People are filing in. I want to thank everyone for coming out today. On behalf of our president thomas burr and the 3,000 members of the National Press club i want to thank everyone who braved metro road closings and construction here at the press club for coming out today. And i think one of the reasons we have such a good crowd is to talk about a president ial transition gives people hope that theres light at the end of the tunnel after the Long Campaign but at the same time i learned that sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is a locomotive coming at you. And so today what were going to do is were going to talk about sort of that tunnel. Whats going on in terms of president ial transition and what needs to be done to get us to noon on inauguration day. We have a really great panel for this discussion. And so with us today, we have clay johnson who served as the Deputy Director for omb in the Bush White House beginning in 2003 and before that he was an assistant to the president that handled president ial personnel and he was responsible for over 4,000 president ial appointments. We also have thomas, more commonly known as mack, that served as president bill clintons chief of staff and he experienced the early years of a president ial administration firsthand and the president and ceo of the partnership for Public Service and through the partnership he has hosted transition conferences in three election cycles and played an active role in planning for this transition. We want to allow time for each of our speakers to speak and have about 20 or 30 minutes for questions afterwards. So without any further adieu, why dont i turn it over to max and hell be followed by the other speakers. Thank you. Thank you. Its a pleasure to be here and thank you to the extraordinary pan panelists that are part of the Advisory Board and are themselves public servants. And really i think the vanguard and evangelists around effective transition planning, have done extraordinary work. As you heard from jamie, im the president of the partnership for Public Service. And we are a nonpartisan, Nonprofit Organization focused on trying to make the federal government work more effectively. We do lots of Different Things, including the best places to work rankings in the federal government. But we came to the notion about nine years ago that a source point for dysfunction in the government was the president ial transition. And, again, there is an irony here because we all learn as children that the peaceful transfer of power is one of the great things about our country. Youre told its peaceful. But no one told you its ugly. And usay ugly, its a phenomenal operation. You think about a 4 trillion organization with 4 million people, hundreds of operating units. And the typical transition has involved at best some substantial activity between the election and the inauguration, which is 70 some odd days, not enough to take over a tiny company, nonetheless the most important Critical Organization in the planet, probably in the world. So we began this work about nine years ago, taking a look at what needed to change. And that included both legislatively as well as operationally. And it became obviously even more imperative when you think about the world that we live in today, post9 11 where transition is not only a phenomenally complicated operation, its not only vital for president ial candidates to be thinking about this, because it in essence is whether it really sets the groundwork whether or not theyre going to be able to full the promises theyre making on the campaign trail. But its also a National Security imperative. Its the moment of maximum weakness for our government. James clapper, the director of the National Intelligence had some chilling comments that he made a couple of weeks ago how in his 53 years doing intelligence work that he has never seen the world scarier. And he likewise presented the point that transition is the point of maximum vulnerability. What is attractive about this topic is there is actually things that can be done about it. Its not one of the things where you look and say oh my god, this is horrible and think that nothing can be done. And in fact, a lot is being done in a very, very important way. And it begins with changing the rules of the road. And there are three laws that have been passed over the course of the last six years. The first of which very importantly moved the data support from after the election to after the convention for transition support. And the reason why that was so essential is one of the things that prevented earlier campaigns from focusing intensely on transition planning was the Political Risk that they saw in doing so. And they were concerned about being viewed as presumptuous. And job number one obviously is to win. When youre in the campaign, youre not going to do anything at all that might get in the way of it. And this legislation i really opened the floodgates. And you saw four years ago with the romney readiness project a phenomenal effort at preparation, better than i think any had happened before up until the point of the election and no further. And youre seeing today both campaigns operating at a level of intensity that fundamentally has not existed previously. So thats a huge improvement. There is still lots of room for improvement to go here. And i just want to focus on one comment before turning it over to the experts on either side here. And that is with a goal. So one issue really is to get the campaigns to set up a transition apparatus earlier, to start earlier. Because if all you have is 70 some odd days, you cant be ready. And you need more. So you increase the runway. But the second piece, and this is something that i bet we hear from clay who is a very, very compelling speaker on this, its about setting the right goals. And one of the goals ought to be to have your Leadership Team in place in realtime. And one of the extraordinary things about our system is we have a very large cohort of new political appointees that come in. 4,000 people. And i would theyd if you look across the globe at any democracy, there aint nothing like it. In my view, an overly large number. In my view its a vestige of the spoil system and ought to be changed. But thats a longer term issue. Its a very important requirement for new team coming in to be prepared for. Of the 4,000, 11 hundred of them have to be Senate Confirmed. And absolutely 400 or so of those are really the fundamental leaders of the government. And our proposition is that the new teams coming in ought to make sure that theyre getting in not just a few people by inauguration, but bluntly, their core Leadership Team, the top 100 by inauguration. And that 400 plus group by the august recess. And we believe its doable if you set that as your goal and if you actually work with the senate in order to make that happen. So when we look at what ought to be occurring here and what is feasible, one of the things we would propose is both the Transition Teams should be setting that as their goal. The senate should be cooperating to make that happen there are some very tactical things that would enable that to occur. And an example would be to imagine bringing in Leadership Teams at the front end, rather than just the lead over the agency. You look at the data, its fascinating. On average over two months between when the first person comes into an agency, the secretary usually or the head of the agency and the second person. Dial back to 2009. Worst economic crisis weve seen in this country since the depression. And what did you have . You had tim geithner home alone. He came in february. The next person into treasury was may. What happened at dod, they brought in a slate of people at the front end. That slating is something that ought to occur across the government. Another aspect of this is the prospect itself is too hard, too difficult, and it doesnt need to be. Of the 1100 Senate Confirmed position, every single one of them requires a top secret sci clearance. That means the most robust, intense investigation of each of those individuals. When you lock at who those people are, you realize that that is silly. You shouldnt have to have that level of clearance, that level of background check for someone who may be serving on a parttime commission on student scholarships like to mo udall scholarship fund. But thats what we have as a system today is largely a legacy that folks have not focused enough on that can get better. It is doable. And we need to see it happen. I want to stop so i can get the wisdom from clay and from mack. We should note also in the audience there are folks like Josh Gottbaum who have incredible experience on this subject, and im looking forward to the conversation. So thank you so much. Im clay johnson. I was also in addition to the positions i had in the Bush Administration, i was the planner of and executive director of the bush transition whereas now theyre causing the candidates to have 200, 300 people work on transition matters with president bush 43, at this point in the election cycle, he had one person working on transition. Lets just say the bar was set very low. And i think we got over it, even though we had half the time. Im delighted about maxs remarks because i counted, he used the word goal 21 times. If he had been given these remarks a year ago, he would have hardly been able to hear the word goal. Youve heard of onetrick ponis. My trick is the goal man. If you need someone to talk about goals, what are our desired outcorp. , thats me. Every president , candidate for president is promising to be a very effective leader. But it comes a point in time where the president ial candidates have to start figuring out what does it mean to prepare to be that very effective leader. And our contention is and the amount of attention given to this is the most important thing a president can do is to put his or her team on the field with him or her at a point in time where he can be very he or she can be very effective at leading this country as promised. And that means not as soon as you can get to it, but that means like right away. Like 12 01 on january 20th of the first year of the mission. As max talked about the complexity of our world, the challenges, the opportunities that we faced domestically, internationally are so astounding that we need to be assured, we the american people, we deserve to have assurance that our president is going to be capable of leading whatever needs to be led the minute he or she is sworn in. Historically, what preparing to govern has meant, say the last 30, 40 years is that about three or four weeks in the administration, a new administration would have gotten through the senate and been able to nominate and get through the senate, confirmed 30, 35, 38, 41, 29. Some number like that of Senate Confirmed positions. And that by the august recess of the first year, about 225 plus or minus. Why is it always so consistent . The reason its so consistent is because no administration has been challenged, including our, bush 43, to set a goal. How many people are you trying to put in place around you, in your team to be able to get a lot of things done by when . How many by when . The reason it tends to be the same in all the administration is the size of the personnel operation in the transition and in the white house has always tended to be exactly the same size as the previous administrations. Every administration is reluctant to spend more on white house staff than their predecessor. Because they dont want to be blamed or accused of being big spenders. So they say okay, well, a president in the last administration had this many people. Thats how many people you get. How many people can that group typically put through the senate and get in position . The same number of people that the last administration did. Not until ever has administration said i want to get 100 people in place by february 15th, march 1. And i want to have 350 or 400 people in place by the august recess. And then figure out and the reason is thats how many important positions there are. People look at the 400 or they look at the list and they rank it. They say this is important, this is important, this is important. Its 375. Not 225. Or look at the 225. What jobs are not filled. Oh many i gosh, this is not filled . This isnt filled . Thank goodness Nothing Happened here. How do you do that . You set the goal and figure out what you need do. Its not only a body and a job, its a body and a job prepared to do really good work. First of all, really well qualified. Thats a separate issue. And what might be a really well qualified person for one Administration May not be for another one. It has to be administration specific. Then the people have to be briefed on what is going on in the agency, what is going on in the world. One of the big challenges in any transition and the responsibility falls on the Outgoing Administration is to brief the Incoming Administration on all the threats in the world. All the health threat, all the war threats, all the packing threats. So the new people coming in are aware of all the possible bad things are. And so the people in place, well qualified and well briefed. Thats the goal. And that doesnt always happen. So you set the goal. What is required to make that happen . You have to do a tremendous amount of work in a transition. There are no brain surgeries performed during a transition. Its very straight forward things, but thousands of them. And you ostensibly have 73 days i guess this time to get all those thousands of things done. Well, you cant do all those things in 73 days with 375 people or 100 in the first two or three or four weeks. So what do you have to do . You have to expand the capacity to do the work. You to have more people working on it than have typically worked on it. And you have to have more time devoted to it than are typically devoted to it. So you need to begin the transition planning sooner. You cant wait to see if youre the president elect. You have to assume that you will be. And you have to be checking your heart and remember that you are really committed to being a really effective leader as soon as we need to have an effective leader. And today that means minute one of the administration. So you have to begin early. And they typically begin in april and may. And typically by that point in time there ought to be hundreds of people working on transition matter, primarily in the personnel arena. Thats what i understand is happening. Thats what the romney people did. It just needs to happen. You expand the capacity by expanding, creating, devote mortgage time to it and more people. Instead of five or six special assistants to the president , president and personnel, thats how many our predecessor had, you need 10, 12, and the related Staff Associated with that. And then after the fall of the first year, in the fall after the august recess, you dont need that many more. Youve done 400 and you can hit more of a maintenance not a maintenance. But youve got all the really key people in place. The goal comes first. The commitment to reach the goal is first. The commitment to being a really, really effective leader as soon as its likely that effective leadership will be called for means thats the goal. And everything focuses on that. So its been fabulous to watch this evolve over the last you said 11 years . Nine years. Obama and mccain got the message, and they both devoted more people to it than ever before. The romney people did a fantastic thing. Its sort of the poster child for it. And the candidates this year are doing the same thing. Its absolutely what needs to be expected. Its what and the press has a responsibility, i think, its a great thing to cover, if i do say so myself, and im a press person, easy to say for you all. But you can help raise the expectation. It should be what our any new president is committed to do, to be prepared to govern from the getgo. Because so many things that are not on the playbook raise their ugly head or pretty head by february 1st or january 21st. But they are highly likely to do so. So thats my elaboration on maxs comment. Let me turn this over now to max. Oh, let me make one other comment. Were talking about preparing to govern. This is not only in the subcabinet, this is also in the white house. Typically, as i understand it, in my case it was, the chief of staff drives the staffing of the white house. They say lets go the cabinet first and white house second. If there is nobody in the cabinet, there is nobody there to orchestrate with the subcabinet. They have to be done in concert. Its white house and cabinet. The second thing is were talking what the administration has to dlochlt is alo. There is also a Program Going on where the agencies are preparing career staff, not the outgoing staff, but the career staff are preparing their agencies to receive their new bosses. And guess what . Theyre highly motivated to do this. How do you want to be really impressed when they first come in . Your new boss. So its fascinating to see them working on this. Because they come up with fabulous ideas about how to best brief their new people and get them on board and so forth. Let me get mack, turn it over to mack mclarty. Clay, thank you. Jamie, thanks for organizing and hosting us today. Im delight to be with you. I always enjoy working with clay johnson who is a friend and someone i respect. And im glad this is a bipartisan effort. Clay and i have traveled in this vineyard for a number of years working on president ial transitions, and trying to streamline the process. And in that regard, i dont think anyone has done more, any organization than to lift the profile and the importance of the transition process than max stier and the center for the president ial transition. So max, thank you and your staff for such great work. All of you are familiar with the old saw so much to do and just not enough time to do it. And that probably sums up and reflects how most of us, or any of you would feel during a transition of less than 80 days to make this shift, this transition and get a government in place. As max noted, it is a cri