Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20161112

In the paper, but then you can say like one person was telling me that, he was telling me that the memoranda they read, that there were not a lot of mistakes in those memoranda because nobodys going to put on paper what host carefully be, yeah. Carefully. Guest but he said that once he sat down with people id say, well, you know, youd think you might want to organize geographically the nsc this way, but we tried this, and it just didnt work, and it didnt work for the following reasons. So that was particularly important to be able to have that time, that obama appointed people early enough that they could do that. But also important was the work that steve hadley did. And so they could take those memoranda which had been passed through the intelligence community, state department, and president bush. So they could take those and ask questions about them. Those were the ones that didnt have a lot of things that had been done wrong but they were willing to be very open in their discussion. Host is a definite analysis, a situation that turned out melted away. You go to a couple central points, one is the issue of trust we will get to later in the relationship that was absolutely key. On 9 11, after the terrorist attack of 9 11 it seems to me reading your book that you concluded the 9 11 tragedy fundamentally changed transitions for the aspects of it in terms of measuring the drapes and so forth. Encouraged more interaction. Guest absolutely that is so. That is true personally and institutionally. President bush talked to josh bolin and the chief of staff in december 2007. And talk to him about the best transition he could. It is important to do that. Congress also acted, demonstrated that a transition was a different time period. The 9 11 Commission Recommended people be appointed earlier, that would require security clearances being done early. The intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act of 2004 made a provision for names to be sent in for security clearances after the convention so that once the transition began they would have people clear, and that became important because we obama people took advantage of that and put in 150 to 200 names so people could start. That was critical because you dont want to have a fragile period like that extended. You want to make sure things work fast and you have your people in place and host you have a period, Just National security is fundamental and sacred as safety and security of the American People and any transition of power, the financial crisis for major consideration in the transition you write about and appropriately so. The financial meltdown occurred before the election. Tell us about that. The incoming secretary, Timothy Guyton are tim guyton are that was a critical position as well. You are planning you are planning the promises during the campaign for a couple years. All of a sudden something that was so large in september. Heart of the election, the bush people really didnt have any political muscle left. That meant the president elect had to be involved and encourage congress, to hear whatever measures they wanted. Host very controversial and difficult. Guest with the auto bailout. Host you are recounting it. An important aspect of dealing with the financial situation, the Automobile Industry had so many contractors, subcontractors. Involve millions of people. The bush people were interested in making sure the industry be stabilized as quickly as possible. They had a meeting with the obama people after thanksgiving, where they talked about an auto bailout, having a dark to handle that, and they would be willing to appoint a person that they wanted. At that time, which was before the inauguration. The obama people decided not to take advantage of that. Host we heard the expression at one time. Off of that bit. Guest the president elect all of a sudden is a swift change from campaigning to governing, having to figure out to take that offer of the bailout and took the same route president roosevelt had when Herbert Hoover was involved. He didnt you buy into somebody elses problem. Host to close the chapter in terms of the financial challenges, your conclusion was during the transition, because of this level of cooperation, your conclusion is the transition helped move through that period in a more positive way than otherwise might have been the case. Guest that is true in so many ways. The appointment process or general procedures. Host lets move to president bush to capitalize your themes, to start early and stay open. Tell us a little bit how and why president bush focused so much on this transition as early as december 2007. Guest in one way it was comfortable for him. He had clay johnson working as his chief of staff, in june of 99, had him thinking separately about transition and wanted him to talk to the jim bakers and George Shultzes and get some understanding how transitions work and also think about recruitment or personnel. Planning ahead with something was natural to him. He was very affected by the wars and the need to not just for president obama or the presidency itself, which you have in your hands, that institution remains strong and that is one of the reasons he started early. Josh bolton, wanted him to handle it. He could come to him, get his approval and banking on something. And involved in the financial crisis, he was juggling all those things, did a lot of the work. And dealt with the executive director for the obama transition, christopher lou. The legislative affairs assistant for senator obama, and lost one together. He had the full confidence, and many issues on a daily basis after the election about people going into departments and gathering information, the two of them were able to dispose of them. Host chief of staff josh bolton, breakfast meeting, former chief of staff and the meeting organized, breakfast organized to give counsel to rahm emanuel, the incoming chief of staff and before that had the opportunity to sit in on a couple sessions chief bolton organized with andy card and a couple others in the Bush White House reflecting what you are saying and we will get to john podesta in the Obama Administration but i recall that vividly, Vice President cheney, chief of staff made the statement, to keep an eye on your Vice President. Guest the mark of Vice President cheney, not just to himself, referring to his experience. Host you make a good point. Dont think that was taken but your interpretation is to divide one. Vice president cheney went on for serious advice as we tried to. It is interesting when president bush began this process, the next president of the United States really started with chief of staff bolton, clay johnson, longtime confident and friends who i have great regard and respect for. The reaction was different than some might have fought between the Obama Campaign and his advisers, and john mccains people, tell us about that. They reflect personalities. Guest with obama, a change of party transition, so in a change of party transition you want to change personnel quickly, have your executive orders lined up, memoranda that are going to change as these guidelines hit the ground running so there is a lot to do right at the beginning to demonstrate there is a new sheriff in town and we are doing business differently. With john mccain, the same party transition so you are not going to be as anxious about changing personnel quickly. And legislative initiatives, you would give that some time. One of the things in their minds, putting in names which he did not for security clearances is he had people and 150 to 200. There is not a lot of difference. And the committee in the senate for appointees of his and security clearances. I think he felt he had the bones of a staff to come in. A same party transition has a helpfulness and friendliness to it this morning, going to make it a lot easier. For example, when Vice President bush follows ronald reagan, when there were vacancies at the end of the administration, the 2 important positions for treasury and attorney general and the education secretary, the three of them left, you had vacancies there, reagan appointed brady, a very good friend of George Hw Bush and Richard Thornburg for attorney general, and he kept all of them and two of them with the administration. Host a positive transition, seamless transmission benefits the city as well as incoming president and it is fair to say you make a point, burnish is the reputation and you did your homework and talked in the white house. Is that part of president bushs motivation . Guest it certainly could have been. Republicans tend to focus on management and bush is focused on management when a managing transition early when he came in, it was natural for him to do it going out particularly with the wars. You dont have a lot of persuasion, ability to persuade congress to do something, not spending a lot of time there and spent a lot of time on the road traveling. It is natural to be thinking about a wrap up of the administration and useful to become a narrative of what youre administration accomplished, how it all fits together particularly with the president s vision. Some people will look at the presidency in part, individual action, this gives you an opportunity to pull it together and that was something reagan did that worked to his benefit and eisenhower did it. I study white house communication. Host we will ask about that later. The press secretary for eisenhower, in his office he performed the jobs of 60 people and one of the memos that he wrote to him, to deal with the last year, he should travel, a man of peace, and travel around the world and that got interrupted by the you 2 and the trouble that resulted with the soviet union after that. Have a theme for your presidency and for eisenhower, having a seat for your whole life, his presidency becomes a man of peace. It is useful for everybody including the president and for his legacy to have a wrap up and the kind of memo steve hadley did were important too for all of this goes into a president ial library and gives people a sense of what you were thinking. It is a positive way to end your presidency because you can get around again to the notion of the presidency as an institution and how did you handle it . Host you make some points in terms of transition after 9 11. That changed the perspective and the fact that president bush was a two term president not running for reelection. We knew it would be a transition and his Vice President was not seeking office. Those are very different dynamics. You also, lets take a step back, you mentioned president eisenhower. President truman was the father of this transition, focused on the need for this transition but in terms of the fundamental tenets you make about the bush and obama teams of trust, relations might have been less trusting or frosty between president truman and incoming president Dwight Eisenhower. Guest they were. And trumans case, one of the things that happened is president s are affected by things that happen to them before. They then want to deal with that situation and truman came in as Vice President , january 20th in roosevelts eyes on april 12th and during that time period he did not learn about a lot that was going on, and it was wartime, the development of the atomic bomb, he was very scarred by that, didnt want it to happen. When he made his decision and announced it at the Jefferson Jackson day dinner that he was not going to run again he could have run but he decided not to run and talked to roger jones, the head of the bureau, the budget and talked to him about preparing for a transition and how he wanted to pull together budget information and making program information. That unit which is the office of management and budget was the heart of a government operation, had the kind of information a president would want to pull together for a professor. He was very interested, one of the things he decided to do, i will read to you, president truman and eisenhowers own words. Please go right ahead blues our viewers would enjoy it. Guest truman being truman. He decided what he would like to do is bring them into the white house, bring the candidates in. You had both candidates, advice stevenson for the democrats, Dwight Eisenhower for the republicans, nominated by the time of the letter eisenhower sent to both on august 13, 19 host truman did. Guest truman said in his letter i will have general smith and the special Intelligence Agency give you a complete briefing on the foreign situation and after that they were going to have more things. He also said he indicated to eisenhower that the cia would provide a briefing from the world situation on a weekly basis which eisenhower did take. Then he said in his letter we will have lunch with the cabinet and after that if you like i will have my entire staff report to you on the situation in the white house and in that way host a generous offer. Guest on what takes place. Eisenhower wrote him back turning him down. In my current position as standardbearer of the Republican Party and other americans who want to bring about a change in the national government. Host in case you missed my point. Guest it is my view to remain free to analyze publicly the policies of the present Administration Whenever it appears to be proper and in the countrys interest. I believe our communication to be those known to allAmerican People. Consequently it would be unwise and result in confusion in the public mind, to attend the meeting in the white house to which you invited me. Truman was not very happy and sometimes what he did was handwrote letters. And hand written, he put it in the mailbox when he was doing host communication today. Guest not going to the chief of staff. Host picking up on your point. Extremely sorry with a bunch of improvable. And a bad mistake and hoping it wont injure the public. Host vintage harry truman response, should have moved forward. This is a fundamental point, eisenhower was skeptical, reluctant to engage with a democratic president , transition of the presidency and one of the hallmarks that you wonderscore about this being a bubble in your view, the you had a sitting two term republican president transitioning with a democratic president who is critical of the Bush Administration and had a level of trust established and equally important. Host joel kaplan is a deputy, talked about how he thought it was an excellent statement about the transition, they were able, they got beat up for a couple years. At the same time host so striking, what is so important, the value of the timing of the book we have such a partisan atmosphere, and optimistic book in that sense, you transcend that, and what is essential for the protection of the presidency. A couple points we want to get to, john podesta assumed the leadership of the Transition Group from president elect obama. The chief of staff to president clinton, seen those inner workings and understood it. You characterize john styles corporate and emphasize having separate track of the transition. Guest his operation was different, early operations, what he needed to do, setting things up, and people go into the department and agency to review programs, budgets, personnel. Host relatively detailed. Guest you have to pick people who have been there before so that they know what to look for but he said things up in a way using a template that all the review teams were to use. They had hugely large review teams on a problem, people may want to get their own information and make a report. He was able to have a disciplined operation. Talked through carefully at the beginning what kind of information they wanted. I asked him about that process and how he maintained this fund and went back to being staff secretary. When you were chief of staff. And he learned there the importance of detail. When putting together the Agency Review team, the policy teams and also the leadership part, 679 people. It was a disciplined operation and didnt hear any problems arising from it. Host it is fair to say and most people would agree their political persuasion, political operative, we saw that in this instance. Now usually it is handled with dispatch and chief bolton is a consequent professional. And linked together easily. You talk about unsung heroes. This is an important part of people in the government cooperating, so essential. Tell us about that because it gets overlooked. Guest there is a lot that has to be done in the government itself before the transition begins. So for example the General Services administration identifying the office space that is going to be used with the office space is identified for the coming transition and then they have to talk with representatives of both sides about how they are going to put their offices together, however they want to put it together and then they have to talk to them about computers, security and how they are planning on doing that. Then you have the office of government ethics dealing with the Financial Disclosure requirements that came from host we built on it. Guest Financial Disclosure, they need to talk about candidates, representatives about what kind of disclosure it is because a lot of people know they have to reveal all their stocks and get rid of many of them. They need to know beforehand the transition teams do. Then you have the people, career staff who are trying to prepare for a change. They are following what is going on in a campaign. Sometimes one of the things that happens, they might follow campaign pronouncements of a candidate and what programs they want or should want and figure out how much of that can cost so they can have that information ready for them and that is something various operations, roger jones did that for the 52 election. Clay johnson, a close friend of president bush, had a sense of management. He and the bush had gone to high school together, they met at high school and both went to yale, both took business. And came in to do personnel for him, was devoted to making sure the management aspect worked for bush. Host one person had the authority and responsibility, one of the key points. Josh bolton dealt with the white house operations, departments and agencies for some of that work, clay johnson worked through the president s Management Council. At the end of the administration, chaired committee made up of all the agencies so he had them come together in the spring and talk about the transition. What information did they think a new administration would need so they work through that and in the summer, july 18th, sent out a memorandum to the departments and agency directing what they were to gather. They show the importance involving all parts in starting early. Host execution and as you say, broad participation. Guest a department of conferences for the secretary to be involved in. What legislation is there affecting the department and budget. Host those where i commend you for highlighting and presenting that information. A clear matter. It is easy to feel that confidence is not there yet and does reside it will be marshaled. Host it does but there is a willingness, people during a campaign, change of party the government would be their enemy. Once they get in they find out mb and how important those people are and then they find they can go the national archive, find out if a particular issue has been dealt with. Host another important point you mention, dropping in the mail. All the information, and 20 years ago was not. That is a big change. Guest the departments have websites they will provide a lot of. They felt they needed more information and president obama example and bay of campaign talking about importance of transparency. That becomes important. You have information there, you have a lot of books that detail passed transitions, what they learned from the past, gone through transition, and prepared for them. Candidates prepared to transition. If he is he worked in the Carter Administration going in to the transition and worked on transition going out particularly on the white house beat so he became a repository of information other democrats ran. He turned over his file which can be important including his work with john kerry on the white house piece, those files can be important, one person was telling me, chris lou, they wanted to put together a budget for the transition, they looked at what john kerry has done. And the partnership host thoughtful guest they brought together in 2008, 2012, both democrats and republicans, government official, outside people, to discuss transition. Host their first right. Lets move to president elect obama and sitting president bush, stayed with this daunting task, almost 8000 appointments, 400 judicial appointments, getting a government in place, the transition, the key point, how do you transition from campaigning to governing and speak about that. That is the key. Guest people working for you the compensation is almost nothing. Telling me how he hadnt been paid for for long periods of time and clicking for a federal judge, the moment that finished, he came into work at the state level, working on organizing people to get to the polls, he also was working on policy issues, education. And they think they should have a play and usually the place they want to be is the white house. You certainly have had experience. It becomes difficult to turn people down. It is important to do because you cant just have campaign people. Campaign people are important to have in the administration and the white house because they remind the president why he is there. They know the campaign, what the problems were. But you have to balance that out with people who know the president well you knew your president very well. How does he like information . How did the students need to be made . You need substantive knowledge, people who are going to have knowledge in foreign policy, national security, domestic policy, the economy, particularly now because it takes a while to get each one through the confirmation process so that there is a natural gravitation to the white house itself and creating czars and that sort of thing but the white house from one administration to another, you have to have some people that have that knowledge. So for example in the Bush Administration, and the card worked in the republican administration. And new those. And you need the knowledge of the Washington Community. How does the media work. What are the relationships on the hill like . With news organizations there needs are the same no matter who is president. When you come in, as president and your press staff comes in they have to be familiar with that. What are those routines . Cant just do what you want and have everything on your terms because if you want to get good publicity you have to understand what the dynamics are of the media. Host you are speaking to someone who has made a careful study of the presidency in a number of years. But you really highlight so many stakeholders and constituencies when you come into office. And the most Important Group on the block so to speak because that is where your legislation is going any way they are, you have the press particularly not well known to the press, governor might not be, senator obama had some exposure to the National Press in the campaign but there constituencies, you have World Leaders you have to be attuned and respectful to and the campaign, not only staff but people who helped you get elected, they dont want to feel forgot and. There is a lot of such so many things to do, such a short period of time including the first 100 days. You make the point, we heard the phrase 100 days, first 100 days, your window of opportunity, not the best prepared time in the white house to take advantage of it, starting early, the transition. That is what president obama did in the first hundred days. He did well. The magnitude of the path ahead of them, he had to deal with the financial meltdown. He had the american recovery act which he got to early. He had to make issues that were important, the executive orders on closing guantanamo. It took longer than he might have anticipated, the ledbetter fair pay act. When he was campaigning for reelection in 2012 he talked about ledbetter and the american recovery act, things that were very important to the administration and started with healthcare early too. You look at the difference in the magnitude, the things you have to do early on. Host you have them better organized on the page. Guest knowing the crush of all of the to deal with. When eisenhower came in in january, he gave his inaugural address and in 100 days he gave 12. And obamas case in january instead of one, he gave 15. Instead of 12 in his first hundred days he had 158. That is talking about a lot of different issues. When you look at executive orders, which are going to deal with a number of issues, Guantanamo Bay and president ial records, a variety of things as well as memoranda dealing with ethics guidelines, in his first days in office he had tween 9 executive orders, and in the 100 days, 19 and 23 memoranda. That is a lot of work. You have seen a lot of change over the years with the presidency, so many things i wish we had more time to talk about. Your views would be so welcome so you make the point to sum up president obama, president elect obama going into the white house that a transition can be a this aggregate series of events and you recommend and suggest a governing narrative to pool that together which i thought was compelling. Guest one of the problems when you are preparing a transition is people doing separate things. Todd stern working on executive orders, president ial appointments, a variety of people, that portfolio passed through a lot of people. People working on that age working with relationships on the hill, and all those things are done separately. That is a necessity. What one needs to do is make the transition from what your campaign was of the president ial candidate to the president of the United States. What is the narrative going to be about . What is it you are going to be doing . What is your focus going to be . I thought one unused opportunity obama had to do that, he gave a speech at Georgetown University in april of 2009. In it he talked about the pillars of his presidency, things like healthcare, energy, dealing with the budget. He laid out those things which in the end have been important throughout his administration, will sometimes say i dont know exactly what he stands for, but if you go back and at that and see what he was interested in, and i think it is useful to raffle those things together. It is important to do, didnt have the opportunity to create that narrative. In reagans case, one of the things he put together, it is a small thing but had a large impact, to demonstrate that he was no longer the candidate and was president he gave a formal dinner in november. He had taken vacation which is important to do, separate yourself from being candidate from being president elect, came to washington, gave a dinner and at that dinner, all the congressional leadership, tip oneill in addition to republicans, robert strauss, people who were important in the Washington Community to governing and saying to them i am interested in governing and i need all of your help. I think then when he was inaugurated he immediately said that he was signing executive orders that would freeze government hiring, cut travel and decorations and those sort of things, so symbolically, right at the beginning to say you are changing things. New kind of leadership coming in. Some things you can do like that, that hold with what youre presidency is about. Host you lead me to another critical part of your book. As we close, the Current Administration and the candidates running this president ial season should be thinking about but my first point and basic point is one you just made which is a good transition is part of this governance and that is to me the essence of something i care about and many others do too, how are we going to govern . How are we going to get things done particularly highly partisan atmosphere which can be accelerated with all these communication channels. That is part of your conclusion. Guest the last decade in the book is the importance of management. You have opportunities at the beginning of your administration to make changes and that rarely happens, people are dealing with the price of all the events they are dealing with on issues they had. It is hard to carve out time for management and also the political payoff is not that great, and president clinton, he was interested in management in some ways, something that was never going to help you and the president s Management Council creating and keeping that in both of them. And it is important, but who in the public would care about that but it makes a difference in how you govern. Host the outcomes of jobs and whatever the issue might be. In a couple minutes we have remaining, what should the cabinet be doing now and what should president obama and his team be doing at this point in time . It is a little early in the december time line. Guest gathering the same information, what is in your administration did in certain types of situations, new people coming in face the situation, they have a history of what went before and planning out how you are going to use the say for example, use the president s counsel, there is currently legislation passed the house, passed the senate and gone to the house that would create a president s Management Council and create a group of career people that would be transition directors. What it was basically doing is taking what bush did. Host a blueprint. Guest there are a lot of things they can do. For candidates transition operation something you want on the side. They need to coordinate from time to time, karl rove and joe altman and say i will meet you and tell you what im doing because you dont want conflict, the worst is when the political people think they are working hard for nothing, eating big macs and stopping for a cheeseburger. The transition people have a list of what the positions are and will appoint their friends. That is what you want to avoid. Host as someone who had the privilege to serve in the white house and serve the American People i applaud you and am grateful for this serious, deep and interesting and revealing book, before the oath how george w. Bush and barack obama managed a transfer of power. A successful transition. I was struck by your optimism and i hope the current president and next president to be he the or good advice. Guest i think they will. One thing about the president that unites them is they care about the institution of the presidency. How they leave it. Guest that is the right note an end on. Host thank you very much come martha kumar, thank you. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, seized and was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. When the tea party initially emerged in 2009, arguably the largest supporters, politically speaking, nationally known figures were women, people like michelle bachmann, congressman from minnesota, served that he party caucus in congress and the original mama grizzly, sarah palin, with the tea party. In my own research i studied conservative movements for a long time including the christian right. I would say in earlier right wing movements women have become part of the movements but really more behind the scenes rather than front and center. There have been some notable exceptions to that rule. Phyllis shapley is the best known exception to that, she is best known for having stopped the era in the 1970s. One of the women i interviewed for this book used to have the office of legal forms and the first thing said to me when we sat down for the interview is Phyllis Shapley was tea party before there was tea party and she is right she really was if you look at the writings. Generally speaking, while conservative women avoid politics they have not been front and center in a way i saw in the tea party so that prompted the book. Why are so many women in front of the movement . I wanted to know the significance of this for american politics. Many of you here probably follow american politics closely, the gender gap in american politics, since 1980 roughly, women are more likely than men to vote for democratic candidates, more likely to identify as democrats. What i wanted to determine was nationally speaking where we beginning to see a shift in american womens orientation toward politics. Where they becoming more moderate, more rightleaning as opposed to more leftleaning . The two biggest questions i am addressing in the book. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Lucifers banker the untold story of how i destroyed swiss bank secrecy. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. [inaudible conversations]