but your job is not to please the president. If you are trying to please the president , you are not doing the job. You have to help the president and you suffer the consequence if pleasure disappears. That is true. Be comfortable that you are not there to please the president. You are there to help him do a job and hopefully, the president will recognize it and ask you to do the job. When the time arrives say thank you for yesterday and start focusing on what happens tomorrow. If you are stuck in yesterday, you will not contribute much as you go forward. The other thing i would say is it really is important to have a candid relationship with the president where you maintain a confidence in the president knows you will keep that confidence. You can be brutally candid and except the i accept the consequence of it. So keeping your word, your word is your bond and politics. I had the challenge of working with a congress and that flip to democrats so we had to work closely with the other side. That is just a reality. An enemy today could be a friend tomorrow. Do not celebrate your enemies. Celebrate the relationships that are constructed and invite your enemies to become friends. It is hard to do that in the political environment, especially during an election year, but i respect the people who have the courage to jump into the arena and get involved in the fight, even if i disagree with them. I always try to make that wellknown and understood. Believe me, when jim jordan switched parties we had to negotiate with democrats to get the tax cut. Max bacchus became a best friends even though he became head be in miami the week before we got it done and that makes a difference. Thank you for inviting us. Thank you for celebrating this democracy. Everybody should get out and vote and have the courage to serve and thank those people who have the courage to run. Thank you, andy. Denis. Look, mo, i think you are doing great stuff. At the institute of politics lawyers are very fortunate to have you doing what you are doing. So hats off to you for that. Thank you to everybody who turned out, especially the students and community. I will say one thing. There is no knockout punches in washington. You may think you have bested somebody in a debate, you may think you have outfoxed them with some clever malarkey, you think you have pulled wool over them but the fact is but these are not only your fellow countrymen but these are people you are going to have to work with tomorrow or next week or next month on another issue. So, i think there is a certain amount of the golden rule that we should probably seek to get back in political debate. We always thought that that started with us. As a sandy says, you do not know the Ranking Member is going to be the Ranking Member forever. She might become the chairman before long. And so i think you ought to be ready for that and the best way to be ready is to treat your colleagues, your political enemies, as you see them as you would anybody else. I think that is the challenge sometimes. It does not work any other way. Thank you. Ok, mick, you have had more opportunity to get this advice. To give this advice. I am going to do something i do not usually do which is dodged your question, but i will tell you why. [laughter] mark is a good friend of mine. We have been close for six or eight years now. Mark was cofounder of the Freedom Caucus with me. I Start Talking to the president , he starts talking about mark being my successor. As early as last summer. I was very much in support of the decision for him to come in. I have talked to him on a regular basis. Because we are so close and because washington is washington if i. Go on and say here is what i told mark meadows, it may well be news tomorrow and i do not think that is the purpose today. What i will say is almost all of the advice my three colleagues would give him, if they have a chance, he has heard. I think mark is the kind of person who can take it to heart and be successful because he is an extraordinarily capable guy. Under any circumstances it can be a miserable job i tell people it can be the greatest job and the worst job at any given day. You can imagine going into this in the middle of a covid crisis. I think he responded very well and i think the advice these gentlemen would give him he has heard and he has, and will, take to heart. So again i dont mean to dodge your question i just did not want to end up politico tomorrow. Understood. Mack, andy, denis, mick, on behalf of everyone thank at the institute of politics in Public Service and Public Policy in a broader georgetown community, thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your past and continued service to this country. We always say at the institute of politics, Public Service is a good thing, politics can be too. I think spending time talking with the four of you shows us maybe it can. Maybe our slogan is actually right. To everyone who tuned in, tonight, thank you so much. We could have kept going for hours, but thank you for sticking with us and for joining in our most recent virtual forum. Please stay tuned to all our social Media Channels as we begin to gear up for fall semester programming which promises to be exciting. Particularly as we we cant read about to celebrate our fifth anniversary as an institute continue to politics a geopolitics for whats coming next i thank you all for your time and be well. Explore our nations past. Cspan 3, created by American Cable Television company. Brought to you today by your television provider. Up next on American History tv, we look back at the 1960 president ial debate again will speak with Barbara Perry about how this debate shape