Transcripts For CSPAN2 Campaign 2020 Discussion On Presidential Transitions 20240712

Get started let me center best wishes for a speedy recovery to President Trump, the first lady, as well as all the officials who work closely with the president. One month out from november 3 americans across the country have already started voting in the most important president ial election in a generation. President elect joe biden for reelected President Donald Trump will face a double digit unemployment situation and a global pandemic, a reckoning on racial inequality and a divided nation. The one institution that could help address these problems is the federal government. The federal government needs to be effective if it will deliver for the American People. That is why preparation and planning today is critical for effectiveness on january 20. Regardless of your wins a smooth transition this year is not enough in this year we need the best transition ever in american history. Should Vice President biden win the challenges are truly daunting. In normal times a new president faces mammoth attacks, of 70 day period to select a government, select clinical appointees, manage almost a 5 trilliondollar budget and rollout and ambitious policy agenda. That is in normal time but today is not normal and in addition to normal challenges i just mentioned the next president will have to get 13 Million People back to work and distribute 330 million vaccines and bring our country back together again. Should President Trump win the transition will also be incredibly challenging. Our data from the last three twoterm presidency suggests almost half of the top officials across the government will leave within six months of this inauguration, half and thats a normal but unfortunately when it comes on top of what is 133 senior positions that are currently vacant without incompetence or without a nominee so a huge challenge for a reelected President Trump will get competent people to serve. Perforation as we have learned from our podcast transitional add is essential in your four year five. If there is a change in administration the outgoing credit will also have a solemn responsibility under law to facilitate a smooth transition, much as president george w. Bush did for incoming president barack obama. Transitions are always hard and they are chaotic and the time is short, 70 days and if the election is not decided on november 3 there will be even less time ready for day one will become or difficult because every day will matter and that is why this event talking transitions comes at such an important time. We are pleased to be hosting this first event of its kind in a nonpartisan event in association with the truly amazing president ial libraries for the past four president s in the George Barbara Bush Foundation the clinton president ial center and george w. Bush president ial center and the obama and the leading Research Center in the country and thank you all for your incredible support, partnership and collaboration are work has never been more important and for poor president ial cycles we have worked to make transitions better, smoother and faster because the success of a presidency is directly correlated with the success of their transition and throughout we worked with the three most important actors, the Trump White House, the career officials across the government who are. For either eventuality as well as the biden team and we have thousands of people watching these events but the Largest Group represents the dedicated Career Agency officials transition planning and they must prepare for either eventuality of President Trump or new President Biden. We like how hard and delicate the work is everyday and we are just support you and salute you. I want to thank a few people before heading over to former congress secretary. Max stier has a been an advocate for more effective transition planning before anybody else focused on it. Second the center has a truly worldclass Advisory Board one i benefited from sage advice from counsel and support in my longtime friend president clintons first chief of staff who i called the godfather of smooth transitions. Governor mike who led the transition planning effort created a new Gold Standard for transition planning and hes one of the few people whos been equally successful in business, and government and philanthropy. Id also like to thank the amazing teams is a partnership for the libraries and the center who have pulled this event together. With that when we turn over to teddy. David, thank you for that very gracious welcome. Let me begin by wishing the president and the first lady a speedy recovery. David, youve been a tremendous leader of this vital project and we are grateful that you have dedicated your time and energy to this important effort to the benefit of our nation. We are also so very grateful to your dedicated team at the center for their long hours to support assault. And the timing of todays conversation cannot come at a more critical point for our nation. Given the weighted issues we face, both candidates will not only have to campaign vigorously but also need to prepare to run the country for the next four years. The diverse and sizable audience we have today reflects the interests in the president ial transition if the process is not well under certain but we have people from capitol hill, private industry, government organizations, transition subject matter experts, political appointees and those who serve on campaigns and Transition Teams and the media. We also welcome the money federal career staff joining us this morning. Your expertise, Institutional Knowledge and willingness to support administrations from both parties during a president ial transition and over the life of each administration is to be commended and we are sincerely very grateful for your Public Service. Let me just say as a person that came from someone in the Government Service and was given the honor of a lifetime serving in president obamas cabinet, i was blown away by the incredible talent, expertise and innovative spirit of the career professionals, not only in the apartment of commerce but across the entire government. Quite honestly, some of the most capable people i have ever worked with with the career professionals in the National Institute of standards and technology in the National Atmospheric administration and the bureau of industry and security, census bureau, National Weather service and so many more important offices within our government. Day in and day out they do the significantly important work on behalf of all of us and frankly, a day that too little credit are given credit for it. I want to thank them all. In terms of our events today the calla bullet of our speakers in the testament to the nonpartisan convening power of the partnership and their vital work for federal government work better. It demonstrates the impact of the centers ability to provide support, expertise and resources for a wide variety of groups that are transition stakeholders, including federal agencies, political appointees and president ial Transition Teams. The Center Brings unparalleled capacity to support president ial transition planning and execution. Their work has gone deeper and broader than any other. [audio difficulties] and the body Transition Team. What i am honored to serve as cochair of this critical effort along with matt mccarty, josh bolton and mike lovett, three simply extraordinary Public Servants that i am blessed to learn from and call my friends. As david said todays program is a oneofakind event that draws together highly respected group of officials from every administration from bush 412 obama, president ial scholars and respected journalists. One of most important of our democracy and our commitment to the transition of power. The purposes of this event is to inform the public about how president ial candidates Transition Teams and the federal government critical to the success or for a president s second term. By design we do not have representatives from the Current Administration. Given our desire for each discussion to remain nonpartisan and to the extent practical and nonpolitical. In our first Panel Margaret brennan faced the nation moderator and Senior Foreign Affairs correspondent in cbs news will moderate conversation with josh bolton, andy card, Denis Mcdonagh and matt mccarty. For outstanding former white house chief of staff and they will talk about their experiences preparing to take office, transitioning to a second term, planning to leave office and what to expect in 2020, and in 2021. Melody barnes former director of the mastic policy council will then lead a discussion with steven hadley, lisa monaco, Barbara Perry and john podesta about transitionsn crises and why this transition time could be the most important and consequential since 1932. Let me say one thing about john podesta. He has more senior transition experience than probably any other living person and could have been on the first panel and in fact, we asked him to be on the panel but on reflection we and john thought given his experience in the 202008 transition where he led the obama transition during a financial crisis and two wars he would be hugely value added on the second panel entitled, transitions in crisis. And that may be perhaps the most relevant topic for today. For our final panel amy Walter National editor of Cook Political Report will talk with four incredible Public Servants, alexis herman, valerie jarrett, karen hughes and margaret spelling. They talk about the complexities involved with the shift from campaigning for the presidency to governing when elected in either first or second term. And to our audience, thank you so much for joining us today and for your many excellent questions. We hope to get to them as best we can throughout the mornings program. You can also be a part of todays conversation on twitter by following at Public Service and by using the talking transition. So now i would like to hand the program over to Margaret Brennan for our first panel. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for all the nonpartisan work you do responding to the public how the institutions of support or democracy function or are supposed to function. This is an extraordinary morning and i think all of us have woken up to this news with a little bit of shock and the one certainty of 2020 seems to be that nothing is certain in expect the unexpected. Its a conversation today to have this powerhouse set of mines who been inside the west wing inside the very high levels to talk us through what planning needs to look like, what it shouldve looks like and what it is like in a moment of crisis. We are, of course, battling multiple crises as a country. Economics, health, racial strife, election uncertainty and now this news this morning. I want to start by bringing in, by the way to the conversation with the chief, will be a question for all of you is that we are four years into the trump administration. Are they ready . Is mike pence ready for what is happening right now . You set the table just perfectly as you always do. Margaret, i think all of us as chief of staff would agree the Vice President ial pick, decision is an important one during the campaign and if we ship for that campaign, the criteria for Vice President is he or she needs to be ready to step in if it is a moment that requires that and be able to discharge their responsibilities as commanderinchief as president of the United States. So clearly that is clearly from day one and absolute essential ingredient or element of any effective administration. If i were chief this morning you would be focusing on that. You would certainly be fully engaged with the president and his family at this time and you would as always, you would have a multiple number of other issues that would be confronted you even at times that were quite desperate not quite as unsettling or an president as these. Lets go to andy card. You know what its like to be chief, to be in that job of extreme National Crisis. What do you do on a a moment, a morning like this . First of all, i pray for the president of the first leg and i dont care what your political stripe is or what your philosophy is or bias may be. We all pray that the president and the first lady will recover quickly and be able to meet their responsibilities. I also point out the white house has to keep everything working the matter whats going on. The first responsibility for a chief of staff is to make sure people in the white house have confidence to be able to do their job and give them permission to do their job and not to try to trump into somebody elses laying or be distracted by our events or distracted by the president s inability [inaudible] such as having discipline i think in confidence and steady hand makes a big difference. Its important for the chief of staff to maintain the momentum that every cabinet member has been asked to maintain if you got into the policies and objectives. [inaudible] as chief of staff i would say my job would be to help the government responsibilities and let the camping world about the campaign responsibilities but it is not an easy time. The truth is, its the time when you have to be prepared for other things to happen. These unexpected challenges are likely to show up and put people to have confidence in our government, confidence in our democracy. I view it as the white house responsibility to may be set the expectation up so that people will have confidence and government can function during these times of trouble. We are seeing a public that is riddled and exciting right now and questioning some of our institutions, now this. What would you be doing if you were chief . Do we need to ask members of the public see the president come out today . What do you need to signal to the public today . You need to signal to the public government is operating efficiently, normally, naturally and its president is available. Put it on camera as well. Let me add my own best wishes to those my call the scum of the and thanks to the Public Service, President Foundation and you margaret, for bringing us together on this important topic. The topic gets more important when we face a disruption, i crisis like were having right now. In essence this kind of a dry run for what we may be facing around election day. I want to get into some of the specifics right election to in a moment but i do want to get douglas madonna a chance to jump in and give his say on what we need to hear from the president today, from joe biden perhaps even, what needs to be signal and if you were chief what would you be doing . Thanks a lot, and i want to thank my fellow chiefs for the chance to be with them. I always enjoy that. I want to thank david and katie for all the work and partnership. Look, the first and most important thing is what Vice President biden has said today and what the three chiefs have d said. You started with, margaret, which is pray for a speedy recovery for the first family, go out obviously and as far as her ongoing appreciation for that medical staff inside the white house which has been working overtime since last january when this news first broke. Look, i think demonstrating that the government is at work is really important. Hopefully reassuring to the American People. I think that was really what was behind the written communication from the white house chief physician overnight. Obviously gst sounds to me like the white house is talk about trying to get some very clear evidence of the president at work today and that would make sense. I would just add one thing that points my colleagues have already made which be we do have troops all around the world right now. We have allies all around the world and i would expect any communication not only with the cabinet but also communication from the white house to our allies that obviously we are continuing here official business continues year and it will be prudent as well as careful about the developments with first family, but also continue to be focused as mac, abie and josh headset on the official business of government that includes staying vigilant with our allies. We know this morning the president is symptomatic, though from our reporting he is mildly symptomatic at this point back. The question of how ill he becomes is something that we frankly hope to learn more about. As you point out potential and National Security crisis. Because of the question of competence. Josh bolten, i want to go back to you and something you raised in your first answer. We as a country because of the high anxiety are asking so many questions about basic civics about how transitions were, about the lectures going to work in the details are so keen and support because of this unprecedented circumstance in which the next election will be having with his global pandemic. Given your observations of the campaign and the transition planning that is happening behind the scenes, how confident are you, what concerns do you have about a transition either a second President Trump term or potentially at Biden Administration . Well, margaret, the good news is that you think everybody should be comforted at the kind of work that is going on in both places, prepare for the transition period obviously the work is much more substantial and intense with respect to a potential biden presidency, but they like other campaigns before them, not all, but most campaigns in recent times have taken the transition very seriously. I think they are likely to be wellpositioned to take over despite the difficulty with potential multiple crises that they will be inheriting. I saw that firsthand in 20089 with the obama transition which was run by one of your next gas, john podesta, very professional, very well organized next guest. A good partner at a a think wee seeing the same thing from the biden team. So on that side, but we also know that the Trump White House is taking their responsibility seriously and are of course hoping, planning to remain in power, but i hope theyre also treating it as an opportunity to refresh and reset if needed. You were talking about the candidates of process behind the scene led by 15, the transition period. [inaudible] of what a transition might look like, and to that point can you pick up on that . We are expecting, we are told to expect a litigated outcome to this election. We wont have clarity for potentially days, maybe weeks. We know that just based on the amount of time it will take to tally up the Record Number of mailin votes that are expected. How concerned are you about the circumstances, and what influence they could have on a transition . Yeah, thanks for the question, margaret. Everybody take this transition very seriously. The fact is josh has just breezed through institutions, that is to say, the Transition Team at the Biden Campaign, the Transition Team that theres been some reporting on inside the white house just over the course of the last couple of weeks as you sent. But then as importantly, david and penny keyed up at the start senior civilian federal workforce who have mobilized and organized and prepared for a transition in either case. That is to say, into a second President Trump term or a first President Biden term. All those reels wheels are movd moving quite effectively as near as we can tell. I think its important, in the context of your question, to just highlight one thing. I think president obama always thought that this transition is important for two reasons. One, theres only one president at a time so when there is a change its important that the current president run through the tape into january 20. But its also important, this is the second point, that could present mechanize at a transition, an effective transition and a clean handoff to his successor is also part of the Job Description of and the definition of an effective presidency. Especially in the times of the kind of crises we are living in. I hope that informs the ongoing work of the Transition Team inside the government. I know it will among the federal service, event i hope it affords the decisions makes as you suggest in the days leading up to the building and then coming out of the voting. Institutions are strong. They work. Thats how josh started his, and minutes ago. I have every confidence that they will work again but again we have to understand and hope the the president and his team understand that. The definition of an effective president starts also with the Job Description that includes a transition clean handoff especially in the time of crisis. Andy card, back in 2000 we saw contested outcome as you well know, and because of what happened in florida that delayed the transition period, certainly delayed clarity for a long period of time. What was the net effect of that . How do you see that as a potential parallel to a not, we may see come november . Margaret, thank you for the question and think for leadership in this conversation. Yes, that was a challenge. However it was also a classic. I got to spend time with the president elect that we didnt even know it was the president elect, at his ranch in crawford planning what kind of government he wanted while secretary james a. Baker the third and the campaign for managing the recount and the question of hanging chads and did it with the lawyers and everything else. We would focus on building a white house staff first and a cabinet second. The the president and i or the president elect and i had a wonderful time kind of working under the radar screen because most people focus on what was happening in florida. We could spend time getting to know each other very well, having me understand what his priorities were not just in policy but also into his relationship with people on the white house staff and in the cabinet, and going through names and kind of building a white house staff without the expectation every day of having to talk to the press. That was a blessing, but we did leave the equation of who one of to jim baker and joe oliver and the folks who are working on that. Josh bolten was focusing on the policies that we want to have as a First Priority as we took office on day one and that happen to be education reform. We also had joe hagan was already working to help make sure we had the infrastructure of Organizational Support at the white house in order to get things done. People dont recognize they were two transitions, one transition is truly a white house transition and thats with the president has Immediate Impact on putting something into position. You can say in the morning i what john spitz to bmi staff my staff and in the afternoon he shows up. With the cabinet you have to make sure you go through throua process of informing the senate and giving them a chance to ratify that decision. There were two transitions. What is the white house to get ready for the real transition into governing, and then transition into governing. I was blessed to have the experience of an uncertain election result, spend more time organizing the white house staff and you normally get to do, and some president s have suffered because he didnt get the white house staff organized until the end of the process and its really better to have dined at the beginning of the process. The team the president elect puts together with jim baker, karl rove and josh bolten and joe hagan really helped make a big difference in having the white house ready to help the rest of government understand the priorities of the new president. Josh, can you pick up on that, because we just heard some of the positives but there were complications because of the delay as well. Those are pointed to in the wake of the 9 11 attack and the abbreviated transition and some of the negative impacts may have contributed to problems of any administration. Practically speaking, how complicated as it become in the circumstances . Well, let me add one point to what andy just said which i theres one thing we kind of took for granted thats very important in this circumstance, which is that we had to let candidates who were prepared to live by the adjudicative result of the election. And this goes back to what denis sent right at the outset, which is its crucially important that in what couldve been a severe National Crisis because of the ambiguity in election results, coming at a florida in 2000, could have been a big crisis. We had to make candidate who told their staffs will live by the legal outcome here. We will live by the result. Both candidates, before the Supreme Court ruled in the december, both candidates made it clear to their entire teams that we will fight this as hard as we can through legal means, but once that is outcome it out and web is occurred the winner is the winner. Thats whats hugely important. The mechanisms that weve been talking about are all extremely important, but the leadership comes from the top and the two candidates need to go into this which could be a delay or an ambiguous election result on election day. They need to go into it with an attitude of country first. Well, the mechanics may be complicated by a delay or abbreviated transition the back country would pick up on the idea that josh bolten just raised, which is there are mechanics, yes, there are institutions here, yes, there is a plan for transition but assumption of comedy combat assumption that the rules will be played by and abided by. Are you concerned that that will not happen this year . This is a highly unusual Election Year, margaret, by any standard with the pandemic and with the way this campaign is taking place and there clearly are concerned with how the voting process is going to be conducted. The president race that everyone following the election knows full well but margaret, the hallmark of our democracy, working democracy, is a peaceful transition of power after a free and Fair Election has been conducted. That at the very core of our democracy since our Founding Fathers gave us the constitution, republic people he can keep it. Theres a question that administration has a handoff to the next administration did so with come after the campaign, diplomatically, particularly this year perhaps, this campaign but had a real transition, a real spirit of cooperation. The most sacred responsibility, you so well know, for any commanderinchief is a a safey and security of the American People. So its just essential in transition that you have a peaceful transition, a smooth transition from one Administration Come in some cases from one party to another. I hope and pray we see that this year as well. You hope and you pray. What do you think happens constitutionally, the date of january 20 [inaudible] well, i hope first of all this will be a different election, margaret, for sure. I dont think anyone has a perfect crystal ball, people who you really respect, chairman of the Federal Reserve using words unknowable. That ought to give you some indication of the uncertainty were living and working in as you know as you began in your opening comments. What you hope is there is a clear understanding, acceptance of the election results. With that i think you start with the transition period thats the real question. Denis mcdonough, you were supposed to involve in president elect obamas first intelligence briefing after the election, and im told by David Marchick and his team of researchers that the cia was under construction to only brief president elect obama and no one else. Do you know what happened during that meeting, that breaking . In the year will resume National Security crises and issues confronting the next commanderinchief, that the sharing of intelligence, conversation like this is going to be extreme heightened importance. Yeah, thanks. Thats not my recollections and eight i should talk to david but i remember sitting with president obama on a morning he had his first briefing. In fact, i remember because i had been in chicago for an extended stay in my wife and i had a very young kids hadnt seen sometime and i came back home to see them and my wife and i hope to be able to stay there but the most directed to turn around and go back to chicago to join the president for the brief. But youre absolutely correct that the sharing of intelligence is may be one of the most concrete examples of that kind of sharing that needs to happen across the board, and to josh bolten good credit, in 2008 and 2009, that happened. And so my participation with the president on pdb is an example of that but it is only one of several examples, and many of those examples that josh said i tried to emulate them eight years later in december november, december 2016 and january 2017. I guess i want to go back just one second on your earlier question, margaret, because i feel we are not giving you the answer you want, which is are we worried about transition . The short answer to that is yes. Each of us was in that job because we are warriors. If youre not a warrior you will not qualify for this job. But i guess what also want to communicate as good as i cant is that there are as you noted in my answer, institutions at work right now to ensure that we are ready for a variety of eventualities. And individuals will be making decisions and the context of the election result. Nobody suggested the results will be an accurate. People have suggested the results will be perhaps delayed because of numerous vote by mail opportunity. So if there were an effort to curtail account at peoples votes, yeah, i would be worried about it, but i think the current chief has to understand the first judgment on great presidency will be whether you run to the tape and fulfill the Job Responsibilities of president , of being president , and one of them is a clean, effective handout, particularly in the time of crisis. I believe because of that individuals make the right decisions. Let the votes be counted so the American People of confidence the way they vote is counted and it gets counted accurately, and will continue this now more than 240 year peaceful transition of power. Thank you for your clarity and the questions the public is asking quite a lot these days, whether the date of the election, the date of the transition, some what the has said publicly. Practically actually could be implemented. Which is why i asked it. Let me pick up on what you just mentioned which was you are part of briefing the Trump Incoming team and the trump administration. They went through a few iterations as we know. What did you do to help prepare them, and what affected your attempts to do so have . With the efforts well received . Were. I hasten to add one thing which is i did several things, but so did hundreds if not thousands of other people. The wheels that are turning right now especially as penny and david said at the start with the federal service, are substantial. They are preparing for either eventuality, and thats a big amount of work. I did some things but it most importantly the government get a lot of things. They were two big challenges in 2016. When was the wholesale change of the Transition Team fight after the election which delayed i think i think the teams start of the transition period which is the transition itself is very short if you compare our transition period to other countries around the world. So anything that curtails it even more is unfortunate. The other thing is that that slow down the building of the team and its peers not necessary for my firsthand knowledge although i have some of that, but from a lot of reporting including by Michael Lewis and others, a lot of the material that was prepared for the transition to just wasnt consumed. Now, time will tell whether that is, what the overall impact of that is, but the fact is that it was a delayed start. It does appear that prepared material was not consumed, even though it had been prepared. And it looks to me like the biden team right now has, as josh suggested, is learning from that and is really digging in on these questions. I think that gives me great hope in the context of very tumultuous period. Josh bolten, why was it so important to president bush and your team to create the model that both you and denis have talked about . Well, the most important thing is that we were in two wars in iraq and afghanistan, and particularly at the time when we begin taking about the transition, its a lot easier to do if youre a second term president than a firstterm president. What there we were pushing the end of a second term. In 2007 the situation the situation in iraq and afghanistan was not particularly good. They can to remain under physical threat, and in early 2008 president bush called me into his office and he said, this will be the first transition in modern history where the nation is actually under threat, and i would be most effective possible regardless of who wins. [inaudible] the a lot of good people in government doing their jobs if they really came from the top. The present said we are partisans. We want republicans to win, but if the transition comes first and that is especially true [inaudible] andy card, we are also looking at the possibility of the transition simply being from term one to term two for the trump administration. What do president s need to do in year or mac to be preparing for year five . First of all that took knowledge that there is a transition. You are not just taking yesterday and repeating it. People sometimes feel they shouldnt be replaced so you want to hold onto the desk even though the president wants out of office. I remember, first of all president bush was also ready to have a very good transition should he have lost reelection. He had told us to be prepared to transition to another president. As josh said, he was just as focused been on the responsibilities as being a leader of our great democracy as yes, i am the president president , and he was prepared to pass the baton if he had to. I remember meeting with him the thursday after the election at camp david, and he called me into his office and said im going to make a number of changes in the staff come in the cabinet, and i am going to make some changes and he told me the cabinet agencies he wanted to change. And i said thats wonderful. You should probably start with your chief of staff because that will send the signal to everybody in government that there may be new people come into your position. He said no, no. I need you to help make those changes. This is a side story. I said he had to go talk to my wife. Im not sure i can put up with it that much longer. He said ill go ask about now. He jumped up, when outfits on the wife and said kathleen, andy says if you get do this but anyway, but he wanted me to help make changes and one of the challenging aspects of the chief of staff, huberty took you to hire people. You take it to tell people there service is no longer needed, and thats a very tough thing to do especially for cabinet members who feel the president won reelection therefore they should keep doing their job. But changing people is part of a transition, friendly transition from t1 131 plus, and thats what you have to do. So yes, there was a transition even though the government quote was the same. President bush was a sitting president on january 19 as january 21, but he did have a new government as executive branch to make his new policies and momentum what he wanted. He a lot of things you want to finish and given so we focus on that and we had an honest transition and it made a big difference. I thought the second term started off very, very well considering we were in a war and we were dealing with unbelievable challenges, and he was able to get an awful lot done. What do you think needs to happen year four for your five . Had he continue to recruit good talent to come into and administration for a second term . Building of what andy said, thinking outline some of the tenets of the change to a second administration. I think its so important is how the campaign has gone before that been reelected that president , and president zelenskys case, the first democrat to be reelected since president roosevelt. So i think critically important for the country to feel that the reelected president , leader, has a vision, a renewal moving forward, not being stuck so to speak or at least slow with that first true. Its got to be a renewal, a new vision. I think as far as a leadership people are concerned, margaret, i think there is a natural transition their whether it be at chief of staff position, i think each of president clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles come the times they were wellsuited for. And and i think the same goes fr the cabinet. The ambassador as well. Theres a Natural Renewal of their. There. Its got to be done however in an orderly, smooth, thoughtful, purposeful manner. But how do you i guess josh and denis can weigh in on this, a question of turnover, question be able to recruit good talent. Almost half of Senior Leaders in an initiation to part in the First Six Months of the second term. What is the Practical Impact of that . How do you recruit good talent, josh . Its hard. Andy did a good job and its the challenge throughout the second term. But it has to be done. For the transitioning administration, i agree with andy. The risk is thus much that you wont be able to find good people to replace the people you had. A much bigger risk for a second Term Administration is that you wont realize that this is a good time to replace people and reset, and everything about administration makes people feel like they are in place and deserve to be there at the need to be reminded what andy card remind the Bush White House staff of regularly is that we are tenants, not owners of this place, and we need to keep it fresh. We need to keep energy and then we need to be prepared to leave when the time is up and, therefore, use everyday you possibly can. By the way, margaret, it actually gets harder on the recruitment side gets harder the later you go into a second term. I took over from andy in year six of the Bush Administration, and there was time for new treasury secretary, it took me several months to persuade [inaudible] only two and half years left in the administration. Turned out that may have been my to government, which is at a key moment. Yeah, because we ended up in an economic crisis right at the end of the administration which hank paulson had a lot to do with basically rescuing the world economy. So its i think it less as a transition problem but an ongoing problem of how do you keep staff fresh . How to get the best people in government . Either way, dont ever assume if youve only got a year or six months theres nothing to be done. Margaret, you started it out exactly right by saying expect the unexpected, especially now. And denis, we have had tremendous turnover in in the r years of the trump administration. Do you have concerns and what is your advice for a second term in recruiting top talent . Look, and my concern . Absolutely. Thats the lifeblood of an administration is people youree able to bring in. And youre able to then work with the federal service which is so, as josh was saying earlier, is so plump full of massive talent. And so yeah, talent is a principal challenge i think in that bridging from the end of a first term into the new second term. But i want to underscore and i believe mostly because this is among really good piece of advice i got from old former chiefs including several pieces from josh, this was the best piece of advice he gave me when i took the job, which is that you have to be very intentional about and very focused on this question of keeping talent but also been being very clear eyed we need to move off of the 16th out into new telecom you have to be constantly looking for signs of fatigue in your team. You have to be constantly taking care of your team but then you also have to be constantly looking for new talent because youre going to need it. Intentionality is truly afford. Let me just say one thing here, which is i think how the congress and how the senate handles confirmation is an issue in this, both as a relates to how quickly you get [inaudible] and some of the tomfoolery that comes along or delays that. Moreover, some without tomfoolery kind of reaches federal level that you end up losing an opportunity to get really good talent on the field because they are dissuaded. I said that was the last point but the last and most important point is theres massive strength in diversity. Part of that diversity is mixing the new team, mixing in new team with your old team apart that the verge of making sure the country looks like america. You see this now in the biden camp, campaign. You see it in the Biden Campaign promises, that he wants to build a team that reflects the full gender and racial diversity of the country. I think that will have look, i think each other three chiefs that are on your similarly tried to build their teams. So that has a great virtue all its own. What that team come how the team works well together, how would reflects the strength of the country. That has a self reinforcing impact over time. So the fact yesterday was such a focus on this gives me great hope. Mack mclarty, she would be more hopeful, was a tomfoolery, was at the terms you use, denis . Some of the problem of getting people through and confirmed the thousands of jobs are required confirmation . That changes or are we added. As the country where just so incredibly partisan that the same is in the wheels and it will be complicated for whomever is elected . You raise the right question. I think it shows how much has changed. I believe i have my facts correct. All of our in the Clinton Administration the day after inaugural same one the attorney general which was [inaudible] in Republican Senate they cooperate with that confirmation process. Most of the tomfoolery was avoided so we had all of our cabinet in place save one, Stewart Gershon [inaudible] was the acting attorney general and we could not have asked for better cooperation from stewart until we got general person come into we got our attorney general janet reno in place. Thats how it was then. Its very different now. But boy, hopefully that will prevail but its harder also margaret going back to your recruiting. Earlier. I think its harder to recruit people who serve in government now that was perhaps ten, 20 years ago. I dont think theres much doubt about that. [inaudible] worked very hard to call attention to the challenge of the confirmation and i believe there was an effort to try to reduce the number of people that need to be Senate Confirmed which would get rid of some of the tomfoolery that takes place on capitol hill. One of the many complications out there is the fact that have in person conversations is complicated these days. Not even talking about congressional hearings in person. What about on the practical side with remote work and the fact, this is a question from one of her audience members, is likely to continue through 2021. What hurdles with the present for the president ial personnel when it comes to recruiting talent . Anyone want to take that. Was happy to jump in. I think this is going to be a new challenge kind of acrosstheboard. I think that at least in my experience as long as josh would suggest committed to go, intention of finding the tablet and the process youre going to run with that talent. Not hard to get people to stand up and come in. You know, the senate this is kind of not withstand i guess, and so this new remote work is kind of, i think its going to be what were going to be dealing with kind of acrosstheboard. Not just in a transition federal government fighting all the other things that the American People are [inaudible] one of the challenges of the zoom process is that its very hard to build a culture of support from the workers. I think when youre working in the White House Offices are really quite small and theres an intimate place to work. So its very easy to have an impact on the way people work. It helps. Its going to be more difficult to do that if were to do everything remotely, and so i think motivating people to feel their part of the team is challenge because of the distance relationship that we now have to add in so many different aspects. Its not just in government. Its throughout Corporate America as well. I would add quickly at the white house, particularly if its a new administration, you have got new people coming in. Not like existing organization like your business or professional organizations where you know people, you work with them. When you have remote work you still have that connectivity and familiarity. Certainly the Top Administration and the Biden Administration if he comes to pass, people have worked together in the past. I think picking up on your. I do think this is such an important challenging time hopefully it will call people Public Service in terms of [inaudible] josh, ive question for you on the National Security front. We may have the best healthcare system, our commanderinchief is the most protected bank in the world arguably, tremendous medical care that he is vulnerable to this virus. We as a country demonstrated for adversaries were vulnerable to a Public Health crisis. Are you concerned on day one in a in a transition what that could mean in terms of immediate National Security threat for the current or incoming president . I am, and its not something to be panicked about what it is deathly something to be worried about, is actually what i animated president bush in 2008, how we have got to do the best transition in history because the country is under threat. To your point, margaret, there is no greater moment of vulnerability than that date of the transfer of power where you can just a few days as a new chief is coming in. Let me a discussed company that mac just a little too which i think the American People made at understand that well, which is that the white house on january 17, 18th is packed with the incumbents staff and on the night of january 19, everybody is out. On the afternoon of january 20, a totally new teen team walks s you just alluded to. They will not be able to, not necessarily a but he will be in the office but even if it they could be there and everybody could be there in person, pretty much every Single Person is new to the job and thats why the transition efforts, the partnership has been promoting are so important at a moment of real National Security vulnerability. Because what they have tried to do and what we try to do in a primitive way in 2008, denis did it extremely well in 2016, is bring in the new folks, harry come up with their counterparts, station on the National Security side, do a couple of exercises so people will know how to react if one of our adversaries cease on this moment of vulnerability and decide to mount some kind of attack on chandra 20th or 21st. Very quickly, didnt the Obama Administration do that and was at the exercise pandemic preparedness . It was. And great credit to lisa monaco and susan rice the president zelensky nationals could advisors respectively. In fact, the exercise that we went through with the incoming team and Outgoing Team was precisely that. And we learned that from josh. There is so much that all of you have just Institutional Knowledge that its such a great opportunity to get as to these questions. For all of you here today, i plenty more questions but our time is up here at it want to hand it back to the partnership. Thank you so much, margaret, for that wonderful panel and hearing that has led a lot of people to raise additional questions and we hope on the span we can continue that conversation. And for you, margaret, for those who live in charlottesville we hope we can to you back to her alma mater soon. Im thrilled to be with you all this afternoon this morning. We had a wonderful panel to talk about some really important issues that. What you think the center for president ial transition for all the president ial foundations and centers and the Miller Center for putting this together. It feels for me like a january 20, 2009 was just yesterday. I remember after taking what was probably one of the Worst White House id photos possible, making my way to my brandnew office in the west wing. The parade was just Getting Started outside. And when i i walked into office the phone was ringing and the person at the other end have a substantive question. I raise this example because government never sleeps. In these unprecedented times, in times of economic and political crisis, when the stakes are particularly high, the 75 plus days between an election and an inauguration are extremely important to prepare a new administration to begin its work. In fact, those days when you could say are barely, barely sufficient. It absolutely necessary and they are absolutely critical. So this morning we had got with us a panel of experts who can help us understand the importance of the transition in highly unprecedented times, and the panel that brings a great deal of expertise to the table because of their previous work. And i and i want everyone as wed this conversation to remember that in the days a transition, in the early days of a new administration, unexpected things happen that layer on top of the crises that the new administration is already facing. Operation rescue, restore hope, waco, the Inauguration Day bomb, attacks by alqaeda in the arabian peninsula. All of these things happened during the transition or during an early days of the administration, and we want to spend to help us understand how you prepare to deal with those kinds of challenges. So with us this morning weve got Barbara Perry who is the professor and director of president ial studies at the university of virginias Miller Center. Stephen hadley was george w. Bush National Security adviser. Lisa monaco was president obamas Homeland Security and counterterrorism advisor, and john podesta who was counsel to president obama and chief of staff to president bill clinton. I want to thank you all for being with us this morning and looking for to diving into the conversation. With that, barbara, i would like to start with you as an historian, as some of you can help us with a single bit of context because [inaudible] unfortunately i have lost them but but i think i know whe first question was. We talked about this before so thank you to everyone for putting together this wonderful panel, to all of our partners. I want to leave plenty of time for the true experts on this Panel Including yourself, melody, who participate in transitions and in administrations. I think my role was to talk a little bit about transition historically and one catgut is i have not studied all 44 president ial transition staffs but it did occur to me that there may be two ways in which were using the term transition period what is the obvious one of the antiover the reins and the development of a new administration, and particularly in the modern era from fdr on word where we have a situation that the bureaucracy has proliferated from the Franklin Roosevelts new deal on board. So even more important to be populating a vast federal bureaucracy pixel in some ways its even more important from Franklin Roosevelts onward. But also it occurred to me when you think about transition that only internally about how the reins for the handed over and how the Administration Come the new administration is being populated or in the case of second term, the turnover that the first panel talked about, thats quite necessary, to repopulate and administration but also i think we think of it in terms of transition in particular if theres a crisis underway. The wonderful essay that bill and david have put together with it looked at i crises situations, five political crises and five Economic Crises in history were transitions happen are very helpful. I was asked to think about what was the best transition in history and what was the worst . Its usually easy when you talk to anything related to the presidency and the president come into Office Conference of the worst situation is the civil war. Obviously that transition from uganda to lincoln rolled the country to break a part as fighting to civil war has to be the worst. We hear about lincoln setting up his team of rivals the famous doors Kearns Goodwin book and the movie made based on that book, that lincoln was trying as hard as he could to put together a team that even include his rivals arrivals among the various factions in the United States and we give them credit for that and yet the country slid into civil war. The number one challenge that any president has face come into office. I suppose i would pick as a good transition and also a historical pattern, if you can get pattern established, would be the fact that the raking to bush 41, theyre not been many sitting Vice President who succeeded in being elected president. Think it was Martin Van Buren with the most recent with a bunch of bush 41. But a think its helpful obviously if there has been a Vice President under a president and you go from the same party to the same party and that Vice President can carry forward. Obviously felt that were differences in the party, bush 41 was viewed as more of a moderate and do some skepticism on the part of the reagan wing of the party about was 41 so there was that issue. Steve hadley has participate in this wonderful documentary that virginia public media and the Miller Center put together called statecraft about the bush 41 Foreign Policy team. If ever there was an a team that was put together it was that Foreign Policy team so i highly recommend that documentary. But it also say a point made by the last panel was that, and by the way Vice President dick cheney has said to this on a number of occasions, the 41 administration he said we did by terms of the president golden resume and the Foreign Policy team was the a team but they havent read all Work Together as a team. So when the panama crisis hit over noriega, he said they had worked together as a team that by the time the first gulf war came around they were ready and up and running completely as well of machine. But it does raise a question may be trying to do some tabletop exercises that happened at the end of the bush 43 era into the obama era. With that i will lay the groundwork historically and turn it back to you. Great. Thank thank you so much, barbar. Thats great because you also move this forward historically. John, i want to turn to you next and take us to 20082009, the Financial System was collapsing. We were involved in two wars and simultaneously president elect obama knew that he wanted to move several big piece of legislation including healthcare. During the transition period and thinking about the policy process, you arrange for general jones and Larry Summers were going to run the nationals could counsel and the ndc respectively to operate and coordinate and so they were in the white house. Im curious, why you decided that was important and if, in fact, it turned out to be an effective strategy . Thanks to the Miller Center and to the partnership for putting this program on. Its really terrific. I think this this is a good transition from the last panel, but obviously i had the expensive come into the Clinton Administration in its early days and then handed off to andy and josh at the in what i was the chief of staff. I have reflected a lot on that. I told him i thought one of the biggest mistakes that president clinton had made is that he waited until the very end to pick his white house staff, he concentrated on picking his cabinet and that i thought was understandable because he had been a governor where his cabinet was his staff but i suggested we reverse the process, i noticed andy, talking about the transition to bush 43 made the same point. And that we picked the white house staff very early so they could begin and the transition to prepare for the prospect of governing, as it turned out when the Lehman Brothers did collapse in the financial crisis really shift, that was a reinforce to get people who were being selected, the economic team, the Security Team and were selected relatively early postelection to begin to work on what their plans and strategies were in a National Security space in iraq and the economic space, i dont think during that summer and the kind of economic crisis in the fall but we went to work immediately, i would say one last word which is we have talked about the transition as though its from the beginning to end into big phases, once before the election and once after the election, before the election that you and others no because we report together on this, the first rule of transition is dont make any trouble for the campaign so that you have to plan completely in a secure environment in silence, dont let anything dribble out of the light be a crisis for the campaign or force the Campaign Office message, we had to develop the Economic Program almost divorced from the campaign but once the president was elected and came into office, it was critical that the people are going to serve him particularly in the key white house rolls in the key cabinet roles and they got together and Work Together, practice together and in fact the recovery act was developed during the course of that transition. To your point people often talk about not looking like youre measuring the drapery in the transition on a pretransition process while the campaign is still underway. One more question before i want to turn to steve, and that moment when we knew about the state of the economy, the dire state of the economy and we talked about the recovery act, simultaneously youve got a candidate who is been campaigning on a number of things that he wanted to accomplish her as a country, in that moment and in the transition how can a Transition Team think about the longterm priority as they are also managing an immediate and nearterm crisis . Clearly president obama could enter barack obama had made big promises to the mega people, tht thing we ended up doing was trying to make a down payment on those promises through the recovery act itself so major investment in education and clean energy, and putting people obviously back to work and the work that needed to be done for the country but you also had simultaneously be thinking about what were the big promises made in the course of the campaign, number one was a commitment to create healthcare for all in the beginning of the Affordable Care act was sketched out and the structures of how the white house and hhs share the responsibility for developing the program and began and i think the occupied a tremendous amount of the president s time thinking about how he was going to get that in front of the congress and of course he was successful in passing that, but he also had because of the economic crisis, he had the challenge of passing thought dodd frank and the one thing that i felt ended up because of so much on the table, Climate Change got delayed in the senate until the second year of the first term and we are unable to have the bill that passed in the house because of a sequencing for the way that you have to make decisions about, you have to decide which priority got pushed off a little bit, obviously the president came back to in the second term when i was in the white house with him and we got a lot done but that was one regret that i have from the early days. I want to turn to you now and also bring lisa into the conversation because there you are, you the National Security advisor, you know everything that we read in the paper and everything that were not reading in the paper, yummy strong sense or very clear sense all the National Security challenges facing the nation, youre preparing has to hand into the issue of the nation, how did that affect the way that it affected the decision in the final days of the Bush Administration. Thank you is a privilege to be part of this program today. Just a little perspective, i was on a transition from president george to carter and to tell you the staff under president florida was let go, i was one of three or four people asked to stay on under the new administration, when the new team came in, there is basically no staff in the National Security council, when i came into the office on the 21st of january and turned to the safe in my office, all because the documents were all gone, the president ial records that they left with the new administrati administration, when the new team started to fill in, there was no paper record in the white house, that is where we started, i would call that a nontransition in terms of National Security. The contrast then was for the bush team to help the obama team to hit the ground running and we did that in a variety of ways and of course the process was run by the chief of staff josh bolton but on the National Security site since its a president ial transition National Security advisers have been court nadir of the team and we encourage the cabinet secretaries to meet with their successors individually, talk about their departments, talk about the issues that were at stake, we also had a series of briefings on issues in which the National Security team of the outgoing Bush Administration and the incoming Obama Administration met together and we will talk through where we were on various issues, one of them interestingly enough was a saturday morning session right before inauguration when we were supposed to talk about why ron and that we can we had gotten intelligence that there was a potential threat to the inauguration itself, that saturday morning we have the fbi director common in brief the existing and then coming National Security teams about the protective threat, what we knew about it and what we were doing about it, and then a roundtable discussion, we thought the veterans were helping the new team learned the road so to speak, secretary clinton asked the most obvious question which i had not thought about which is what do we tell president obama if he is in the middle of inauguration speech and he hears a loud bang, a potential bomb attack or Something Like that, what does he do, does he hunker down, do we rush him off the stage, how will he handle that moment, there was a very productive discussion, brought to the attention by a political experience secretary clinton and we agreed on what would be brief to the incoming president and what his options were, that as a nation you want to have in your reference to the fact, we thought we would do an exercise with the new team on how to respond to an incident, initially we thought we would let them roll but then we decided we did not want to do that the new to the positions and new to working with each other, we kinda stepped through scenario and tried to explain to them what resources were available, what institutions were available, what processes were in place so in the event of a terrorist attack, they wouldve had some familiarity, thats a kind of thing you can try to do in a transition to put the new team in a position as soon as they come in the door, and handle the responsibility of issues on the 21st of january. Building on that, youve got the counterterrorism responsibility and also the Homeland Security coordination responsibility and innocent and want to ask you about the tabletop exercise that you ran they came up in the last panel in this panel as well, i wonder what you might want to add to what steve was talking about and also the question a lot of people are curious about, many people ask, what is it that you are saying in a transition. To a campaign and what is it that youre saying to the president elect, what kind of National Security and Homeland Security information are you providing and who makes that decision. Thank you melody and all round out the thank you, sir of my fellow panelist in the partnership for holding this discussion, its really nice to be on the screen with some friends and former colleagues. I have been part of three different transitions in some way shape or form from president clinton to president george w. Bush from president bush to president obama and in 2016 they obama to trump transition and its the important of this safe, effective, comprehensive handoff that dennis and others talk about in the fire panel, is so critical from a National Security and Homeland Security perspective because frankly i suspect steve would agree with me, its a signal to our allies about constancy and the signal to our adversaries that this is not a time in which to test us. That is the first point i would make. In terms of the information and who is making those decisions, one thing to note is there is a lot of govern by norms and conventions, for instance in the. John talked very rightly about the two big phases in the transition before the election and after the election, that is very relevant when were talking about what information we share, before the election was the notion of sharing information and sharing intelligence, its entirely a product of convention, there is no dictate and requirement to have these intelligence brief and information sharing or National Security information sharing, the campaign and the candidate get information and get the briefing about National Security issues indeed including the election itself entirely from the current and sitting administration willingness to share that information. That is an incredibly important point for people to be mindful of and in that case obviously is the president and the director of National Intelligence setting up a process by which to brief the candidate prior to election day, after election day, there is a provision in a lot of the path after 9 11 the terrorism prevention act that requires that the president elect although i would note i dont think theres any provision for the ice president elect to get this information that there is a requirement that the president elect gets informed of the president s daily brief, in my experience, that decision is made by the intelligence professionals, the director of National Intelligence with a brief or to the president elect and give the president elect a steady set of briefings in the transition. Similar to what the president and his team is getting in that. , that is made and should be made by the intelligence professionals so there is that study buildup of understanding what the director and state of big Strategic Issues is so there can be that handoff, the last plan i make, i was in one of the transitions from president bush to president obama, i was part of one of the briefings, i was then the chief of staff to a littleknown washington lawyer named bob mueller when he was chief of staff at the fbi and i remember quite distinctly going out to chicago to be with the been fbi director bob mueller to provide the first briefing the president elect obama got on the homeland threat state of terrorism threat and this is days after the election and it was incredibly productive, the session was very important and they immediately rank the president elect uptodate on the threats and it is something that was very clear from then president bush that needed to happen and there needed to be the full information sharing and flow so there wasnt an understanding of what it was. I want to stay with you to talk a little bit more about the tabletop exercise, it came up in the last panel, we heard and it came appear and its been written about in the press as dennis was saying that you and susan rice organized the tabletop exercise on ebola, im wondering if it you can describe in a bit more detail what the tabletop exercise look like and st was talking about, the challenge for people who necessarily in the beginning had worked together to go through a roleplay type of exercise, what does it look like, i want you to give us a sense of how you think this might work in an environment of haiku one written today when so much is happening remotely, this is a larger question for her piano when she finished about how we can go through the transition. When many people are not physically in their offices, what are the constraints that should slow normally, let me start with the tabletop exercise, what does it look like. Sure i think you should go to president george w. Bush, steve and his team because what we did in 2017 just a few days just a few days before the inauguration was a direct growth in a Lesson Learned from what they obama, incoming obama team got from president bush, it is been talked about the president bush made it clear direction for his team that was going to be a professional and comprehensive handoff and part of that was the tabletop exercise that steve had me reference, i was at the tabletop exercise within fbi director bob mueller and i remember being in that room as the outgoing National Security team from president Bush Administration and sat sidebyside and shoulder to shoulder with their incoming counterpart or designees from the incoming Obama Administration and walkthrough set of scenarios and talk to the issues that he laid out, to a person i think people felt like that was an incredibly useful, and he disses the incoming obama team and it was useful and productive well run session, fastforward eight years, im now the Homeland Security advisor to president obama and were discussing the transition and president obama was very clear in his direction that one of the best thing he experienced and he was very thankful to president bush and his team are having that comprehensive and professional transition, he said that was a high bar but lets exceeded and that was our direction in my job and that transition was to build out exactly what that tabletop would be, i knew even if we had gotten the direction from president obama that we were going to apply that same tabletop exercise, what we did, we said what should be the set of issues that we want to relate to the incoming team that we need to think about. I sat down with my team of mostly korean Homeland Security professionals drawn from across the federal government and said what are the scenarios that we want to discuss with the incoming team and we chose a cyber scenario, hurricane, we made especially sure to include a pandemic scenario because we knew that the incoming team was going to face some form of emerging Infectious Disease is a crisis because we had experienced h1n1 and then ebola and it stood to reason that this would happen and of course the Intelligence Community has been saying for several years running that emerging Infectious Disease and the danger of a potential pandemic is something that was very high on the world assessment, we included a pandemic scenario, the scenario was a novel strain of flu and we put that in the scenario planning and we had just like the bushel administration for the obama team we had the incoming designee National Security and Homeland Security officials sitting next to their counterparts walking through these sets of scenarios, i asked my then incoming successor who President Trump had asked as Homeland Security advisor, i asked him to cochair it with me, to walk through the scenarios with incoming team and it was something that we knew we were going to do and we knew we had to do because it was a virtual certainty that this set of issues would turn up in some form for the new team. Building on that and using that as an example and so many other ways that the income net administration and a new Incoming Administration have to Work Together, i am curious, this is a question from the audience members about the impact of teleworking and taking precautions because of covid19, what impact might that have on a transition and ill talk that out to the panel for anyone all start i was just going to say a couple of things, one of the things you need to do, again youre gonna have to a new team will have to li rely on the existing staff, and the transition of the Obama Administration they made clear they wanted the senior people to leave, the senior directors to leave but we had therefore ensured there was an existing director who is going to be running each of the respective offices, that you can do now and it gives the new team someone to deal with and turn to from the getgo as soon as they come in. One of the problems will be access to documents and the other thing we said these are president ial records but we asked each of the directors who are running offices in the transition. In the early days of the Obama Administration, make copies of the documents you will need in order to do your job, that may be a little bit harder to do in terms of her virtual environment. Third thing that we did, and the months running up to the election and after i was accumulating a list of initiatives that were underway that were decision that the bushel administration could take but they were also what we can hold over to the Obama Administration, one of the things that i did i took the stack of issues and questions and sat down with tom tomlin and jim jones was a National Security advisor went through one by one, do you want us to take this action, is this something you want us to hold on for the new administration and then we took the result of that and got the sign off. A lot of that you can do in a virtual environment, the trick will be access to files, that will be more difficult in a covid19 environment. But the people part of it is manageable through the zoom tools and other available. Of course, he sort of alluded to this but youre not doing class by briefings on zoom, that gives a whole layer and dimension of difficulty to operate in a classified environment when homes have not been built for that, indirectly related to that, i think the last panel hit on the Biggest Issue which is building the teamwork that is necessary to be able to create a culture that is going to Work Together and Work Together effectively right from the getgo, weve all gotten way to working remotely over the last several months, i think there has to be a lot of tension given by the leaders, they are there now and moving forward, President Trump is reelected and we wish him well, if there is a new incoming creating that culture inside the white house and administration, it is going to be more challenging operate remotely and eventually i think there will be physically in the office as we see most of the people in the Current Administration physically in the office that has its own challenges, i think its going to be hardest on the National Security team quite frankly. Thank you. A couple of other issues im watching are clock and theres so much to talk about, i want to ask a question about the legislative branch, obviously weve been focusing on the executive branch incoming a administration or this year with an existing a administration, one of the audience members is thinking about this, what role for the legislative branch, how can the legislative branch help facilitate the peaceful transfer of power to ease in improving transition and doing that there is a Historical Context for this where the congress has been better or worse, more helpful or not that you might also want to add to this. All take us down but that, one way to look at it is through the lens of 2000, first of all our nonpartisan conversation today through the panels and people who participated in the presidencies of all of my fellow panelists have from different sides of the aisle, but to show up that bipartisanship and interpartisanship, can happen and can make our country better, from bush 43 to obama, we talked about that and from obama to trump, the best transition are best for our country and so they are best if they are bipartisan and interpartisan, and if there working as teams across party lines, i wanted to mention something that melanie will know quite a bit abouthe about, she e through the fast process of Edward Kennedy on the hill and he was noted for not only having the best staff but sending them on to other positions in the melody went on to the white house for president obama and was involved in the transition, bring up senator kennedy because it was a case that he reached out to president bush 43 and bush 43 reached out to him because president george w. Bush coming from the governorship of texas worked in a bipartisan way in texas and was a member of the legislature. He had a pattern and practice of doing that, as did Edward Kennedy, he is noted by those who approach him being partisan but he can be bipartisan and may be nonpartisan when it was toward a common legislative goal, and bush 43, no child left behind, education reform and president bush 43 and biden senator kennedy and his family down to the white house within a few days of the inauguration in 2001 and you need to think back, how divided our country was, the bush gore context in the uncertainty that went on for so many days that had an impact on the transition and what did bush 43 do then reach out to senator kennedy and then to watch the new movie 13 days about the crisis in senator kennedys governor and in turn if you go to the library at smu george w. Bush library, you will see a handwritten thank you note for which senator kennedy was always famous, i think he got that from his mother always writing thank you notes, he wrote a lovely handwritten thank you note to the president george w. Bush thanking him or inviting him and his family to the white house and then he said at the end i know will have differences but i hope on education and healthcare we will find Common Ground and ill be down at the white house for bill signing. If that is not a pattern that we need to follow now, i dont know what is. Melody, another thing a legislature can do is following the pattern of moan under memorializing the statute best practices. So we have the transition act that was passed after 9 11 with the best practices that the bushel administration did do, this requirement for table talk exercise is a sharing of information that is in the statute, building on Lessons Learned and memorializing not putting them in a statute can be a very helpful role for the legislature for future transitions. I would also mention something john podesta mentioned, the most important thing that the congress and the senate can do is speed through the confirmation of the government officials for the new president , that is clearly the most support think they do, get the president s team in place so the president can start their administration. I would add one more to the list which is congress is sworn in on january 3, they received the vote of the Electoral College on january 6 and begin working before january 20. We are talking about transition and the time of crisis, during that period of time in 2009, there was a good deal of work being done by the transition with the congress, the deal with the simultaneous Economic Crises in the country to save the Auto Industry and to implement tarp to build the recovery act and got people working again, we were losing 500,000 jobs a month, at Vice President biden is elected as i hope you will be, they will have an opportunity to try to do simultaneously tackled the environment, the economic crisis and really work to put in place their strategy for dealing with a covid19 crisis, the economic crisis cant really be resolved until we finally resolve the pandemic crisis. So congress has a vital role to play in those conversations will start taking place in december, and january and as you remember, the recovery act was passed in the first week of february. So calling out senator kennedys work list with the president that led to no child left behind in some other legislation that they worked on together is a model for how people can begin right from the getgo to say can we cooperate on what we can move, obviously the constellation of the congress is also up for grabs in the selection and whos going to control the senate will be resolved but once that is known you have to begin working right off the bat to basically implement a program as you come into office. Talking about working across the aisle and bipartisanship and what can get accomplished, i want to ask the final couple of questions, question about innovation, maybe a couple of different perspectives, how do we create the Transition Team a new administration create a culture of intubation and when were thinking about, it cannot be an Incoming Administration or changes in personnel, what we see, if you have not read at highly recommend it in terms of personal different president s have a process in different ways, there is a team of rival approach, there is literal team of rival approach of bringing in people from a party into your administration and ways to shape up the thinking and expand and broaden in terms of ideas to create opportunities for innovation, i am curious, what ways do you think we might approach innovation and is it even imaginable at this point given the polarization and the vitriol that exist that we might have people from different parties or even different wings from the same party that are coming into an administration. You are already seeing to your last point a sense of unity with the Democrat Party drawing on the diversity and the expertise from the different ways of the Democrat Party, that is evidence and a lot of what we seen and the development and Vice President biden approaches impositions and platforms. On the question of innovation more broadly, i think there needs to be a sense and a reminder the people in government should never forget, they are not the source of wisdom on a set of issues, having a productive way of collaborating in getting information from the private sector to draw upon innovative ideas outside of government, bring the perspectives to the table i think is absolutely invaluable, you point to things that the Obama Administration did with the creation of u. S. Digital service and stuff like that to try and bring innovative and cutting edge talent into and across agencies on the digital side, those types of practices should continue. I want to say john podesta, i want to invite you in on this, innovation is great but there are a lot of ideas out there, i think the trick is figuring out politically what are the ideas whose time has come and are salable and sequencing them, i will give you little criticism of the bushel administration on the domestic side for which i was not responsible so its easy for me, we led on Social Security reform giving people access to the stock market, where we probably shouldve read for solvency, we probably shouldve done immigration first before we did Social Security reform because we did Immigration Reform to close to an election, part of it is new ideas and innovations but part is having a political strategy and when the time is come how do you build the coalition was a priority in the master of that is john podesta, john tell us how you do it. Im going to take this conversation in a slightly different direction, i think president s dont think about performance nearly enough in the public quite frankly is skeptical about whether government can deliver, one things i think bill clinton did at the beginning in charge of the government reinitiative is consciously focus on rebuilding trust in government and the Vice President deserves a lot of credit for being able to do that in the American People have the sense that government was delivering, i think that you saw that in Public Attitude about their faith in the ability for government to deliver, i would advise the administration, whoever is leading it to pay more attention to that and again, i think one of the things because im paying attention to this campaign that the Vice President has done is woven a story together about the need to simultaneously attack the pandemic crisis, the economic crisis, the racial crisis and the climate crisis, that takes huge amount of coordination at the White House Level two top of mind strategy but at the end of the day it really means implementation, implementation and implementation. That has got to be number one. With her last one minute and 45 seconds, im just curious. [laughter] no matter who wins the election what do you think the Biggest Challenges for transition and barb you can put that in Historical Context. I may offer this and it is a bipartisanship as well because its an interview that we did for bush 43 project and gephardt who is the House Minority leader during bush 43. This is after 9 11 and he is speaking to the pentagon and he is speaking to the president and he said i said mr. President the most important thing that we trust one another, this is about life and death, our first responsibility is to keep the people safe, we field we all failed and we have to do better and i know politics and everything that happens here, this we had to keep politics out and we have to do whatever we can to keep the country safe and to avoid anything like this happening again and this is related to terrorism but i certainly think its a matter of life and death with covid and thats what we have to keep her eye on. Absolutely, i have thoroughly enjoyed being in conversation and we could do it for another hour, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and i want to turn this over to amy walter. Thank you melody, thank you so much and i am amy walter, im the Senior Editor at the political report, i will give you my view and trying to wrap my head around getting this transition correctly but im really excited for the next panel that i get to moderate. And the Governor Cuomo theyre able to campaign but they have to govern and no one understands that his reality and women who i talked to in the next moment about taking the transition from being candidate and even if it happens to be the sitting president of the United States to them coming in post november and transitioning in that time to taking office in january and putting forward an agenda that hes talking about nonstop on the campaign trail and also having experiences coming in times of crises and economics i think they will have great insights into what the 2021 process im going to start here with alexis who served as secretary of labor under president clinton she was chair of the dnc and Deputy Director of thenpresident Transition Team, aaron hughes, to george w. Bush, she also served at his director of communications, type of government and on 2000 campaign, and president obama the director White House Office of public engagement, and Public Affairs and Market Selling to secretary of education under george w. Bush and she works for the texas. Ticket for being here not only do you share with your panelist and for a candidate going into first turn in the president who served obviously and one and one to serve a second term, can you help us understand what that looks like meaning the candidate and the income net and how you approach both of those. Im delighted to be here, i think its absolutely right to say particularly when you are going through your third term and for the country you contract herself with the predecessor and suddenly you have to have a more concrete plan for how you want to get it done and deal with all of the incoming. I think one of the cochairs of president obama transition in the first term to a job in route, we started in july, president obama by seeking the democratic chief of staff and how they organize in working with the policy from the campaign and the policy work once he was in office, combination of thinking through how you would implement the strategies and articulated in finding the right people and we have a lot of time interviewing and president obama made it clear to make it shorter to assemble the team and not only shared his values and integrity also the priority and hit the ground running, one point i will make and how incredibly helpful president bush and the entire team during the transition and he made it very clear the transition of power even though we disagree on any possible power that you can think of in the treasure trove of information that proved invaluable and they could not have been more open and candid for coming with us to make sure we would benefit from their experience and hit the ground running and profitable going into second term is different, now you not only have the initial challenge of the team and they Work Together on the campaign in new people coming in, president obama set often in the beginning the best players on the field in the end of the second term he is on that team and thats very different, many members of our cabinet have a second term so the president went to the discipline process going every two years and said heres where we are, heres our priority, what we must do and what is nice to do to help frame our energy as we went into each successful. And what they said about the first transition, we were not knowing what was expected for us to go through what happened in september in 2008 when we went into bankruptcy in the suing crash of the bank in the Automobile Industry going into bankruptcy and millions of people losing their jobs and their houses and thats where the challenge comes in you push for to the permanent agenda and dealing with the crisis, i will say the continuity going from Republican Administration to a democratic one was made much easier with having helpful predecessor in the second term, when she when it sends affirmation of what you did in your first term which makes you realize two things, you must be on the right track in terms of how the country used your accomplishments and secondly how quickly a one of the second term. Really good points and somebody worked for your predecessor, karen hughes and you also have a rare experience but a compressed transition time, bush gore happened december 12, 2000, now you have to go through december and you have a month before your inaugurated, i want to talk about how you balance you personally room folks were working with the Texas Governor in the period in between when you are doing the legal work and how you made that transition work. As you can imagine it was an excruciating time, the only thing that would get you through something as intense as the president ial campaign in the last couple months, and two months its over, and then when you come to election day you stumble across and of course it was not over, i felt like id ran a marathon and somebody told me keep running impersonally it was a chaotic time and for example we were going to move to washington and i needed to sell my house, was not wealthy and i cannot afford to have two houses, things like that, i cannot put my house on the market because i was afraid the reporters would take that as being presumptuous that we had one. It was a very difficult time, we had several things that really benefited us, one president bush when he first set off to campaign for president , and the chief of staff of the Governors Office said i want you to come up with a plan for what i do when i went and that was in june of 1999, 16 months before the election so johnson had been working on transition planning all that time and at some point it given me a very comprehensive status and information about the communication function with the white house and how they are set up in president bush talk to me the day of the third debate, i wouldve thought there wouldve been other things on her mind but the third debate we were on a long walk in a home in missouri where we were staying and he started talking about how he was thinking about structuring the white house staff so we had some preparation, florida during the recount was so intense with the phones, the lawyers and i was on the phone with margaret every day and in the office of the president , there was not much time during florida itself to be thinking about the transition to the white house, that happened all very quickly when the election was decided on decembee plans to go to washington, that was with president clinton and president bush and Vice President gore, we tried to meet with her counterparts, the Transition Team had it appointed by september 15 and we had a pretty good idea of who it was going to be in one of the things that president bush did effectively was blended team of people from texas who knew him well with the team of experienced people who knew Washington Well and so andy was our chief of staff, our legislative director, Vice President cheney served as chief of staff and secretary of defense in new Washington Well, he really blended those experiences and those of us, remember president bush, he gave me my Job Description and i said what you mean by the teleport to the president , i want to go to every meeting where decision is being made and tell the people how i will approach that decision and they want you to tell me what you really think so i was going to meetings about what i often do very little but we had people around the table with our senior staff who knew a great deal about washington and the policy issues. I want to come to you, you are in the 92 campaign and to move over in a transition in your one of the people here on this panel who are working for candidate and he was going and sitting down, they beat their job, how was that, what is that experience like, and turned out because you beat them. It is interesting you told the question that way, hello to my fellow panelist, its important to work with in some capacity over the years, i will tell you what its like, me personally, ill never forget the day in caring use the term transition planning which is something you dont really talk much about thats a secret moment when youre engaged with the transition process and you cannot talk about it and no one measuring the tiny office preparing if the president wins so then you talk formally about transition. For me i was a part of the small office of transition planning that led to the transition process and they did a company that day to the white house the head of transition and you never know how that is going to feel but i have to give andy a lot of credit and i remember that day very well, he was very professional, he was very welcoming, we were sitting there in the roosevelt room and you have your list of the Critical Issues that you want to make sure that you understand what the handoff process is going to be about, so for us in our transition process we were very clear about the Critical Issues in the key agents we wanted to engage the white house on and not just the larger white house agenda. So for us it turned into a real business meeting, a real business session that was very respectful but honestly i had a revelation going into because we were not sure about the receptivity and the degree that we had received, i had a little insight because i was in the Carter Administration and the secretary of labor and director of the womens bureau, i had experience that transition of the other end but really from an Agency Perspective in a very limited role, my republican counterpart and ill never forget it was connie at the time he was president bushs leader of the opm and she was the liaison of the department and so connie to this day was my contact so i acted quite frankly what i had experienced many years before in a transition, i was not disappointed, i know that the administration, there has been challenges but i have to say that handoff for us was respectful, disciplined, we did not go into the agencies not knowing who each of our contacts would be and that is very important and that was a White House Team that made it very clear to us that they would be available to us for whatever we needed, we had to take advantage of that offer, for me, respect and cooperation in clear lines of communication of what you really need as you engage in that process and get rid of all the preconceived motions and ideas in the partisan moment that often cant come into play when you just come off of a very political environment to win an election. Yes, i hope there is certain people listening, that is wonderful, thank you. I want to talk to you about the process of this and again, you been on a campaign, you and karen both worked for the governor so you know him personally a little bit better than a Traditional Campaign staffer who maybe never met this candidate before it never worked for them. How do you ensure that you and valerie touched on this, how do you ensure all the promises that you make on the campaign trail, all the commitments you make on the campaign trail are able to translate into a policy especially the chaotic 100 days that youre trying to figure out where the bathrooms are, to know that you are staying focused on keeping what you talk about on the campaign moving forward into governing. Thank you amy is terrific, its a testament that we were involved with them and as we know things go better when you have women involved, anyways great to be here, i think you have to know what youre about and you have to have a game plan and focus and priority and president bushs case we knew and that secret moment that they talked about education and something obviously had great comfort for him, he did not need a lot of tutoring or talking points and had a great record in texas and what one does a state policy and the understanding and what were trying to achieve in washington something in the aftermath of the contention selection is really something that americans can gather around incenses around education that certainly was true in the eight years of the Bush Administration working with people like senator tom kennedy and congressman George Miller and continued into the Obama Administration and i was on a panel yesterday and we leaned into those issues that i think all americans not their heads about, in terms of managing i want to emphasize karens point about having people around you as president who know you well and know what you are about in no washington about. I remember having that feeling and i remember what they were talking about but i do know a heck of a lot about george w. Bush and how he thinks about things and thinks about priorities and the like, i think being elected at this point, humble and the opportunity and understanding the situation and being at the white house theres 20 and work for everybody in figuring out how to create a symphony of players with the expertise that can get something done and in our case the First Priority was no child left behind and all the things that president bush did on week one in office to build the bridges and build relationships and get things done, i do have one quick story about that when he first met with senator kennedy in the oval office and literally the second day of the administration probably and i remember him saying you were probably in the room at the time so the press is going to come in here and ask us about choice and voucher, here is what icon president bush is going to say about that, im going to say we had a great conversation and were off to a great start and not take debate essentially, senator kennedy returned the favor and it was the first of many many good gess that they both showed to each other along the way and netted out in a piece of landmark legislation and Mental Health parity and on and on. My question about that, obviously a key issue on the campaign trail in the fact that the election was so contention and ended the way that it ended, push the idea of having a bipartisan deal with senator kennedy from the very top and in there at some point it mightve been number three. Absolutely, you recall during the transition within president elect bush invited washington leaders to the Governors Mansion in texas including congressman George Miller who have watched and admired the work that we were doing in texas to close the achievement gap and to measure and invest resources and whatnot, absolutely, timing is everything certainly in politics and policy that we had the need for something that can be common because across the aisle and a cast of characters and players, frankly we were taken republicans where they had never gone before and maybe some were uncomfortable going, people who were here to abolish the department of education type republicans that they were following their leader an important way and i think that is how we started the conversation. I want to go back to something that you said about being in this tiny little office, we cannot talk to anybody in your held up there for a while, can you demystify the process for the rest of us, what it looks like and everybody here on this panel that this planning starts over the summer of an Election Year and in the office for six months, is without looks like. I indicated the ceo of that and i immediately, that was july of 1992, i went immediately from the convention operation, shutting it down to being a part of the small Office Culture in transition and i think every president is different in terms of how we approach it but the first for us, there were five of us in office and that we could have no conversation with anyone especially bill and hillary clinton. [laughter] they did not want to jinx the process. That was grilled into her head, you cannot talk about it so i was like how do you do the work if you cannot get this and you cant talk about it. The first thing that you do, you get the ground roof and im in little rock with a Huge Campaign operation and its like why do i stay out here and they gave me a soft grip about labor, i cannot remember what it was. And i did a little of that in terms of labor union and i could never talk about transition planning and so what happened and we have three lanes in transition planning, there is a white house lie lane when you lk at the white house operation in the first 100 days of how you lost the presidency and the cabinet, the second lane is that National Security lane, you have to have a transition plan that already has a National Security clearance so they can really be doing very quiet and delicate work of the National Security issues with the National Security clearance that you actually can get ahead of time from the agency and the state department because you do have to reveal who is working on what, the third lane and this is where we were charged with everything else, it was called the agency and liaison. That was my portfolio, i was responsible for organizing all of the issues, the Critical Issues in all of the agencies that you would inherit of the Income Administration but you had to take into account the plan that was going on in lane one the president s agenda, the white house agenda, the first 100 days and you have to know what agency would impact the execution of the president agenda, in my case of course bill Clinton Obama plan is going to be the first thing on the table which was a heavy lift of treasury, heavy lift of economic counsel, getting very clear about the treasury affirmation department of commerce operation and all of those especially impacting the first 100 days would be at the top of my list, and the transition planning process you are laying out the priority, get these liens straight and then you can select a key leadership that will go into each of these areas should the president when, that is very painful, the other half i was cochair for some of the transition operations and i to say its one of the most effective operations that ive been a part of but of course getting elected but you have all of these people and some of them you cant tell them what their role is going to be, you simply have to say to them i need to be on standby, should the president when, should you have a team in rating that you have to be ready to deploy the very next day, should the president when the election, actually at midnight that night, thats how it was set up, it is a quiet operation but strategic and a lot of planning in the president s agenda in the country have a handle on the Critical Issues on the Previous Administration may have been dealing with that you know you will inherit on day one and there can be time to think about what are you going to do, you have to have made them preliminary decisions on how we operate, i was focused on the entire program in particular interested when there was a panel that saidlinton waited in the briefing with the Obama Administration, what happened, they were inheriting an environment that was very different from ours and the inauguration, you have to really be thoughtful about what youre inheriting and its not all about you and what you want to execute in the Current Administration, i could go one but thats in terms of the secretiveness that goes on in transition planning. Thank you for drawing the curtain back for us, im going to start and anybody else that can feel free to chime in as well, there are some questions that we have gotten from the conference in a number of them reference career government staff, how do you work with them, one question was about the useful types of information that were shared with the buy career staff in another one was about the recommendation that we can give to career staff on how youre prepared for a transition especially if what were doing is transitioning from one party in power to the next. Again i think thats cooperation to get from your predecessor and i mentioned president bush made it clear why he expected full cooperation and that made our job a lot easier, we did have as she mentioned earlier we had both people who knew washington and been in the government before having jobs in one of the cochairs of the transition was enormously helpful as well, i was a newcomer to washington but i knew the obamas and so i think it was really important that we signal to the career teams all over and the professionals that we value their input and we werent just going to come in with a set of priorities and listening to the council as we try to get the ball running by showing respect that they deserve, many them particular in agency with National Security agency, intelligence agency, Justice Department and it was a long time and we deferred the professional, not just during the transition but throughout our time in office and so it was important to hit the ground running and again, it made it much easier from president bush and so the final point i would make, every populated agency, many of us political appointees myself included spent a lot of time, this is post inauguration, going to the agency and meeting with the career team to demystify who we were in the sense of oh here they come, they think they know everything, we wanted to lift them up by having senior people from the white house and outside of the white house and travel around to the agencies and that was a priority in all and i enjoyed. I have been there and i think our career in Public Service treasure in our culture carriers within the agencies and departments incredibly knowledgeable in a tremendous asset to president and her citizen, you need to develop those relationships on day one especially in places like the dom the weather going to help you develop those president s budget and detail around things like the state of the union that are quickly going to be developed and delivered, my own experience is they were valuable, we listen to them, and i think to overlook or to suggest that they are part of the deep state or some such is really disrespectful and tragic because they are really such a treasure to our citizens into any administration. The white house when we first went to the white house i realized there is such a source of Institutional Knowledge and i remember one of the things the first couple of weeks i was planning an event and i was going to do in the rose garden and somebody said you cannot do that we only use the rose garden for good news in just the Little Things like that about what the different rooms are used for in the tradition and what is not, where i found because the transition, we did not have much interaction with our predecessors out the white house the first time we came in, i found the career staff to be absolutely invaluable when i was at the state department in the second term when i became undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Public Diplomacy at the time was a stepchild at the state department, you may remember the u. S. Information agency had been merged into the state department and a lot of hard feelings and when i got there they were calling the merger the murder of usia, i wanted to send a signal that the Public Diplomacy was important and valued in one of the first things i did i had the deputy come from the White House Personnel Office and i said i want you to recruit some of the best Foreign Service officers in the state department because i want other people the state department to look and say, dan smith is going to Public Diplomacy because i wanted to send a signal and we will have the very best people in dan smith became my chief of staff and others who were fabulous career Public Servants and he taught me so much, every day that i was at the state department and i agree wholeheartedly, there absolutely a treasure and were completely and valuable to my ability to do a job on behalf of the country. Im in a throughout an elephant in the room so to say thinking about a potential transition in 2021 from former Vice President joe biden were to win we will know this president had a lot of rhetoric around accusations that the election would be rigged, he would win as long as the election is fair, i would just like to weigh in on a couple of questions, one your assumption that after 200 plus years of peaceful transition, do you still believe that is going to be the case is time around in the second even if we assume this is going to go smoothly if biden were to win and we have Inauguration Day and the new president is sworn into office that the transition that you are talking about was lovely and people are helpful and Work Together and use the time in between election day and the inaugural to learn stuff from each other, what do you think that is going to be the case this time around. Who wants to start without one. I think that we have to remember we had difficult elections before in our history, i went back in preparation for this and. Reporter president bushs speech the night he became president the night it became clear he won on december 12 when the Supreme Court stopped the beach house in florida, i read that speech and i think thats exactly the speech that we need to hear and one of the things that he talked about were the lessons of history, he talked about another difficult election in 1800 when there was a time in the Electoral College and it went to the house and i think it took six days and 36 votes to be resolved and Thomas Jefferson became the president and that was the first transfer of the presidency in our young democracy from one party to another and president jefferson wrote shortly thereafter, he talked about the steady character of our countrymen as a rock to which we can safely work. President bush the night he was going to win the election referred to that in the steady character of the American People and urged respect for each other and urged generosity of spirit and risk and went out of his way to say im not the president of one party on the president of one country, whether you voted for me or not i will seek to earn your support and serve your best interest, he is very gracious to Vice President gore and said he knew they both went through the same thing and they cannot imagine how difficult the moment must be for him and he thanked his supporters, both his own supporters and Vice President gore supporters, i think that is what we need to hear, i certainly hope we will hear at this time and there have been difficult and divisive elections before in our history and i hope that gives us some comfort as we look back and realize her country has done this before many times. I would say what karen has just said, just in the words of the great prophet, i remain a prisoner of hope, the way karen has just said this, she made me remember how i felt listening to president bush that day, i was literally still in my office trying to quickly pack up my books in my desk into really get out of that moment on capitol hill and i dont remember who quite frankly the agency was from the bush transition, who was there but i was there with tears in my eyes and and i remember this person who looked at me and said, sticks and i remember they said personally, that we have in the spirit in which we sold i dont know what this moment and we talked about the terrific career with the servant and i think this election is long dated, we will be dependent on their steadiness and the continuity of their leadership in Social Security checks and unemployment, benefits have to be taken care of, the business of government in the lives of everyday people, i hope that we will show respect if we are in a moment of crises and i hope not bitterness, i hope we will remember the servants that we just talked about because much will be on their shoulders during that time. Valerie. First of all obvious President Trump is no president bush and yes its a Contentious Campaign and i do think hope from Vice President biden a couple weeks ago where he said if i win ill be an american president and that is of the whole country, i dont feel President Trump has done that in the past four years which is deeply troubling and i am hopeful by nature i believe in but by change but i recognize it is to be hopeful in my counsel who is my former chief of staff of the last term in the white house and i met him when he was a huge organizer just graduated from yale back in 2007 and organizer in iowa ive known him a long time and Vice President biden has given him the responsibility of transitioning, hope for the best but plan for the worst and i think theres going to be a lot more responsibility and Vice President Transition Team to reach out to the career folks because i honestly do not think theyre going to get a lot of cooperation from the senior people and certainly not from the president , i would like to hope those that work in the white house or who are political appointees going into the transition, i was heartened by the comments of many of the republicans on the floor who doubled down with a smooth transition of power but i am actually not confident and i worry deeply and profoundly worried that if the election goes much beyond november 3 which i think we should expect it might because so many people have absentee for their own safety and theres no notion for one reason doing it from the military of the war in many of our states and theres so many questions and concerns that it is legitimate and i worry that that is getting a lot of anger among American People and the challenge whoever is elected is not just to ensure that government itself is functioning while going into the next term but the polarization of our country begins to steal, that will be a real challenge in a matter who wins. I would like to add a practical point, as it goes on and generally 20th is going to come in the business of government must go on, if there is a transition in executive orders that have been issued fairly recently, that can be revoked and if President Trump is reelected there will be a changing of the guard, there will be personnel changes and so just the practical reality of making this thing go, i hope will cause people to rise to the occasion and get over the politics and get on with it one way or the other and weve all been privileged with two people who are respectful of the role that they played in certainly the people around them in the case that is around. That leaves me with a couple minutes left and it leads to this question that we had from one of the audience about the recommendation that you can give to career leadership to prepare whatever moment may be coming for them, you always talk about how you lean on them during the transition but what should they be prepared for, alexis you want to weigh in on that. I certainly do i think its so important and i love when valerie talked about the outreach that they did in the very beginning, it can align them that they are Public Servants of the American People and that at the end of the day that is who they serve and they have to reach deep into their selves to take pride in the work that they are doing and to know that they are making a difference and you have to put on the honor and be prepared to discontinue to do your work, continue to bloom where you are planning and whatever agency it is and remind yourself and your callings that you are making a difference on behalf of the American People. And to understand what the principal and the president wants to accomplish and get smart and strategic and get creative about how you help him achieve those objectives. That is one of the hard things when youre first there, what is the priority, what do i need to do right now, for the clear sense of what needs to be done and when and what is most important, there is so much coming at you that is very important to have the clarity. I agree with that but i think what i was responding to, if we dont have a clear outcome it is going to be up to them to keep the focus and if you are not getting that direction that is very, very hard. I think they have been frankly beaten down a lot over the last nearly four years, i think of Vice President wins itll be a come not upon him to lift them back up and validate the Important Role that they play, make it clear where there have been changes in the norm but safe i independent Justice Department port relying on the scientists for believing the Intelligence Community and rehabilitate the Important Role in which they play and i can ensure you there are many who are feeling pretty wounded. We have come to the end of our time and i want to think everybody on the panel for incredible insight and advice valerie, jared, karen, margaret andel handed back to phil as he is going to close it up for us. Thank you, what a terrific panel that was when just about three hours in a huge thing to all of our panelist who i will come back to, but may go to Key Takeaways or at least what my notes are from the last great three hours. First the hallmark of our system is the peaceful transfer of power, you do not want to play politics without, we have one sitting president and that president needs to sprint through the tapes, the constitution allows that. In that contested 2000 election Vice President gores gracious consolation speech so president bush preparing well behind the scenes and president elect bush being ready to take office. Also we saw a terrific transfer in bush 43 to obama. President bush knew particularly from experience of 9 11 how important it was to have a peaceful transfer in case there was an emergency and there was an emergency in the 2008 financial crisis. My second tech take away their two faces to a transition for theres the preelection phase when the incoming team is preparing itself and that is while the election is going on. They need to work silently on personnel and policy planning and they should stay away from the campaign. That makes it easier for both parts of the same team to do their job but after the election the Transition Team should start to plan and build. Thats going to be a big challenge this year. Covid is not just a crisis which will need to be addressed along with the economic crisis but we also have the racial justice. Covid presents real challenges, building a culture as we feel every day in our own workplace how hard it is to work with one another and here we are building a brandnew team and doing that in the state of a crisis this particular going to be hard. Then there are additional challenges on that. Access to documents and access to security clearances to secure operating so we are not prepared for secured committees and communication will need to work that out in the transition period. Building the team and spellings refer to it as a symphony of players and the importance of diversity in a team that looks like america and both of those things are really important. What is particular critical getting that done first can be super helpful but then its also important as we heard. I think a cabinet done by Inauguration Day is a good benchmark. They will have to go through confirmation hearing for the confirmation poses an increasing challenge because of the politics of the confirmation perhaps that something the whole country in this moment of crisis can focus on doing well and not deepened the discord but to try to get beyond it. Finally also trusting the Civil Service and in the white house National Security Council Staff often Service Officers or military personnel. There is Civil Servants across the government who are prepared to help them pride themselves in to have the president and the cabinet hit the ground running when they arrive. Category 4 is to prepare for the worst and that requires coordinating between the incoming team in the Outgoing Team. We heard about National Security challenges including with the current and sitting administration what decisions they have to make and what can be deferred to the incoming president and then coordinating with that precedent. That is challenging because of security clearances and other things but its something previous transitions have done well in something that should be able to happen even in the current pandemic. And the pandemic, the current pandemic proves the importance of this. Planning for the next pandemic could be a very different one. We could have different transmission rates infection rates and also mortality rates so if there were different pandemic kicking off how would the government respond differently and it is circumstances if they were different in some emergency efforts can be done with congress as well during a transition period that is congressional response to an emergency, new activities either in an economic crisis or the one they are doing now. You need to be negotiating those arrangements during the transition period as what happened in 2008 and 2009. And then finally the fit the most important one as look for opportunities to bring the country together going from campaigning to governing is a really difficult challenge. And bush 43 particulate coming out of the contentious election president elect bush immediately started reaching out to senator ted kennedy and that really set the mood and tone for a year of hard work that led to no child left behind. President clinton similarly started focusing with the Outgoing Administration and in the early months of his administration on passing what became nafta. We have been imprinting this first year and the First Six Months of that administration when the ledger was a pretty turn to a bipartisan piece of legislation that helps bring it back together. So i think that was my five takeaways and we look forward to hearing yours. Please be in touch with us then the friends of the partnership for Public Service. First a big thanks to all of our panelists. What a pleasure and a joy to have five former staff and former National Security adviser three former cabinet secretaries, two counselors to the president , tude journalists in the country Walter Brennan and amy walter here at the institute and not just me and my two daughters and my superstar colleague Melody Barnes and Barbara Perry. The bush 41 clinton bush 43 Obama Foundation and centers and especially our partner jim mcgrath and Michael Strout meant thank you for your partnership and friendship and indeed the director of the center for transition and the partnership for Public Service; author now on the study of transitioning prices available on the web site. We want to thank the george and Judy Mortensen Practice Fund on this event. We couldnt do this great work without you and all of our supporters and finally thanks to all of you for a watching this and for playing the most important job in art democracy that of an informed citizenry so on behalf of all of my colleagues at the Miller Center who have worked hard with the center for transition to pull this together a big thanks to everyone. This is the university of utah in Salt Lake City were Vice President mike pence will face democratic candidate Kamala Harris tomorrow night. The debate stage is being set up in this hall and the agreement whether plexiglas should be installed between the candidates and whether the candidates will sit at separate tables are stand but they agreed to be separated by 12 feet after President Trump and several white house staff tested covid19 positive. I honestly will tell you i dont think when the dust dust settles in this election is going to be whether america becomes more republican are more democrat, whether we are more liberal or more conservative, more red or more blue. I think the choice in this election is whether america remains america. As joe biden has said from the moment he entered this race its about the soul of our nation, who we are, what we stand for and maybe most importantly who we want to be. Pentagon and state Department Officials reviewed u. S. Readiness for a biological attack and the response of the coronavirus and foreign adversaries. They appeared before two house subcommittees