Transcript
Paul C. Light: -- all been involved, in one way or another, with our Presidential Appointee Initiative, which is designed to help presidential appointees get into office a little faster, certainly much better informed, perhaps a little less exhausted by the process itself.
To my immediate right is Mark Gearan, president of Hobart and William Smith College. Mark is former head of the Peace Corps. He's former White House deputy chief of staff. He's former deputy transition director for the Clinton administration and has a depth of knowledge about what the next administration is up against.
To his immediate right is C. Boyden Gray, who was White House counsel under President Bush. He's former transition counsel. He's former counsel to the vice president of the United States and also has an intimate knowledge of what this next transition is up against.
And our job today is to talk a little bit about what's going to happen when the election is declared, the role of the transition, what the next president-elect needs to accomplish over the next 60 or 58 or 53 or whatever days are left in the transition.
I'm going to start with just a brief overview of four simple facts about the transition, and then we'll segue into more of a conversational style, with Mark and our colleagues giving five or so minutes on the transition
Four simple facts I want to review.
Number one is that the transition itself is a historical convenience. That's all it is. We created the transition because we needed time to assemble votes and count votes, gather votes, and gather our leaders to Washington. It just took time, and the Founders understood that it would take time to assemble administrations, but more importantly, to move bodies across a country that was linked primarily by horse-drawn carriage.
Secondly, the transition did not become a significant moment, we did not start paying attention to the transition, until relatively recently. It was only 40 years ago that the federal government actually began funding, providing funding, for transitions. It was not until 1963, with passage of the Presidential Transitions Act, that the federal government actually allowed the General Services Administration to pay for some of the costs associated with beginning a government. That piece of legislation, which became law following Kennedy's assassination, was also designed to help the outgoing administration leave.
So there was a lot involved in the original Transitions Act of helping the incoming arrive; covering the costs of the staff, covering the costs of all of the activity, the travel and so forth, associated with coming to Washington, and also to help the outgoing administration leave. And in fact, the history of the Transition Act is more to help the outgoing than help the incoming. Now, that's changed over the last 40 years, but the origins were to help the president leave.
Today, the General Services Administration has been charged with the transition. The transition headquarters have already been designated and wired -- it's 1800 G Street. And the federal government will provide about $5 million in support for the incoming administration.
The third issue is that the transition has become a key to a successful start. We have this moment of time, and over the last 40 years, we have filled it with a lot of activity. More than just planning the inauguration ball, we launch the presidential appointments process during the transition, and we also make a series of key policy decisions. And we'll have a little bit of conversation about that.
It's clear to us that the Presidential Appointments Initiative, that one of the big impacts on transition is on helping start the appointments process; that the president-elect begins the process of naming key people, the forms start to be filled out. This is best analogized to a concrete pipe. The transition itself is not infinitely expandable to accommodate large bodies of possible appointees, it's best handled in a sequence under which you're loading and sending forward names for vetting, and you're going through the process in a staggered fashion, not a balloon that can be expanded to accommodate huge numbers of people. And that's why we've written and published "The Survivors Guide", in collaboration with the Council for Excellence in Government, to help nominees understand what's happening to them; to help them help themselves, or so to speak.
Finally, the transition is best understood as a finite resource; it can't be expanded after the fact. The transition this year was already going to be short because we had a late election. We had a 73-day transition designed here before inauguration. We're now down to about 65 days, and assuming that things get resolved this weekend, perhaps early next week, we're really talking about a transition that lasts 45 to 50 days rather than the planned for 73. I mean, we all know in Washington that on Wednesday the town will shut down. Even if there is a president-elect, there's nobody to talk to in the administration.
And under the 1988 Transition Act Amendments, there is now a process in place for clearing the names of people who are allowed to have contact with the executive branch. There were concerns in 1988 regarding the 1981 Reagan transition that there were some people here in Washington who were making contact with executive departments not on behalf of the Reagan transition, but perhaps on behalf of their own interests. And a process was set into place that requires transition aides to declare themselves, make themselves visible to the departments. And that's a process in which you must declare your name, your address and the source of income that's covering your costs as a member of the transition team, and that has to be declared to the departments and agencies that you're visiting. You can't do that if everybody is on Thanksgiving break.
The best of circumstances, this transition, this next transition will likely occur, assuming everything gets resolved in Florida and Iowa and New Mexico -- and Wisconsin, Oregon, we might have a transition starting on November 27th; we just don't know.
I'm going to stop here and basically turn to our guests to talk a little bit about their experiences in transitions. I want to remind people who are watching this that if you're thinking of being a presidential appointee, if you want to know what the process looks like, there's one place to go; that's www.appointee.brookings.org. You'll get every bit of information, the links you need as well as a downloadable copy of the "Survivor's Guide for Presidential Nominees," and believe me, anybody out there who wants to be a nominee past the Cabinet level down into the sub-Cabinet is going to need a Survivor's Guide.
Let's turn first to Mark and then we'll go to Boyden for comments. Do you want to stay seated, or do you want to come up?
Mark Gearan: Thank you, Paul, very much. Thank you for the invitation to come here at such an interesting time. The curse may well prove true that we do indeed live in interesting times. Last week I was traveling out to the West Coast to visit with our alums and I was seated on the plane next to a gentleman, and he said, "What do you do?" I said, "Well, I'm college president." He said, "Is that the Electoral College?" I said no.
I thought I might reflect just on my experience from eight years ago in some things as we go into this cycle now, and some distinctions that I think are very clearly in play, should Vice President Gore assume the presidency, and that is to review some fundamental facts.
This would be a very different transition for Vice President Gore. You'll recall in 1992, Democrats had been out of power for 12 years, the incoming president served as a governor, it was a very different moment, certainly, to begin to put together the kind of government that at that point President-elect Clinton and Vice President-elect Gore wanted to do.
Vice President Gore would come into this position after eight years, as I think most would agree, as one of the most experienced vice presidents, with tremendous access over an eight-year period of time to the Oval Office and to the decision-making and, importantly, to the personnel decision-making of the White House. He has broad experience himself, as does his staff, after eight years in the executive branch and legislative branch. So all of this points to a very different character of the times, I think, that we would enter into with this transition, however brief it would be.
Therefore, it's not surprising that my view that when time is really the question here, will the shortened transition period have real salience this year? I don't think so. I think in many ways, that's a red herring, certainly for an incoming President Gore. This time around and, admittedly, always, it's personnel. That's really the heart of any transition -- or, the guts of it -- and certainly this time, should Vice President Gore come into power.
The most important thing for any transition period and for the president-elect and his key folks is to make decisions in an organized way. And so, therefore, admittedly, certainly there is a greater level of organization that's required, a greater level of discipline that would be required, should we face a 50- or 45-day transition period. And it will require greater and more expeditious decisions and processes that the president-elect will have to put into place. That much is certainly the case.
But when one really considers the task, working back from Inauguration Day, what you really want is important names to the United States Senate, and then, admittedly, a great deal of the vetting and the extensive backgrounding material takes place then for a fair amount of the nominees. Secondly, most of the early nominations to the Cabinet and other senior posts are folks who have broad experience in public life. By and large, these will not be new names to most Americans in many cases; folks that have been in public life at the state level or at the federal level, or names that will have been known to people, so the process in the vetting process and the backgrounding has a different dimension. Certainly later into the process, later in the terms of the administration, lesser-known names in the third and fourth strings of any administrations, the vetting and the backgrounding has a different type of dimension.
And then last, to kick off a discussion, at least, here, my sense is that this delayed transition may actually be a blessing in disguise -- and I think on this point, perhaps Boyden Gray and I would agree -- that it might actually result in a little less government, at least on the front end. It may actually save us from creating the kind of massive bureaucracy sometimes that any transition period can come into, with the creation of working groups and cluster groups and study groups, and the preparation of briefing books and documents from anything from the Tuna Commission to the Department of Defense.
It's unclear to me when if my thesis is correct that the heart and soul of the transition period is on personnel clean decision-making, that a lot of the activity of a transition over an elongated time will be any more productive for an incoming administration, and it might help cut down a bit of the politicization on the process, which this year would probably be very welcomed after this election. Less massive group lobbying and less intrigue as to some of the important processes.
So my view is I am an optimist on this. I think this delayed transition won't have the kind of effect that one might fear. It will have certainly -- place a greater importance on the decision-making and the expeditious decision-making that the president-elect and his team will have to do, but it also points to the importance of this initiative, the presidential appointee initiative. If ever there was a time when anyone coming into the government needed a survivor's guide, if ever there was a time where we needed the kind of access and coordination and links that Paul spoke of through the Brookings website and the presidential appointee initiative, this was the year.
So I am grateful. I wish this had existed eight years ago, certainly, for the kind of materials that have been prepared and will be given to appointees this year.
Thank you.
C. Boyden Gray: I do agree with Mark that perhaps this will help us avoid the horrid cluster groups and transition teams that go marauding through the federal agencies. And that is something which I hope the Bush team wouldn't have done in any event. So that's definitely a plus. I think it's also a fact that during this period, learning the ropes, learning the ropes of what you have to do is also something -- I'll get back to that in a minute -- is also something that can go on under the radar screen that isn't hampered by this interregnum.
But I don't think it's quite as harmless as Mark suggests. And the main difference is -- our roles are sort of reversed in this context. I helped to oversee a friendly takeover in 1988, and watched an unfriendly takeover in 1992, which Mark directed. Here the Democrats' and the Republican's rules are slightly reversed and it's the Democrat who has the friendly takeover and a government in place if he wants it, whereas it's the Republican who is coming in with having to set up a whole -- start from scratch. And that's much more difficult. And the loss of time is much more damaging, I think, to the unfriendly, hostile takeover than it is to the friendly takeover. There are many more people that the party out of power for eight years has to get vetted. There are many more things that could have gone wrong in the eight years; plenty of -- many more people like myself who, having done it, aren't really all that anxious to go back into it again. And I'm willing to help but not necessarily willing to serve. And so you do have to get vetted a whole new team of people especially, as Mark suggested, the younger types; even getting all the people cleared is more difficult today than it was 10-15 years ago.
I have an anecdote that I've told once or twice publicly. It involves Mark; or a remark Mark made -- I don't know whether he remembers it or not. But there was a lot of hostility in the beginning -- tension in the beginning of the transition in 1992. We were putting up roadblocks to these marauding cluster groups and transition teams; which I think, Mark, you may now suggest, well, that was probably a good thing because there probably have been so many marauding cluster groups.
But we were only doing what the then legal requirements specified, and there were some surprises on the other side about these requirements. So they called a meeting and thought that we were gaming them. And so, to resolve this, they asked us to meet. And we met in the Roosevelt Room. It was very tense, as I recall. And they brought Mike Burman [sp] with them who had been Mondale's counsel to sort of stare me down; my being the oldest in the room -- of course Mike was a little older. And he was glaring at me and I said, "Mike, look, all of these laws that we now have to comply with and you have to comply with were put in, poison pill as it were, by you guys, but made perspective so they didn't apply to you. But they now apply. And he scratched his head and laughed and said, "Yes, we did do that," and laughed.
By the end of the meeting, I think people -- the tensions had resolved and Mark and his team were persuaded that we were not acting capriciously in this regard. I went back up to my office with my assistants to shut it down and we chatted for a few minutes before going downstairs again to go out to dinner, and Mark and his group were still, themselves, huddled just outside in West Executive Avenue parking lot chatting. As we waved sort of a friendly good-bye, Mark said, "Boyden, we've decided to let you have it again for another four years."
The real problem that faces Governor Bush is one of getting people into clearance. By now, no damage really has been done. When you lose a week or two, that's remediable. But if this thing stretches past Thanksgiving well into December, and we have a fight over the electoral college and it goes into when the electoral college is supposed to make presentations in early January to the Congress, then I think this serious, serious problem will arise because he will not have had a chance to clear his people through the FBI. And I don't think he would have had a chance really to get to work on the ethics clearances for the top-level people. It may be that they've been in government before and know the ropes and, therefore, don't have as much to be reviewed by the FBI in going through their past. If you've been cleared once, the FBI just simply does an update; they don't start out at your childhood and run through your rambunctious college years; they start where you left off.
But the ethics stuff, the financial clearance, is very, very difficult. I told the story before of trying to get Carla Hills cleared. It was a very laborious process; it took weeks, because her husband was, and is, a very prominent businessman and had his own potential conflicts of interest that were attributed, by law, to her. And as the trade rep, of course she's in the middle of almost every potential trade commercial dispute in the world.
And what came down at the final hour was whether he could stay on the board of a steel company that he had helped found. This was his first board, it was very emotional for him. And I get this call from the president-elect about 11:00 and he says, "At 2:00, Boyden" -- "CB", he called me -- "I'm going to nominate -- announce my nomination of Carla Hills to be trade rep." And I said, "Well that's great, sir." And he said, "Well, she tells me that you have not yet resolved a problem involving Rod's board membership. I don't know what the problem is, but I expect to get it resolved by 2:00 when I will announce her in the auditorium of the Old Executive Office Building." And I said, "Well, I said, I'm not sure I understand what the problem is." And he said, "Well, that's your problem." and down went the phone.
So I called Carla -- obviously, my staff had been working on it. I called up Carla and she said, "Well, Boyden, the problem is very simple; we can't get around this. He does have to resign if I am to serve. Steel is too big a problem, import problem, to ignore." And I said, "Well then, let's do it." And she said, "Well, he's on a plane to Los Angeles, doesn't arrive till 4:30, and I'm not going to resign in his behalf. I have to have his permission, obviously. I'm sure he will do it, but I'm not going to have him get off the plane and find out that he has been kicked off the board of this company." And I said, "Well, that is a problem, then, if he doesn't land until 4:30." And she said, "Well, Boyden, that's your problem." "That's not my problem, that's your problem, and I'm not going out on the stage." And I said, "Well, the president says he's going to announce you." She said, "Well, he can announce me, I'm not going to be there." Down with the phone. Any of you who know Carla know that she meant business.
So what did we do? This was a crisis of mega proportion, for the young counsel-to-be. And what we did was violate the law, actually -- but the statute of limitations has run. We went to the FAA and got Rod called up to the cockpit where I talked to him. And he said, "Oh, gosh, anything Carla wants." So that was resolved at about 10 minutes of 2:00. So everything went smoothly after that.
But this point does illustrate, I think, that these problems are going to be there and you can't anticipate them, and they're very complicated. And the longer this thing stretches out, the more difficult it's going to be. For Vice President Gore, he can let people -- he's probably going to ask for the resignation of everybody, but he doesn't have to accept the resignation of anybody until he's ready to replace them. For us, we probably -- for Governor Bush, he probably won't trust to let hang over -- holdovers stay there.
Now, one of the interesting things is, is that for many jobs, not having them filled is actually a delight. You get a chance for once in your life to work with the professional career civil servants in the agencies, and believe me, that can be a wonderful experience. And it is unfortunate in many cases that you have to super -- you have to sort of layer them with these sub-cabinet appointees who probably shouldn't exist at all, but who are put there by generations of congressional oversight committees wanting somebody to yank around so that they can compete with the executive branch in the direction of executive branch policy.
If there's something Brookings could usefully do in the future, it is to try to do a study -- it would have to be bipartisan, of course, and done with the Hill -- try to eliminate the number of committees and subcommittees, which would be a prerequisite to the elimination and streamlining of a number of sub-cabinet assistant secretaries. That would make everybody's life extremely better. But that's not something that can be done overnight; that has to be done prospectively. As of now, we are now faced with the need to fill these spots.
It's not as dire, though -- my point is, for some of the lower level, it's not as dire because you're happy to work with the career people -- should be. Nevertheless, the delays, if they get past Thanksgiving, I think will be very serious on the personnel front. And if there were a way to put people into FBI clearance right now -- it looks as if this thing is going to extend all the way up to the time of the -- you know, the electoral college presentation for Congress on January 6th, or whenever it is, and I would hope something could be worked out where both teams could send selected people to just start the process with the FBI, and that the press would forebear when people start doing ethics clearances, the public process, somewhat public process; you can't hide it, and it shouldn't be thought to be presumptuous if either side engaged in it.
I think that it only takes the clearance and placement of maybe 100 people to get launched, but if you don't have those hundred people and you're in an unfriendly takeover, you really can't do anything at all. People are policy; a president can't do everything by himself. And it is, unfo