Welcome to 2024. Hi. One year from today or actually 363 days from today, a new president will be sworn in and ill actually be potentially a second biden term, potentially a second trump term, potentially a first nikki haley term. 4000 political appointees will be installed. The federal government, 8000 positions will be decided. And a president will have to pick their priorities and have to work backward from that to try to move them forward. Its an enormous undertaking and we are really delighted today to have three experts in the most complicated transaction that happens on the planet. Weve had turbulent transitions before. Obviously in 2021 we had a very turbulent transition and we have experts on that transition. With us today. But turbulent transitions are also not new. In 1800, we had the first peaceful 1801 we had the first peaceful transfer of power from one Political Party to another ever in human history, because prior to that, we didnt have democracies with competing parties. And that was not a particularly it was a ended up being a peaceful transition, but it was also turbulent. Weve had turbulent transitions in 1824, 1860, 1876, 2000 and turbulent transitions may now be part of our future as well. To unpack all of that, we are particularly delighted to have a new book published by the university of press in the Miller Centers series on the american presidency, which is ably led by our own Marc Selverstone and jane mckee. And the book is by Chris Liddell and it is called year zero the five year presidency. And were delighted to chris with us today to talk about book. His book is, concrete. It has nonpartisan recommendations. Its kind of the as zen, if you will. It is an extraordinary accomplishment. And were really proud not just to have the book, but to have chris with us to talk about it today. And we are particularly thankful to our friends at the university of virginia press, eric brandt and the dean zimmer, who helped pull this together and move it forward for us. Lets just think back to the transition that chris helped usher for the Trump Administration. Chris was president Trumps Deputy chief of staff and four years ago in that position amidst covid, amidst a turbulent handoff of power together, working with ted kaufman, president , representative in the transit, and he saw a peaceful transfer of power actually take place. But the book is much more than about 2020. And he will talk about that. He talks about it in the book and well talk about it a little bit today. Its a deeply researched book on the structure and functioning of the white house, how it works and how it doesnt work, what it can do and what it cant do. Its built not just on his 2020 transition experience, but his 2016 2017 transition experience, where he was brought in by the newly elected Trump Administration to help see through the transition and in itself was based on work that he had done working with mitt romney in planning for a potential transition in 2013 after the 2012 election or as chris refers to it in the book, as the ship that never sailed. Before that, chris was a Senior Vice President and chief Financial Officer at microsoft and vice chairman and chief Financial Officer of General Motors to discuss the book with chris and us today are two real experts on this. To my immediate left is dr. Martha joynt kumar, whos the director of the white house transition project and an emeritus professor at towson university. Shes written two books before the oath how George W Bush and barack obama managed to transfer power and managing the president s message. The White House Communications operation, which won the richard nustar award, the best book on the presidency from the american Political Science association. We also, the far end of our panel today. We have David Marchick who one of the first books in the Miller Centers series on the american presidency with the university of virginia press. The peaceful transfer of power in 2022. Dave served as the director of the center for president ial transitions at the partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit entity in washington that helps incoming and outgoing administrations manage their transitions and the book is actually a transcribed and edited Series Podcasts that dave conducted going back and looking at president ial transitions in American History with authors of great histories of these books as well as practitioners from past president ial transitions. But he didnt just do this as an academic enterprise. He behind the scenes with the outgoing Trump Administration in the incoming Biden Administration, not just to do the mechanics of the transition, but as things became turbulent, how to walk through a number of uncertainty use in unprecedented operations. And we were really fortunate to get to work with dave and an Incredible Team that he assembled. Dave and i actually wrote an essay in the run up to the election in 2016. Looking at these previous turbulent president ial transition and what the Lessons Learned were from that. But let me just say, as a coauthor of that piece, i was kind of like a copilot in the airplane. Im glad there was a pilot on board and that i was just there to make sure that i could fill in the gaps. Dave is currently the dean of the kogan school of business at american university. He has previous jobs both in government and in the private sector. And dave and i worked together 25 years ago at the at the state department before starting. I do want to introduce one very special guest whos here with us today. And that sitting here in the front row is lauren henry here at the Miller Center. Hes the man the myth, the legend, warren actually helped invent the business of studying president ial transitions in the 1950s at the brookings institution. With the advent of nuclear weapons, suddenly this long period between one one president s elected and the other president hands over power suddenly became super consequential. And lawrence spent ten years at brookings working on that, including helping brief an incoming kennedy administration. He then came to uva and served on the faculty in the Politics Department and helped design the miller. He was turned to when mr. Miller was about to make his gift, and they asked him, given his experience at brookings, what should a place like the Miller Center do . And his fingerprints are all over the blueprints for this organization. And more than fingerprints, we actually have photographic evidence. One of the first things we did at the Miller Center was an oral history of the ford administration. And i hoe can pull the picture up. We cant. Well, as youre walking out the the event space later today, when you walk down the hallway, theres a picture youll see a young cheney and a young don rumsfeld and Brant Scowcroft, for whom there is no photograph for evidence of him ever having been young and standing next to Brant Scowcroft is lauren henry in the front row . This was the ford oral history. It got us in the business of doing oral histories. So, lauren, thank you for joining us today. There it is. Lauren is in the first row right next. Father right there in the first row, all the way on the right next to Brant Scowcroft, sharing the lead, though, hes 102. So a few years hell have the experience run for president. Lauren, thanks you for being with us. Youre a mentor to us all. So. Hes also a neighbor and and a regular Miller Center attendee. So lets lets come back to chris. Chris, the book is really terrific. As i said, its the presidency on this. And its how you would want to run a presidency, even though chris accounts for the idea that disruptions and crises happen. But chris, lets start at the beginning, which is at some level starting at the end, the book looks ahead and it looks backward called the five year presidency. Year zero starts the day before yesterday, but it also starts with a core organizing principle, which is the president needs to know what his or her legacy is going to be and structures all five years. Unpack that for us. How does that all work in your in your mind sure so let me just a couple of things before i answer your question first you yourself, bill and the Miller Center and everything you and the team do to contribute to making the government better, which is what im focused on inside the book. And secondly, i just think its wonderful to be in this little triangle with lauren in front of me here, martha and day are on either side of me. One of the wonderful things about transition work is its bipartisan and you stand on the shoulders of those who come before you. So i was very proud to. Meet lauren a few months ago and take a photo of him holding his book. Me holding mine. And one of the first things i read when i did the romney transition ten odd years ago was was laurens great work from and then marthas also made an incredible contribution over the years i stand on the shoulders of her work and dave for his book as well. So im in the middle of a wonderful triangle. So i just want to recognize everyone on the stage. Thank you very much. So text it back. What are we trying to solve and where the book fit into it . The fundamental problem we have is, is that we have a crisis of trust in country. And im sure seen the various studies, but the ones that struck me recently were more than 70 of people think the country is on the wrong track and probably even more starkly with respect to two to my work saw gallups survey a few months ago that said theres no institute asian in the country. Were more than 50 of people have a trust that its going to the right thing and thats across every institution, from the judiciary to the government to whatever. And so my view is what do we do about it . You can observe it and you can complain about it. At the end of the day you have to do something about it and i believe that that starts with the white house, which i think is the most Important Institution in the country in a lot ways. And its what i describe as the head and the heart of the government. So you can try and solve the public sector. You can try and solve government overall. But if you dont solve the white house, its unlikely to be effective. And so all of my recommendations are around how do we make the white house more effective for the people in the country . And hopefully in doing that, start to rebuild trust in one of the most Important Institutions that we have now my book is not going to solve all of those problems. Journey of a mile two starts with a few steps. So i have 50 what i hope are reasonably practical suggestions about how to make the white house better and the important thing is that they are the control of the president to a large extent, or the candidate. So these are not things that rely on miracles. These are things to a large that an incoming president or an existing president can do. To your question specifically, one of the important things is in order to have an effective presidency, have to know where youre going. Like any journey in life, you have to know what the distillation is and one of the consequential that you find out working in the white house, you take over and youre buffeted by everything around you. And we see that at the moment the number of crises that are in the world, the things that happen, that are outside your control. So unless you have a strong north star that youre towards. You will be buffeted left and right and you will lose your way quite so. Its critically important you have an idea of what is the legacy that you wish to leave for the country and work backwards from that. From there, the most important first step in that legacy is year one. And in the way the government is set up and the way the white house is set up, you have a very small window in year one to get substantial legislation passed and to really get momentum in your administration. And if you dont get that, youre on the back foot immediately and then you start to get buffeted around. But you cant have a successful year one if you dont have a successful what i describe as year zero, which, as you point out, has started around now. And year zero is critical because there is just so much to do once youre elected or elected, and its impossible to have a strong governance structure and, a strong momentum, if you havent done all the work that leads up to it. So its that you do all the work thats necessary to have a strong years, year one in year zero, appointing all the right people, the thousands of people that you need in order to make your Administration Work to get your policy initiatives ready to go and launched very quickly, to get the Team Together that you are going to rely on in the white house and to build the of that team and the mechanisms about how youre going to make decisions. Theres just so much to do in this tiny little window between election and inauguration, way too much than its possible to do if you stay in, if you start from just the election. So year zero is critical to leading to year one, which is critical to delivering that legacy. So lets bring in martha. Dave here. Martha, youve youve studied so many of these transitions and in particular, you looked at this transition from bush to obama in the middle of a financial crisis. Those guys, how both of those president s outgoing bush, incoming obama, think about the year beforehand and then how did it work in that in that period before there was a recognition on sides that there was a financial crisis and and so they worked together. Josh bolten, the chief of staff with rahm emanuel, to try to see what they could do, whether it was the automobile Interest Rate was particularly what they were concerned with, a collapse and yet so they they met together and. Then the bush people wanted to a czar for the Auto Industry but to handle with the the issues but the obama people decided that they did want to do that that an incoming president doesnt want to to bring problems on themselves that come from the last administration. So it is they worked well together, but a lot of it was because of the people and the the work that they had done beforehand. Josh bolten had done a great deal of work with the obama team. But both representatives of both obama and mccain into the white house during the and before the conventions because the conventions were laid and said, you know, you need to get your people in place, were going to hasten the process of security clearances and well have you submit the names to the fbi. They wont be going through the white house. So you wont have to worry about about leaks. And he wont beyond what had done been done before and that was very helpful, you know, establishing that, i think the the the recommendations that that chris has for the planning beforehand. I think we have an example of an effort to do that and that is the Biden Administration and joe, as a candidate had worked transition legislation and has been the senate and and so he decided to to start early right after Bernie Sanders left of the president ial race which was on. April 7th, 2020. Then then biden knew the stakes from his time in the Obama Administration. And so he called ted kaufman, who you spoke of, who took seat in the senate and had been his chief of staff and a very trusted aide by him and instill a friend and confidant so called ted, and said, do you think its time to start the transition and already ted kaufman and marketing who also had worked with biden had been of worked him when he was in the senate. The two of them worked with the partnership for Public Service and with dave and and his staff to figure out what needed to be done and especially for what kind of crises might come up because because the Obama Administration had to deal with such a crisis. So they set up one of the really unusual projects of theirs where on conventional challenges they anticipate that they were going to have difficulty and so they had a separate unit that dealt with that and then after after biden asked ted about setting up a transition he met with with ted and mark and they they met on with ted on the 22nd of april and talked what needed to be done and then. He wanted some recommendations on who was going to run the day to day operation and they chose jeff science and science. Ted had been in in the Obama Administration and whenever there were whenever they were problems, cash for clunkers, his first one and then the failure of the white house website on the health. And so by mid midmay they had their team set up, they had the coordination mechanisms with the campaign so the two would would be in sync. And i think all of that had to do with the experience that they had had coming in to the administration. So maybe dave is a great place for you to pick up your managing this Nonprofit Center enterprise, working between the the sitting president and the democratic challenger and then turning the corner into the fall. Looking ahead, thinking about what a turbulent transition might look like, what are seeing, hearing, saying and particularly in working with the sitting Trump Administration. So first of all, let me echo my thanks to the miller and also to nadine when i was running this project on the tran