presidential transitions. so, you know, for all the books and scholarship devoted over the years to the american presidency the period specifically of presidential transition hasn't received much attention. as dave writes at the of his book, a number of scholarly on presidential transitions can be counted on to. and the two major academic treatments of this subject are already decades and yet a smooth and peaceful transition from one president to the next is a fundamental feature. our democracy and we all learned last year this period can prove rather vulnerable and, a rather vulnerable and precarious for the country of some of those resists to go along one group that has done some work on transition is partnership for public service, which is a nonprofit dedicated, creating a more effective, functioning federal government. and 2008 partnership for public service began gathering best practices and offering assistance in presidential transitions and 2016. it set it set up the center for transition in the run up to 2021 transition day who had a recently retired from the carlyle group where he'd been a managing director, accepted an offer to the center. he brought to the task his own experience. a former attorney and as a former official in the clinton administration and as well as an interest in history, politics and management. and little did he, like the rest of us, realize the months ahead would one of the most complicated and contentious transition seasons in u.s. history, dave and a team put together something they call the transition lab podcast, which in 2020, collected many interviews about the peaceful transfer of from former transition team leaders, chiefs of staff, cabinet secretaries, history agents and journalists. those interviews ended up constituting the largest and most comparable sense of oral history of presidential transition going on to write this book, dave has expanded on those interviews. adding comment terry to provide context. he also highlights some key lessons that hopefully will benefit future transitions. dave himself spent a year in the biden administration as chief operating officer of the development finance and he's now dean of the business school at american university. he'll be in conversation here this evening with someone also who has looked closely at transitions she's a presidential transition. she's she's covered two of them. nancy cook is white house correspondent for bloomberg news. and this is her sixth, sixth year reporting on the white house. previously, she's reported for politico national journal and newsweek. so please join me in welcoming david marchick nancy cook. thanks so much for having us. i met dave during the last transition when i was reporting on it. little did we know of what would come of it. but i guess i'm just curious. start out the talk talking about what you think the future of presidential transitions are you still have a major political party. the majority of republicans who say that the election was rigged that biden did not actually win. i'm curious like what does that mean for having peaceful transition moving ahead. well, first of all, thank you for being here, nancy. brad, thank you for hosting. thank you all for coming. i want to recognize coauthors. alex is here. alex tippett and aj wilson. so we worked for a year and a half thank you for your great work and mom is here as well as is my mom. so in the book, can burns was nice enough to write the and he starts by talking about lincoln's famous where lincoln hearkened to the angels and for most of our history actually presidential transitions did appeal to the better angels there a bipartisan affair most went fairly smoothly. there have been some bad transitions, but the modern era really carter transition things have been a bipartisan affair even in contested elections like bush v gore, clinton actually cooperated. bush he provided bush with intelligence briefings and other services and support even when the election was contested, really only up until the last election was this a contentious issue. so i'm hopeful that we can get back to the nonpartisan, bipartisan nature of presidential transitions. if trump were to run, i think all bets are off twice. he has allowed people under him essentially to play on effectively, organize effectively, and once the election was held, basically threw everything out and impeded the. so hopefully we can get back to the nonpartisan, bipartisan of this handover of power. but we'll see what happens in the next year or two. but he still has such a grip on republican party, and we're seeing that with the midterms. you know, so many of the people are running in congressional races or grew up in a morial races, sort of hallmark for the republican in the stamp of approval is bet on this idea that you think the election that biden did not actually win the election so i guess it is a republican wide fairly wide in the republican party i guess what does that mean forget trump. i think the republican party is going a type of soul searching where trump appeals to a large segment of the population that's reflected in their elected representatives. and there's a litmus test saying that you don't recognize outcome of the election. i have i've had a couple friends that have run for office and they refuse to say that the election was a hoax and they lost their primary. so this is it's a it's a political reality and it's affecting, i think, about half of half of the republicans in congress have said they don't recognize that in the house. so they don't recognize outcome of the election. i'm hoping that we get back to kind of a more traditional two party system where the parties debate within the bounds of reasonableness. and i mean was bragging over the weekend that the largest crowds he saw was not where on january 6th as if that was positive as opposed to a negative, i guess like in the transition world, you know, you ran the center for partnership for public service during the last transition. how have you all about trying to make sure that the next transition is peaceful or that there talk about changing laws? do you do i mean what can you do to try to set up something for next time? so the purpose of public, which is a great organization that actually is the central organization that is focused on better, faster transitions, they've come up with a series of recommendations a number of which are in the book which do create opportunity better transitions. number one would be change in the law, which starts the formal process. as you recall in the last transition, you reported on this very. well, there's a provision in the law that allows the head of the general services administration and the gsa to quote ascertain the outcome of the election. this was seen as a ministerial task, not something that was political the the head the gsa under the trump administration, refused to recognize the outcome of election because her boss refused to recognize the outcome of the election that delayed the transition. so one way to fix that is actually lower the the the standard to start the process to make it easier for the formal transition to start which then means the president elect's team kind of access to agencies can get briefing memos, start to get personnel in place, can start to get political appointments processed and reviewed for their security clearances. that's one thing. second is congress can move the dates up when various transition related activities start. so for example, under current after the nominating candidates president the winning candidate in each party can submit names for security clearances to the justice the fbi so they can get cleared this came out of 911 because after bush was elected because of the delayed transition because bush v gore, he didn't get all his national security people in place. and 911 happen. so the congress could change the laws to move up and accelerate the transition process. and that would make it better as well. hmm. one of the interesting things that happened during the last transition aside from january six was that the trump administration also really stonewalled the biden people access to some very key agencies, like the office of management and budget is, you know, the budget office controls all the money, very key. but also the department of defense. there were a lot of problems. i wondering what did that mean for policy. so i think the biggest impact was probably on the covid response. so recall during the last transition, we were at the peak of the pandemic, 172,000 americans died between the election and january 20th, 172,000. that's the most any period of time. the vaccine had been developed. but a distribution plan had not been put in place. so the omb was actually critical because they were funding the distribution plan that eventually took place. the lack of access to the officials at omb, dod and hhs meant that the biden team working on developing a distribution plan could not get access to the and the officials determined what was happening actually nothing was happening and they didn't have a distribution. so what happened is that jeff zients, who head of the transition and then head of the covid czar, was talking to a bunch of governors and elected officials around the country and he realized from them that there was no plan and that led him to work his team to say, we have to put a plan in place from scratch. so did that stall the plan? probably not. i think that they put together a very effective plan so that on january 20th memos went out and said, we're going to start these mass vaccination centers, we're going to fund distribution, we're going to get pharmacies to cooperate. it did delayed discovery of the fact that there was no plan. and then in other agencies like the united states trade representative for the department of defense, it impeded the cooperation between outgoing and the incoming so that it just was harder for the incoming officials to start to launch, to get organized once they took office, january 20th. yeah, you have an interesting chapter in the book you interview on january 19th, 2021. chris, who is a former business executive, i think he's australian or he's from new zealand originally, but he ran the transition inside the trump white house or tried to tell me a little about what that was like working with him because he was essentially to keep the transition which takes place over a year secret from the president, astronaut ingraham is that right? those are your words on i don't want to get chris in trouble. but chris was the deputy chief of staff in the trump administration and he was in charge of planning the second term for the trump administration. that the trump administration's view of the transition. josh bolten who was former chief of staff for, president bush, and he one of the co-chairs of, the center that i ran, and also a good friend he and i met with chris liddell in january of 2020 in the white house mess over and we talked to him about transition planning at the end of the breakfast josh chris well what are your plans if trump doesn't win and there was this kind of awkward silence, chris looked down at his plate and said, i guess we have to think about that. so that began a discussion where we with chris and the law requires the outgoing to prepare for a potential to organize the agencies into different committees to prepare briefing materials to provide space and cell phones and computers. chris actually did a very good there was a whole effort to keep what he did out of the oval office because there was fear that trump impede it. so in the book, alex, aj and i describe the good, the bad and, the ugly, the good was actually pre-election where chris was able to do his work quietly, effectively he coordinated with chris with career officials across the government and did the law required. yeah, he had. i remember reporting on that he hit some deadlines. yes. you almost screwed it up. we can come back to that with with the story that she wrote. we all have different names and life yes the bad post election the good work and the planning was put on hold. this decision by the head of the gsa just to not start the transition. and then the ugly was january six, which slowed down a lot, including the senate confirmation process and slowed the ability of biden to his people in office. in addition, obviously, the horrible, terrible, bad day that it was. i'm thinking about the children's section of the bookstore downstairs. so i do want to i was so struck by something and so this book is quite interesting because it has transcripts of all these interviews that you did, top transition people. and so you can really hear it in their own words. i was so struck by something that chris told you on 19th, he said he still seemed be tiptoeing around trump even then he said he was about the election results. and he says i thought this was really telling he says quote i don't want to get into ins and outs of the election. what did you make of that so it was obvious to me that chris was a trying to do the right thing and be under great pressure. i didn't know what we know now from the january commission that there was all chaos loose in the white house. chris actually called me on january six and said i'm resigning and i, you can't resign. and he said this is too much. i stand it. josh bolten i did an event on saturday night. and he said that chris called him as well and chris was in tears and we both amped him to stay. we basically said you have an affiliation with trump you can't shed of that in 14 days you maybe can get two sentence article that says you honorably resigned, but you're the person responsible for getting the transition in place and you can help the next president. united states take office in a smooth and peaceful away as possible. you can't resign. and he didn't. and actually, i think that a heroic act i do want to tell the story about nancy cook and almost messing this up can i tell that? sure. okay. so this whole effort to create space for chris liddell was confidential. nancy called me one day and said, i hear that chris liddell is actually doing a good job in the white house and said, and i said, does does president trump know that. and i'm going to not comment it. and i said, off the record he is. and she said, will you go on the record with that i said, let me think about that. so i called chris and i called the biden team and i said, chris, does this help you. and he said, actually, it help me with other officials around the government but if there's a story that says i'm doing an effective job and i call the biden people and they said well, chris says it's okay it's okay with so next day nancy came out with the story and sometimes i see my my friend manuel in the back sometimes journalists may amplify piece so the story read trump the only part of the trump white house is the part that's trying to usher him out of office. so immediately my heart sunk and i thought, this is not good for chris. i didn't call nancy and tell her my heart sank. so night i was texting chris. have you been fired yet? and he finally, you know, he jokingly said, i'm just going to avoid the oval office for a few days. and luckily he wasn't fired. but nancy almost wrecked the transition. i think there are other things at play there, but also, chris, i would say just if you want to map out the power structure in the trump administration, i also think was very close to jared trump's entire presidency. i think that that helped him at some very key moments. i want to also just you know, you have a bunch of interesting i mean, i note the trump transition we could talk about for four days, but you do have some interesting chapters, sort of just talking about transitions, the past, how they've i was really curious about chapter, about the transition from president hoover to president roosevelt because actually there were a lot of parallels that i hadn't really thought about from that time to the most recent transition. and there was also a pandemic, the economy was tanking. you know, there was really interesting things happening. can you tell me a little bit about why that was so rocky? and then and then what does that actually mean for things like the economy at that time? so at the time of the transition between and roosevelt, the recession, great depression peaked. we had bank runs and 25 states, hitler to power the reichstag burned japan out of the league of nations starting. their march to imperialism and hoover refused to cooperate with the roosevelt he hated. they knew each other when they were actually were. they were not that far apart. but roosevelt's demeanor and smile made him look a lot younger. i think there were six years or seven years apart, but hoover despised roosevelt. he thought that he was a weak body and a weak mind. yeah. and you write at one point, i think that he set out to we wanted to see if he could embarrass who are very embarrassed roosevelt excuse me about all of his campaign promises. yes. so his view of should be done during the transition was to convince roosevelt to abandon new deal. so in the book i interview a historian named eric rauchway who actually found and he wrote a book called winter's war and i interviewed him and actually brad mentioned that there have been every aspect of the presidency has been studied. there have been 15,000 books on lincoln alone. i asked him why did you write another book on roosevelt? and he said, well, actually, i wrote about transition because i felt that the 100 days before the election, the inauguration, were as important, if not more important than 100 days after. and i said, so what was impact of hoover's lack of cooperation? and he said, well, banks failed. more people had their houses foreclosed. we not get advance planning on the war with germany. it was a time where farms were failing and, people were starving. so more people died and shows the importance of this smooth transition of power and we can get into this but that contrasts with the collaboration between obama and bush during great recession, where their collaboration actually eased to the end of the great and in a faster recovery. let's talk about that a little bit because i thought another interesting part of the book was about sort of the how, you know, from bush to obama they were dealing with the economic issues, but also that was the first president to sort take over post-9-11 and. there were also very big national security that sort of came to play that, hadn't been there before. talk a little bit about that played into sort of sharing information between incoming administration and the bush administration. so let's create the context for bush. so bush takes office in 2000. he has a shortened transition. the average transition period is 75 days. he has 35 days because of bush v gore. i think the supreme court ruling was december 12th or so. so it's clear that he well, he's declared the winner december 13th. he has a harder time. his people in place. and eight months later, 911 happens at the of 911, bush had just over 50% of his senior national people in place. and witkowsky here, she's a senior official. she to get confirmed it took her nine months. how long? nine months. so nine, 11 happened. bush has just over 50% of his national security people in place, more than half of those in place had only been there for two months. so the 911 commission, when they their autopsy of 911, one of the things they found was that the shortened transition imperiled bush's ability to get his people in place and therefore undermined national security preparedness. this stuck with bush through his whole presidency. so in 2008, he's the first president in years that does not have a sitting vice president running. and he tells george bolton as chief of staff, i