And thank you all for attending. And please join us for many more events today. Iall right. Good afternoon and my name, susan poser. Im the president of hofstra university, and i welcome you once again to hofstra and this very interesting president ial conference this plenary executive policymaking in the Obama Administration will focus on evaluating the nature and success the obama team and its policy ideas from different perspectives from a former cabinet member, from journalists as. We continue our assessment of the presidency of barack obama. I will provide very introductions of our panelists who are joining us this conversation today. They dont really begin to scratch the surface of their bios, as you might imagine. The honorable jacob lue, who served as a 76th secretary of the treasury, as white house chief of staff as the director of the office of managed mint and budget, actually a position that he had previously held in the second term of the Clinton Administration and as deputy secretary of state for management and resources i welcome secretary lew. Peter baker who is working very hard for us today. I think this is your third check on me is the chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times responsible for reporting on the biden presidency right. Now, he previously wrote about president j. Trump and barack obama for New York Times and president s bill clinton and George W Bush for. The washington post. Welcome, mr. Baker. Welcome back, mr. Baker. Chris whipple is author, political commentator and documentary filmmaker, one of his books, the president s explores the evolution of the white house chief of staffs responsibilities. In the past 50 years. From nixon to the Obama Administrations to his most recent book, the fight of his life inside Joe Bidens White house examines eternal internal power struggles and policy making. In the first two years of the biden presidency. And welcome mr. Whipple, they are joined on the stage by rich hayes, the Zagreb School of business, and Professor James sample from the morris dean school of law. And of course, by bose at this point needs no introduction. So i will now hand it over dr. Bose to to begin this afternoons conversation. Thank you. Thank you. President posner. And thank you, everyone, for us today. We is very exciting to host this panel, this plenary discussion. So many distinguished speakers and my distinguished colleagues, weve spent a lot of time over the last day and a half examining president obamas election his media coverage, his communication strategies. Weve just had two fantastic sessions this morning Foreign Policy, u. S. Transatlantic relations. Weve had scholarly panels on Health Care Policy and Foreign Policy leadership and military intervention and this is the session now or we to talk a little bit about the decision behind the scenes. It is essential, i think, for those of us in Political Science and so many colleagues in the audience and presidency studies to understand how white management influences the policy making process and shapes the agenda and policies. And thats what were looking forward to discussing today that my colleagues i professor sample from sir hayes and myself weve prepared a series of questions were very lucky to have an internal Administration Perspective from secretary whos returning to hofstra after a few years where he participated in a session here on. The office of management and budget that produced a volume with my coauthor, andy rolovich, who i filed a moment and. Peter baker was here few years ago for the george bush conference to present the journalistic perspective, kind of what was happening, the how reporters viewed what was happening in the white house and Chris Whipple who were delighted to welcome to hofstra and hope to contain you this this partnership to talk about the the research on several of your books particularly but particularly the gatekeepers and the of the chief of staff position that secretary lew had in managing and directing the policymaking process. So to begin that conversation id like to start with a question for secretary lew. Secretary lew, you held many positions in the Obama White House starting in the state department then office of management, budget chief of staff and then in the second term as treasury secretary would you share us from those experiences . How president ial Decision Making process you saw it was started and perhaps evolved the two terms of the Obama Presidency . Sure. Its great to here again. I mean, its great to be on a panel of people. I think ill consider each other all friends and well see if thats the case after an hour and a half talking. Yeah im you know, one of the things about having had the reins of roles that that i did is you see the process of the white house from different vantage points. And there are different stakeholders in the process even, though everyone reports up to the president directly or indirectly its quite intentional that you come into the process with a of view, an agency position, and that get made as they go up with. All different perspectives being reflected so that the president can make an informed judgment. You know, at the state department, which i wont spend a lot of time talking about. Yeah, its something youve im sure discussed at length this morning with the National Security process theyre very formal organized process where stakeholders sit around a table it goes from one level to the next. It gets up to the point of being a meeting with the president and youre pretty sure that youve got full picture at the end it whether its a perfect decision or not a process its wellestablished designed to inform decision with all points of view. Nothing clear is that exists outside of the National Security setting. You know, since the Clinton Administration, weve had a National Economic council, weve seen more or less role with that. As the coordinator, youve always had omb as a center. Youre pulling all the pieces together, the funding and on on the management. But its a its really a reflection of the president how all of the different are presented to for decision in on the domestic side, let me offer a vignette from each chair. If i dont have much time, you want to it to omb that youre that this was perhaps an unusual. Year 2011. Yeah when i was there because it was a year when theres a grand bargain negotiation with speaker boehner. It was a year when we were facing a potential shutdown or debt limit and entirety of my time at omb in that in that chapter was around those issues. The engagement between white house, the president and congress was at the most sensitive level. It was a very small circle of people directly involved. The challenge and this my perspective now from omb was for the white house remain coordinated. So the president all the views the president needed while the fewest possible people were in the conversation, which is normal in a domestic issue, thats normal a National Security issue, not normal in a domestic issue. Thats a hard process to run. And there probably was a little breakage in the white house that there were people who would have liked to have been more involved. But going from a group of five to 10 to 20, its very hard to have a private conversation in washington. You know, i think the council tation was effective. It gave the president what the president needed to make progress and move forward. But it probably was a little bit of difficult process from the perspective people who were not in the small circle. So as omb director, i was very much in the small circle. But thats its its a challenge. And you a tradeoff. You want to have everyones view but you cant have everyone know the president s having a secret meeting and so you as director your job is to reach out and collect information. And president s have multiple ways of getting information it doesnt have to be that somebody on the white house staff says theyre in a meeting. And im writing a memo. So you have to turn to the people who are working on it and count on them to reach out and get all the points, view that requires trust amongst the parties. I think if you were talk to the people who were in the room and in the room at that time, you would get somewhat different stories about how well it was done. But i think the president was well served. I think the president knew with as much to 100 as he could with every point of view was and the information he needed. When i moved to the year, i was chief of staff, so i change seats. Its now my job to run that process to make sure everyone who needs to be the room is in the room. But its also an Election Year. And in an Election Year theres a whole additional dimension to it, which is theres a Campaign Apparatus that is not going to be running the government and the government has to be run they have to understand what each other are doing and not cross the line and into each others business in an appropriate you know, we did that by having a daily conversation between people who knew each other. So there were no surprises and we kept in the white house, we left politics in the campaign. And i had one of the one of peters colleagues, probably the most senior reporters in washington tell me at the end hed never seen a better coordination between campaign and a white house, and there was no government governing decision that was made by the campaign. And i think its fair to say. I dont think the white house suggested where the president needed to be to win state x, y or z. You know, so everyone did their job with full transport agency but appropriate boundaries now governing in that year, i meant that you didnt take your eye off the ball on what you wanted accomplish. So if i look on the domestics side, you know, doca deferred action for children was, probably the Major Policy Initiative that we drove forward that year. It was not a new start. The president had looked at it for the first two years, had been frustrated that he couldnt find a solution, felt a moral need to find solution in a world where congress was not acting and that was a case where he tasked me, the new chief of staff, the white house counsel, cathy rambler, staff from scratch. Dont start from the old dont start from the old legal analysis. Start from scratch. And we convened a new process. We brought all the stakeholders then there were some new players, there was a fresh and we came up with what became doca. It was not without its controversy. It was a question of whether or not what we did was going to be effective. It was a question of whether we went enough. There were views that should do more. There were views that we should do less. And the president s running reelection. Hes traveling. We dont have lots of time for long meetings. Him so as chief staff, i thought it was my job to make sure that absolutely every view he would care about got to him and i remember one meeting in the in the chief of staffs office where i said oh this is going to the president. Is there any in this room that needs to go to him . Because if i dont hear it in this room, dont want to hear it got to him afterwards through a different channel. Now i the the privilege of working for a president who cared about process. He didnt want things coming at him from right and left. Im not sure that that story work in every white house. Not going to fill in the blank with any any specifics. But it was very important a that everyone be have their views represented and b that it served the needs of the president to make the decision with that knowledge, there was a hard decision as to whether or not to take what became the second doc action in the second term. And i think for all the right reasons. We went with the piece that we had the closest to 100 certainty it would be effective and be upheld if it was challenged. And we did the second piece. I wasnt in the white at the time in the second term, and it ultimately did not withstand the legal challenge. The first piece is still there and i think after ten plus years its going to be there, you know, its going to be there and making a decision like that. If the president was just influenced by doing the most you think you can do, he might have ended up doing less because it might have been all connected. It might have gone to the courts and it might have been overturned. It was done in the kind of thoughtful considered way that is the way you make decisions when you have lawyers, your policymakers, your advocate is all the voices represented and you dont leave any stone unturned in terms of the risk and yeah, there was a risk he was going to be seen as having been too timid when. We did the first piece. We didnt know we announced it, whether it would be celebrated or criticized, we really didnt know. And i remember that conversation and. It was one of the most emotional days had in public life. Standing there at the rose garden, knowing that we were the lives of we thought was close to 500,000. But it turned to be close to a million young people and all of relatives. So it and i think the process served to get us there going on for too long the summit let me just say one thing about treasure and we can come back when its my turn again. You know, treasury is a very different seat than the white house, but its very close to the white house. And youre very closely to the white house. And you know, it was very important you know that that, you know, as a former omb director and as a former chief of staff, i didnt stay in a role where i looked like i was doing my old jobs. And i remember we were selfconscious about how to organize, make it clear i had a new portfolio and i had argue the treasury view and. I wasnt managing omb or the white house. And, you know, there were points of time where, there was friction between what treasury was the right thing and what the people in the white house might have thought was the right thing. And i can tell you as as a treasury secretary, if it ever, gets to the point where you cant walk into the oval office and tell the president what you think the right thing, you ought not do the job because you have a perspective thats different. And then someone else has to make the political judgment as to whether or not thats theyre comfortable doing that. I dont think we lost a major, you know, disagreement on that. But there were some times when i was back with the assignment, if not comfortable with what we want to do come up with a way to solve the problem. You cant in government just criticize. You have to have a solution and a white house has to be able to push to agencies and say, okay, this is not the right way to do it. I mean, i could give you a case in point, but i really dont want to go on at length, and i think thats appropriate appropriate when we get to the, you know, kind of what do you learn from it. Theres been a common theme in what ive said which is all the voices have to be heard and represented. And a president is not wellserved if. They only get one perspective, whether its political or pure policy and there are often disparate voices like who matter, because if you take and youre going to step on a landmine and have it thrown out, you dont very much. Thank you, secretary lew rich. So chris, welcome again to joshua. Thanks in multiple studies of the executor of branch policymaking, what do you think was most distinctive about the Obama White House and why. Well let me let me just begin by saying it its im really honored to here at hofstra with all of you and to see jack again to be with with peter. Im proud father of the park award winner theo and and you know ive just done a book about the Biden White House and its its often said that ron klain, joe bidens first chief of staff, could do any job in the white house. He could. He be white house counsel, he could be communicator director. He could do almost anything, jack, on the other hand, did almost every job in the Obama White House and did them awfully well. You know, peter peter well knows that bad things can happen when a white house of staff decides to become treasury secretary. Back in the reagan era. James baker, the third after four years, is white house of staff was so desperate to get out that he swapped jobs with don regan. The treasury secretary and what was without a doubt the worst job swap in american history. Its its no coincidence that the irancontra scandal erupted shortly thereafter. It never would have happened on jim bakers watch. I guess to answer your about the Obama White House what one of the things i would say wearing my hat as author of the gatekeepers is that every president learns sometime the hard way that you cannot effectively without empowering. White house chief of staff is first among equals. And also to tell you what you dont want to hear, barack obama was a student of history unlike some other president s weve had recently. And and obama understood the importance of chief of staff. And one of my favorite stories concerns, the time that obama was campaigning a month, the election, he was in reno, nevada he called a secret meeting of staffers. They included david axelrod, Valerie Jarrett and all of bill clintons, almost all of bill clintons former white house chiefs, erskine, john podesta, panetta was on the phone. So is bill daley. Anyway, the point of this, the it was secret was because obama want to be accused of measuring the drapes in the oval office before he was elected. But he knew how important it was to figure out who his white house chief would be unlike some other. And he and so erskine bowles, who was on this phone call call marvelously and id kind of unforgettably the first thing he said was listen leave your chicago friends at home they will only cause you grief. Well everybody on the call was from chicago practically david axelrod, Valerie Jarrett bill daley and all the rest he did not tak