Welcome to todays event focus on the evolution of the american presidency over the last two decades. I emphasize the warm welcome because when Public Health realities forced us to make this a virtual event. I made the compelling argument that there were warm days in february and maybe we should just go for it and get a tent and a couple of heaters. And as usual the thoughtful staff at the bpc prevailed and so here we are virtual yet comfortable my pleasure to set the kind of contest for todays discussion. The Bipartisan Policy Center is really primed to focus on durable National Policy that we believe requires the engagement across a broad ideological spectrum and as a result, we normally focus most our attention on the congress. It has occurred to us and in recent months that the congress is a somewhat less dynamic vibrant deficient enterprise and at once was and in that vacuum the presidency the executive branch has absconded with significant amounts of you know, Effective National power and thats really the premise for todays discussion if you think back to president clinton and the mexican peso crisis, he was flexing some executive muscle president bush post 9 11 as a wartime president with a little bit of whispering in his ear from Vice President cheney now, so rather expanded imagination of president ial power president obamas pen and pad strategy and proliferation of executive orders followed by President Trumps i alone can fix it somewhat unique imagination of the role the presidency and now President Biden for whom i think the you know, this story is get mixed, right . Theres been a strong emphasis around federal authority on mandates around vaccines and Public Health. See and at the same time a pretty differential approach to congress on a bunch of priorities. So here you just have you know in 30 seconds a little bit of the mixture of the realities of the president ial authority. So were gonna you know have an exciting discussion about that today in addition though. Todays actually the soft launch of the Bipartisan Policy Centers new initiative on the study of american president ial leadership. We are most fortunate to have been joined at the bpc by dr. Tevi troy. He was leading this exercise. Tevi is a classically trained president ial historian. And yet despite that knowledge actually went to work as a senior official in the white house and so he brings both a little bit of historic framework and also some practical experience to this discussion. Hes admired. Im gonna both sides of the aisle. Hes also creative and prolific writer. What is unique about heavy in the kind of dc literary scene is he writes books that are actually not about himself. Which adds to the National Understanding and appreciation of you know, really the past the present and the future of our democracy, so it is a great pleasure tovy to have you with us at the bpc and really happy to hand it off to you and listen to the panel. Its all yours. Great. Thank you so much jason for this opportunity and for this partnership with the Bipartisan Policy Center. Were very excited to be here with you guys today. We have this conference on the presidency in the 21st century the premise and its an idea that i worked on with my longstanding mentor less lenkowski. Whos at the killison boderman foundation on their board. Is this concept that in the 20 years of the 20th century. The presidency has been held by four men and yes, they were all men. Who have changed the presidency in significant ways, which is really important because the presidency is a common touchstone the most Senior Executive in our nation and really an essential player in our system if we are going to make it through the many challenges that we as a nation face. And so if you look at the last 20 years you would start with George W Bush for whom i worked. And he is faced with the crisis after 9 11 and what he does. Is he expands and creates a Homeland Security state that didnt really exist beforehand. He also is somewhat aggressive in his use of signing statements in a way that often alienated the democratic members of congress and the signing statements allow the presidency to put its stamp on pieces of legislation that are passed by congress in a way that congress didnt always necessarily like he succeeded by barack obama and jason alluded to this already but obama has some legislative success in his first year. But then is stymied after the Republicans Take Congress and looks more to executive power throughout the rest of his presidency and David Letterman had a joke in obamas second term that he goes to the doctor and is told that he passes his physical and then lederman says which is a good thing because its the first time hes passed something in years. So obama really cant get feelings through congress. So he then engages in this pen and phone presidency where he actually does through executive order things that he said previously were unconstitutional for him to do Via Executive action such as the the dreamers action that he took and then you have donald trump whom jason also referred to with the ilo to fix it, but kind of a very unilateral vision of the presidency. He wanted to see what he could do individually as president as opposed to working necessarily through all of the levers of government and now we have joe biden his president and what weve seen is biden is very ambitious legislatively and trying to do a kind of fdr or lbj type agenda at a time. When he has much narrower congressional majorities than either of those two and in fact, he is a 50 50 tie in the senate. So those four people whove held the presidency have really changed things that individually each of those changes is significant and worth noting but in toto, i think we are now in a situation. Where the presidency that joe biden now inhabits is vastly different . Then the presidency that bill clinton passed on to George W Bush at the end of the 20th century and that is exactly what we want to examine here. What does it mean for our nation . What are the parameters of how the presidency has changed and how if we want can we fix it . Should we change things are we on a inevitable trajectory or is there a chance that things might change . Can Political Leadership can individual leaders say we want to go in a different direction . What would that different direction look like and thats why weve put together these two panels right now. Were going to introduce the first panel. They the first panel is going to look a little more internal at the presidency the mechanisms of the presidency. Weve got a three people theoretically for the panel of im going to go in just an alphabetical order and start with like old friend Jonathan Burks. I think he wont be embarrassed if i tell the story that i actually hired him as an intern well over 22 years ago and Jonathan Burks was he got farther than i ever did on capitol hill. He became the chief of staff to the speaker of the house paul ryan. He also worked on the National Security council in the white house. So he understands Foreign Policy on both side of pennsylvania avenue. And then we hopefully have lane k mark although shes a little delayed. She worked with president bill clinton, and shes a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and then speaking about transitions. We have martha kumar who is at Towson State University in a real expert someone whos writings. I admire on the presidency a great deal. So we have these three terrific panelists right now. Weve got two of them, but weve got these three terrific panelists and were going to have this conversation about the presidency and i just want to let all of you know that if you have questions, theres a twitter feed where you can post that you can also post them directly in the chat and i will be able to see them and potentially ask them and then for the next panel that will be the case as well. So im going to begin again. Were gonna go in alphabetical order start with john burks and im gonna ask each of the panelists to briefly three minutes or so. Explain. What they said in their papers the papers are not online. So this is the only way youre going to be able to find out about that for now and what theyre what their theory was what case they made and what they would like to see us do going forward. So jonathan, please take it away. Thanks, terry. I really appreciate the invitation to be here and really appreciate your starting my career 22 years ago on capitol hill. So my paper really looks at the question of president ial power in the context of if power is creating to the presidency must be coming from someplace. And so we look at the congress as lens for clarifying whats changed and whats constant in that president ial relationship and we look specifically at Foreign Policymaking because thats where the president s power is at its apex and how Congress Plays in that space i think tells you a lot about what works and what doesnt work or whats changed and what hasnt changed in terms of the president ial president ial power and inner branch comedy. So i think when you look at the details of the last 20 years and whats occurred on Foreign Policy. Whats a prepared in the National Security space . Its a lot more nuanced picture than sort of the standard narrative of the presidency is up in the congress is down. There are two or two axes along which is this narrative is the challenge the standard narrative one is along the axis of constitutional powers places and things which constitution specifically and trust to do and that the president is unable to do independently things like raise an army maintain a navy raise the funds needed to conduct the wars and thats an area where congress has been very active and that congress has interventions have been decisive in shaping how the executive is acted to a variety of tools that they have the second axes that has been important is in terms of International Commerce where trade and export controls and other import restrictions and all the rest have been incredibly important tools increasingly important tools in Foreign Policy and whether again the presidency has a fair bit of discretion that conferences given it but congress has been very active over the last 20 years and cobb and cabineting that exercise authority. And so i think as we look back over the last 20 years of Foreign Policymaking, its actually a complex story that shows that there are both broad president ial expression, but theres an active congress that limits that discretion and that provides new tools or new authorities or at times has pulled those authorities back in a way that that reflects the congresss constitutional role. Looking forward. I think we see that there is the form policy agenda is moving frankly in the direction of congresss powers and congress is most adept. Given the focus of the Great Power Competition with china and russia one. The accomplishment of china is very much driven by that International Economic competition where again congresss authorities are plenary and where the ability of the president to act without congress is limited and some are clumsy and then the second aspect of competition really is the deterrence which really relies in a large measure on the shape funding capabilities of our military, which again is critically dependent. Acts of congress and the actor involvement of congress and so while i think theres no question that the presidency has changed over the last 20 years. Its important not to overstate the case in terms of the change necessarily made the presidency imperial and powerful there are still very important checks in Congress Hands and congress is still exercising that authority in that ability to check president power. Thank you. A nice contrast to what you typically hear when were talking about this subject how congress has seated so much authority im gonna ask for questions of you in a little bit. But first, id like to have martha talk for a few minutes about her really interesting paper and transitions. Up. Thank you very much, debbie, and its good to be with you here the president ial transitions from from the period of after World War Two when harry truman was the first president to be very concerned about a transition well before a time when he left office, he said that he had been when he came in and didnt know about the Manhattan Project on the atomic bomb. He felt he had been unbriefed and unprepared and he wanted to make sure that who have ever his successor was would be well briefed and he began his transition in in march and thought to bring in eisenhower and stevenson after the Party Nominations to be briefed in the white house by the ya, but also by white house staff and cabinet members eisenhower did not take him up on it, but stevenson did but in the period when you look at most of the transitions the legislation starts in 63, they they were not particularly acrimonious, but when you look in the 21st century at the four president s who come in two of the four had truncated transitions that were in the courts and then also within 2020 with the administrator of the General Services administration not declaring a the ascertainment of bidens win so that george bush had 37 days instead of the normal. 75 or so and biden had only 57 days and you look at the 2016 transition that was chaotic in its own way as donald trump fired the staff that had worked through the transition process up to the election and then replaced it with with Vice President pence and then with particularly with family members and people who would worked on the campaign most of whom did not have government experience. Um, the one transition that was smooth in that time period was the transition in 2008 between bush and obama bush of felt that there were with two wars that he wanted make sure that they had early start and took the transition very seriously and he began his transition talking to his chief of staff josh bolton in december of 2007 and steve hadley. Who was the National Security advisor around the same time began gathering information on memorandum countries and issues to provide with whomever came in so when you look at these the series of transitions that even though you have youre going to have a lot of turmoil at the same time when you look at bidens transition, how was it that he was able to come in with a white house staff of 2006 as amen filling out a lot of the president ial appointee positions. That did not require Senate Confirmation bush did did much the same thing and they had the biden people had their policies ready ready to start and how was it that they were able to do that even if they had a shortened transition and the same thing was a true with bush and bush with only 37 days had his first months mapped out first week education second week office of faith base initiatives in the in the government. And so what i look at or three particular elements in transitions that have developed over time. The first is the law starting in 1963, you have the things of transition law where the responsibility for funding transitions moves from Political Parties to the government itself, and it first is a matter of Resources Office space and whatever it needs to become with that and then gradually theres a framework thats thats built where you have the White House Transition Coordinating Council that is going to develop policy clinton created one by executive order and then you have the development of the Agency TransitionDirectors Council which takes the policy that are established by the the White House Council and then with represented is of all the departments and the largest agencies they implement the same there are target dates that have been put in as as youve had further development of transitions so that a president has to create these councils by six months before the election. And it doesnt say who is on it, but the president still gets to to decide that. Um and this this past election was the first time that you had a a sitting president who had to create a counsel even though he was running for reelection and before that it really was an optional item, but it wasnt in 2020 which was very important for how the transition worked and in addition to law. You have tacit understanding so ive been tested understanding among president s that have um have guided the actions of those in office even when they lost reelection while that was not true of donald trump. It was true of jimmy carter and George Hw Bush both of whom told their staffs that they wanted to smooth transition and to and to begin to work quickly which they did now this past transition though. We did not have that as from the president the president instead of refused to concede the election and then and then also it sought to delegitimize President Biden, but that even though he wa