good afternoon. i'm the president of hofstra university and i welcome you once again to this very interesting residential conference. this afternoon's plenary and executive branch policymaking in the obama administration will focus on evaluating the nature

and success of the obama team and its policies from differing perspectives from a former cabinet member and some journalists. as we continue our assessment of the presidency of barack obama. i will provide a very brief introductions about panelists who are joining us in this conversation today. they don't even really begin to scratch the surface of the bayou as you might imagine. the honorable jacob who served as a 76 the secretary of the treasury, as white house chief f of staff, as the director of the office of management and budget, a position that he previously held in the second clinton administration and as deputy secretary of state for management and resources. welcome, secretary. peter baker who is working very hard foror us today. [laughter]

is the chief white house correspondent for "the new york times" responsible for reporting on the biden presidency right now. het previously wrote about president donald trump and barack obama for "the new york times" and presidents bill clinton and george w. bush for the "washington post." welcome back. an author, political commentator and documentary filmmaker one of his books the president's gatekeepers explores the evolution of the chief of staff in the past 50 years from nixon to the obama administration. thehi most recent the fight of s life inside joe biden's white house examines internal power struggles and policymaking in the first two years of the biden presidency. welcome. they are joined on the stage by professor hayes from the school of goodness and professor jame

from the school of law and of course at this point no introduction needed i will hand it over to begin this afternoon's conversation. thank you. [applause] >> thank you everyone for joining us today. it's exciting to host with so many distinguished speakers and colleagues. we've spent a lot of time examining president obama's election and media coverage and communication strategy. we've had two sessions this morning on a foreign policy, trans-atlantic relationship. we followed on health care

policies and foreign policy leadership and military intervention. this is the session now where we get to talk about the decision-making behind. it is essential i think for those in political science and colleagues in the audience to understand how white house management influences the process and shapes the agenda and policies. that's what we are looking forward to discussing today. my colleagues and i, we've prepared a series of questions and we are lucky to have an internal administration perspective after returning for a few years where he participated in a discussion on the office of management and budget that produced a volume with my co-author a moment ago. peter baker was here to present

the journalistic perspective on how reporters viewed what h was happening. and we are delighted to welcome you to to hofstra and to contine this partnership. to talk about the research on the books in particular the gatekeepers and the role of the chief of staff in managing and directing the policy making process. >> i would like to start with a question for secretary lew. you have many positions in the obama white house starting will with the state department. would you share those experiences how the presidential decision-making process as you

thought started and perhaps involved in the two terms of the presidency? >> it's great to be here again on a panel of people i think that consider each other all friends. we will see if that is the case after an hour and a half talking. one of the things about having had the range of the roles that i did is using the process of the white house from different vantage points and there are different stakeholders in the process even though everyone reports up to the president directly or indirectly, it's quite intentional that you come into the process with a point of view and agency position and decisions get made so the president can make an informed judgment. the state department which i won't spend a lot of time

talking about is something i'm sure you discussed at length of this morning with of the national security process a very formal organized process where stakeholders sit around a table that goes from one level to the next and gets up to the point of meeting with the president and you're pretty sure that you've got the full picture at the end of it whether it's a perfect decision or not it's welloi established and designed to inform the decision with all points of view. nothing isou clear as that exiss outside of the national security setting. we've had a national economic council, we've seen more or less role with of that as the coordinator you've always had omb as a center pulling all the pieces together on the funding and management, but it's really a reflection of the president, how all the different interests

are presented on the domestic side. i will offer a vignette from each and the year that this was unusual perhaps 2011 when i was there because of the year there is a grand bargain negotiation with the speaker was the year that we were facing a potential shutdown or debt limit crisis and the entirety of my time in that chapter was around of those issues. the engagement between the white house and the president and congressss was at the most sensitive level a small circle of people directly involved.hi the challenge, and this is my perspective now from omb was for the white house to remain coordinated so the president had all the views the president

needed while the fewest possible people were in the conversation, which isn't normal in a domestic issue. it's normal in a national security issue, not a domestic issue. that's a hard process to run and there probably was a little breakage in the white house that there were people that would have liked to have been more involved but going from a group of five to ten to 20, it's hard to have a private conversation in washington. i think the consultation was effective and gave the president what the president needed to make progress and move forward but it probably was a little bit of a difficult process for those that were not in the small circle. i was very much in the small circle, but it's a challenge and you have a trade-off. you want to have everyone's view but you can't have everyone know the president is having a secret meeting so the omb director your job is to reach out and collect information. there's multiple ways of getting

information. it doesn't have to be someone saying i'm having a meeting and writingg a memo. you have to turn to the people working on it, count on them to get all the points of view that requires trust among the parties andpa i think if you were to tak to the people who were in the room and not in the room at that time you would get a somewhat different stories about how well i think thebut president was well served and new with as much to 100% as he could with every point of view and the information he needed. i'm going to move to the year i was chief of staff. it's now my job to run that process to make sure everyone who needs to be in the room is in the room and also an election year and in an election year there is a whole different dimension to it which is there's a campaign apparatus that is not going to be running the government and the government has to be run. they have to understand what

each other are doing and not cross the line and get into each other's business in an appropriate way. we did that by having a daily conversation between people who know each other so there were no surprises and we kept governing in the white house. we left politics in the campaign and i had one of peter's colleagues probably one of the most senior reporters in washington tell me he had never seen a better coordination between the campaign and a white house and there was no government governing decision made by the campaign and i think it's fair to sayus i don't think the white house suggested the view to win xy or z. everyone did their job with full transparency but appropriate boundaries. governing in that year meant you didn't take your eye off the ball on what you wanted to accomplish so if i look on the domestic side, this was probably

the major policy initiatives that we drove forward that year. the president looked at it the first two years, frustrated he couldn't find al solution, felt the moral need to find a solution when congress wasn't acting and that was the case where he tasked me the new chief of staff the white house counsel to start from scratch. don'tt start from the old memos were legal and analysis. start from scratch. we convened a new process and broughter all the stakeholders . there were some new players and a fresh look and we came up with what we believed was dhaka. it was a question of whether or not what we did was going to be effective and whether we wentug farr enough.

i thought it was my job to make sure that absolutely every view you would care about got to him and i remember when meeting in the chief of staff's office where i said this is going to the president. is there any view in this room that needs to go becausese if i don't. now i don't want to hear it got to him and a different channel. i had the privilege of working for the president who cared about the process. he didn't want things coming from right or left. i'm not sure it would work and every white house or we would fill-in the blank with any specifics.e but it was important that everybody have their views represented and that it served the needs to make the decision with that knowledge. for all the right reasons we went with the piece that was

closest. i wasn't in the white house at the second term and it ultimately did not withstand the legal challenge. after ten plus years, it's going tore be there. making a decision like that if the president was justin influenced by doing the most you think he can do he might have ended up doing less because it might have been connected, it might have gone to the courts and have been overturned. it was done any kind of thoughtful and considerate way but that's the way you make decisions when you have your lawyers, policymakers, advocates, all the voices represented. we don't leave any stone unturned in terms of the risk. and there was a risk when we did the first piece. we didn't know when we announced it whether it would be

celebrated. we really didn't know. i remembered having that conversation and it was one of the most emotional days i've had in public life standing there at wthe rose garden knowing that they were changing the lives. we thought it was close to 500,000 but it turned out to be close to mammalian and all of their relatives. so i think the process served to get us there. i'm going on for too long but let me say one thing about treasure and we can come back when it's my turn again. a treasury is a very different seat in the white house, but it's very close to the white house, and you're very closely tied to the white house. it was very important that is a former director and former chief of staff, i didn't stay in a role where i looked like i was doing my old jobs. ion remember we were very

self-conscious about how to organize and make it clear. i had a new portfolio and i had to argue with a treasury view. and i wasn't managing for the white house anymore. there were points in time where there was friction between what the treasury thought was the right thing and what the people in the white house might have thought was the right thing. i can tell you as the treasury secretary if it ever gets to the point you can't walk into the oval office and tell the president what you think is the right thing, you ought not to do the job because you have a perspective that is different into someone else has to make the political judgment as to 'whether or not they are comfortable doing that. i don't think we lost a major disagreement on that, but there were sometimes when i was sent back with an assignment. if you're not comfortable with what we want to do, come up with a way to solve the problem. you can't in government just

criticize. you have to have a solution. the white house has to be able to push back to agencies and say if this isn't the right way to do it, i could give you a case in point but i don't want to at length and i think that's appropriate. when we get to the kind of what do you learn from it, there's a common theme on what i've said that all the voices have to be heard and represented and a president is not well served if they only get one perspective whether it's political or your policy analysis. there's also disparate voices like lawyers who matter because if you take action and step on d on a land mine and have it thrown out you don't accomplish very much. >> thank you, secretary. chris, welcome again to hofstra. in your multiple studies of the executive branch policymaking, what do you think was most

distinctive about the obama white house and why? >> lett me begin by saying i'm really honored to be here at hofstra with all of you and to see jack again and be with peter, proud father of the award winner co baker. i've just done a book about the biden white house and its often said joe biden's first chief of staff could do any job in the whiteob house. he could be white house counsel, he could be communications director, he could do almost anything. jack on the other hand did almost every job in the obama white house and did them awfully well. you know, peter knows bad things can happen when the white house chief of staff decides to become treasury t secretary. back in the reagan era after

four years as the white house chief of staff was so desperate to get out that he swapped jobs with the donald reagan the treasury secretary and what was without a doubt the worst job swap in american history. it's no coincidence the iran contra scandal erupted shortly thereafter. never would have happened onn jm baker's watch. i guess to answer your question about the obama white house, one of the things i would say wearing my hat as the author of the gatekeepers is that every president learns sometimes the hard way that you cannot govern effectively without empowering you chief of staff the dispersed among equals, and also to tell you what you don't want to hear. barack obama was a student of history unlike some other presidents we've had recently.

and obama understood the importance of chief of staff. one of my favorite stories concerns the time obama was campaigning a month before the election. he was in reno, nevada. he called a secret meeting of staffers. they included david axelrod, valerie jarrett and all of bill clinton's, almost all of bill clinton's former white house chief's, erskine bowles, john podesta, leon panetta was on the phone, so was bill daley. anyway. the point of this, the reason it was secret is because obama didn't want to be accused of measuring the drapes in the oval office before he was elected. but he knew howor important waso figureus out who his white house chief would be, unlike some other presidents. ..go

the call was up from chicago. david axelrod, bill daley at all the rest. he did not take that advice needless to say he appointed rob emmanuel who was i think a good choice at the time for the first part of the obama presidency. but my point here is once again that presidents often learn the hard way that you have to empower a white house chief. under obama understood this from thebe beginning. that was one of the reasons i think, including his good

choices of chiefs of staff over the eight year. i think one of the reasons for his fixed success. >> peter everyone spent welcome back i'd like to say we missed you since this morning. [laughter] secretary lou spoke about the buttoned up very disciplined us all circled in the administration that can be great for running a government is not necessarily conducive to journals getting access. i am curious what the challenges ofre following the obama ministration were in the challenges. >> i'm against small meetings. one people in the meeting is my friend. and bring the tape recorder. [laughter] they give or not it's not true i'm planning to spend the rest of the semester here but i am glad to be here for this wonderful panel unthinking for including me.

i would just say what you heard him say, you heard him describe an election year process of chief of staff helps run the government and the campaign runs the campaign the new chief of staff taking over and they call the jack loop model. maybe there's a plaque on the door something. let them tilt the politics of it. from a journalistic point of view covering the obama administration there are always people in the room there's always enough people in the room they talk to people in the room of what happened.

the day today of the white house is the reporters who are in the press room during the daily about 25%i say we get of it. through archives that eventually become available through memoirs, the oral histories you'relo really start to learn a whole lot more. as i reported that's very frustrating to learn how much we did not know at the time. i will say that one thing we learned about the obama administration is anything else happening is happening so but somewhatmore than you thought. no, this decorative health is not fighting with the secretary of agriculture. they hated each other. you'll discover after the fact

wewe went to a gymnasium sometie or something like that. the think good out to the press have been usually so softened you don't really get the full extent of it. for only taking up the vapor trails of whatever is happening inside it. but at times you get a pretty decent opportunity to follow things for the best example of something we talked about this morning with form policies the afghanistan review in 2009. i'm part it is because president obama ran such an extensive review ofhi this and our loving pleadings or something like that. quick cephaliced hundred. clerks professors and the students it was very familiar with very much academic process. who is not going to sit there and say okay let's doh it. he wanted every single possible permutation tried again until

the intelligence agencies to go back and give it up the report and another report and i'm going to forget the number but i think they produce something like 50 products or something like that just during the one review. it was intense, it was meticulous, it was thorough, it was exhaustive it. as the model or case studies of the way president obama like to do business pretty like to think thingser through to the point where sometimes the staff wish to go ahead make a decision. you could never accuse him of not having spent time reviewing things for it because theur intensive drag other opportunities reporters get to the question to pick up on things. we would pick up onw. things during that review. we picked up biden was not for a surge in afghanistan. got him out of the time but we picked up on the concern the military generals that there try to put pressure on him that was the concern inside the white

house. the military got a grip the characterization but that was a concern inside the white house. we did pick up on a lot of those things at the time. but as far as a journalist then went to have a process i understand that i understand that if i was in their position i would to it's my job not to let that happen. we find out as much as we can. to be aware of how much we don't know. we don't overstate what we know. i think we can open this up to questions from whole panel. i will start with the one following up on what each of you hasso said. you each focus how the obama white house functioned what differentiate from predecessors and successors. what are some of the lessons you see both internally and

observing from the first term to the second period were there learning curves with decision-making and management that provide lessons are instructive for future presidents? >> i'm happy to offer an observation or two from inside. immeasurable ring true or not from people observing it. the approach and exit lessened over the second term. i actually think 2012 only got into a routine was part of that. it became moreta comfortable relying on fewer people in the room. knowing all the views of everyone was reflected in what he heard it. that was more selective when you had the big table and the long

meeting on the second meeting on the third meeting. this may be inherent in first or second terms. there was a degree habit blow of not that things became the second term you don't have that same immediate consequence you can try something a little bit more -- on the scale of one to 10 if your comfort level was at risk level of five administration like ours there's a lot of continuity people know

each other very well the processor changes of how will people know each other. a lot of administrations come in and they have never been in government. their people learning basically how the system works. by the end of a second term with people who started out with above average experience and gain a great deal and i would have said the same thing in the clinton to ministration the second term operates a different way. you tend to see people promoted who in the first term you may be looking people with elected office in the cabinet position or in the most senior white house staff position. the second term you see focus on who's proven they can get things done. not that either is right or wrong you need a mix of both. but time is so short. on the second term your conscious from the beginning of the second term the hourglass is running down and you use the

time is much as you can. quick secretary a quick follow-up would you say the risk-taking is perhaps part of the reason white they were separated doctor was june of v 202012 and dopp oh was 2015 question request may be part of it. i know in 2012 there was a very strong view you did not want to count on pieces being separated and it litigated separately. you wanted it to be a different action so you are not putting in jeopardy what was most of central and strongest. i am not so sure the case for the second decided appropriately. i'm not saying it's a mistake it supports was made in the second term.

>> what me just also i wanted to pick up on something peter said i'm just on a book on the biden white house i can tell you i won't say i have a newfound respect but even more respect for what peter and all of the other white house reporters joined a daily basis. my first two books probably covered cumulative 100 years of history per this last book covered to and it was much more difficult. and one of the reasons for that it's's like designing an airplae mid flight. you're getting hit by a covid drink from one side, an invasion of ukraine from the other and you are just hoping you can land the plane safely. as far as picking up on what jack was saying about the second term being very different there real cycles to the presidency.

i think there was tremendous urgency. it's easy to forget now when barack obama came into office was facing tremendous crisis on the verge of a worldwide depression two wars in a stalemate. he had to get legislation passed in a hurry which is one reason why who strike cheaper at the right time he was a guy who took the hill andf they had to get a lot of stuff passed. it just changes in a second term. and the polarization of the country and on capitol hill became worse and worse as time went on. to the point in the second term denis mcdonough had to perfect the art of governing by

executive order. it was almost impossible to do anything on the fit hill in a bipartisan way. at least that is the weight wait appeared to me. >> i would add by the way chris proves me wrong being able to report in realok time. it's very well reported very much on the inside very much as things we love to have the daily newspaper thank you for embarrassingss us. [laughter] but to add to your point the difference in the first german second term made to be divided between the first two years in the bible six years is a legislative policy in executive policy. the first two years congress entirely democratic hands 60 vote majority imagine thatny today. the president dealing with 50/50 senate with concussions and

shingles aren't really democrats may not want to be democrats or what have you. it's not all that easy there is a 60 votein supermajority at one point they got a lot done in the first years because of that. including the big healthcare overhaul is not an easy thing to get through the last six years as chris said increasingly give up on congress it was republican house and there is not much mood to join hands on a whole lot. they decided to push the boundaries as far as i could on executive power dock is a great example. president obama said i don't have the power to do this before he decided he did have the part the courts did back him up. even president obama thought wait a second we can't go that far felt congress going in on something like this until lawyers cleverly found a way to say theyy could. this has become the normal thing

in washington this is the new norm this earth bush as well on national security really, really pushing further and further what they thought they could do without congress coming on board they were frustrated a stent with the jim bakerli era we coud find common ground the other party in congress on things. they had just given up on some ways onn that. and it is understandable why you bang your head against the wall and not get anywhere not get doanything done is to tell me wt i can do what are my options? you get slapped sometimes as ao gin the second term version they tried to expand it. you now have a situation were each party will find a sympathetic judge and a sympathetic court to create national policy to undo what you do through executive policy the sister of democrats and republicans. there's a ninth circuit in

california to say what trump did should be stopped nationally. if you are a republican he do his own taxes should go to a single judge in texas who you knows when to be sympathetic to get an abortion policy changes likeha that. that is a real challenge going forward it started to become apparent in the obama administration and more so today we are governing becomes this a rubber band. one day the signing of a document changes policy the next day is no, no way it is not a compromise of top product of a consensus of a fight that develops into common ground. it is a snapping back and forth. the reason why they have usedlo executive power is the next one comes along and undoes it. if you are a president you'd much of have a long congress is turning that over is much harder

this is changing poll to make and very profound way. >> if i could just add it has become part of every transition to become up with the list of first-day actions motors a change of a party to reverse the executive actions of the prior administration the rubber band or pendulum effect is not right for democracy leaders very much of the moment majoritarian kind of policymaking. it's not necessarily lasting. the reason i showed doc as an example to very important policy. it turned out to be something there was an enduring public support for. that made it impossible to go back a truly verbose. i don't think everything fits that model. >> imagine how hard it is with the docket recipients are told they can stay in the country to

worry because the next a person's law comes along it could change. how do you buy a house question my cardio is a family? >> it was by far a way to make policy but the t situation i thk peter correctly describes as the partisan paralysis of the last six years of the obama administration and now it is the world of thei present. we could have a different discussion on what it would take to restore by policy partisan making. people would probably leave the room they are talking about history not the future. >> i hope not. [laughter] james? >> should pick up on those pointsur the successor administration pressed the idea they could do away with birthright citizenship even by executive order. to a certain extent doc i hope most people in the room would agree is a tremendous policy

accomplishment. but what are the risks and the administration defining for itself when it is okay to engage in policy that is optimally one might argueue constitutionally grounded and bipartisan passage in the legislature and signature by the president it can fit into an executive order box. whether it's constitutionally is ultimately decided by the courts there is ambiguity about this. h thank at the very reasonable question how far down this road you can go in a predictable ousustainable policy in our country. second term of the clinton administration we did an awful lot with a pen. aesthetic concept that waste invented. it came out of an increasing partisan gridlock in congress for the answer is how do you fix it in congress?

not how do you stop all government from functioning? in the absence of congress that is legislating you could not ignore all the problems for you cannot overstep the bounds either which is why the debate about where the boundaries are. we thought it was very important i'm not sure all administrations take a similar view that those boundaries matter. we did out to cross the boundaries we only wanted to do things with our constitutional and legal. reputed to situation the president settle threat against the wall and maybe won't go to court, that is pretty dangerous. i think we are at a time now we've already seen extra mentation on that. >> we've talked about the shift in the way policymaking is being done under the obama administration to shift more to executive orders. at that is the most consequential policy shift of the obama o administration?

>> jacket probably into that better than i could. one of things we have not touched on and i wonder if jack would agree with this. one of things that really contributed to the success of the obama white house and the first term with the almost flawless transition. i think there is a popular misconception that u transitions begin upon the election of a new president. successful transitions begin a year before. and they are absently critical in laying the groundwork for presidential governing. the 911 commission found a half bit transition of the election recount from the clinton white

house to the bush white house may have contributed to 911 for being unprepared for 911. the fraught transition in 2020 obviously the bloodiest transition since the civil war which i write about inoo my boo. somehow happen in spite ofan everything. on vitamins team the transition was really a model. all you have to remember is on the morning of the inauguration josh bolted the outgoing white house chief of staff and rob emmanuel the incoming chief were in the situation room working hand and glove to make sure there is not a terrorist attack on the mall that morning.

we all forget that now. who was a really model transition and i think made a huge difference in getting the obama white house off to a running start. >> would youou agree with that?h >> i certainly agree on the quality of the transition from the bush administration to the obama administration and i will say we modeled our part of the transition out on that. our instructions from the president, see what exactly the same butut that relate raise yor hand and the baton someone has to take out. there has to be an interest in it. you can have all of the briefing material in the world of the incoming team doesn't want that not going to do any good. i think we saw that in the transition and it did not go so well. it's crucially important. i would say from the inside

apart from doing things by executive action the president took a real interest in laying the foundation for the future. he knew he was not going to get legislation on controversy oh policy through congress. but he was determined the budget proposals he putpu forward shoud start to socialize ideas that we would want to advance. so that somebody else coming to them as proposed in the obama. i was not an academic exercise there's a lot of things he bite administration had been advancing which if you look back at budget proposals dead on arrival on republican congress i not just policy that is people. as outgoing chief of staff one of my assignments in the

transition we can stretch to give opportunities too. when there's a democratic administration looking for appropriate experience people got it in the second term. don't give people jobs they cannot do but don't be so worried if someone says they are a little young for that or someone like that is never had the job before. we put talented people in good positions are increasing the roles right now. he took a veryer long term viewf what you should keep in mind is not just what you can accomplish today. it's what he could do to lay a foundation. we developed against russia in the first ukraine round is the template and it's not just the policies it's the people on the staff that worked on it.

it is -- you are constantly making decisions for the moment. but one of things very special about presidental obama i cap didn't mind what does this mean in terms of the future? >> peter, any comment on the transition. ik think we will open for questions inra a minute. what i would like to do us a is wrapup with one concluding q. when we study the presidency we discussed the structures and the individual. white house organization taken for granted you can't impose a structure that is not mesh with the presidents personality. there has to be a way to get the information the president needs in a way that works out the president. but that said is there a lesson for each of you might say would

be instructive as a model or cautionary lesson from the obama presidency for future administrations as far as white house organization governance? i think the transition point you made is a very good one. and actually the bush administration published a volume handoff. forty previously classified memos on foreign policy that they prepared for the obama administration. they've now been declassified with post scripts on kind of what they got right at the time and what they see differently. i was in a discussion on this earlier this week it was an instructive example of the model transitions you describe. are there other lessons? every president governs in his own way. there is no cookie-cutter model

you can stick to it. having said that what i found it in writing by white house on the white house chief, the gatekeepers is really with the nixon white house ironicallyfo because halderman became the poster boy for watergate but halderman created a model of white house governments that every president has strayed from his peril. jimmy carter thought he could govern the white house without a white house chief off staff. he did not have one for two and half years. how most was a de facto chief completely miscast it was not until the final year of his h presidency i really think had to have achieved me found a guy named jack watson and it was too late to help carter. i think bill clinton spent allim of his time picking his cabinet to the detriment of its white

house staff. he picked them at the last minute. he was not interested in being disciplined particularly. it was only when leon came in a year end a half in the clinton white house turned around on aim dime. there is a model of white house governance that requires every present have a white house chief to execute his agenda and to do everythingre jack and the great chiefs have done. it is not easy to find great chiefs.. they have to have white house explained generally. they have to have knowledge of capitol hill. deep political savvy world-class

temperament and if they are tilucky i really good long-term relationship with the boss there are only a handful of those people around but that would be my bottle. >> thank you. i'm not sure i agree the assessment of the first years of the clinton administration. [laughter] there were certainly bumpy things going on. there were also real accomplishments in terms of economic policy in the model of economic policy for those first two years is very much a part of thec landscape. >> forgive me i oversimplified. i guess my point would still be when leon came in as a result of an intervention that was led by hilary clinton and all of the bill clinton's close advisers of them and lmb directorate like

jack did not want to be chief of staff they had basically taken to camp david lock him in a cabin until he agreed to do it when he did he turn the clinton white house run in my view. >> i do not disagree with that he also continued to be omb director. [laughter] wit a conference of that here a few years ago. >> yes we did. lessons for the future. the point about the basic structure from the nixon years enduring is verye true. but every president is different in terms of what their temperament is. nobody was in the obama administration. he is a different person is a e different way of briefing him there's a different way of making sure he has what he needs. if you are chief of staff you

have to be focused on what the president needs. you cannot be locked to a t structure that does not serve the president. you have to make sure the president -- i worked for two presidents who could reach hundreds of pages at night. not every president can. that doesn't mean they can make a decision. in my view you need to see with whatthe president needs and desn the process. that is never good if the team doesn't feel they are part of it. the team has to ultimately execute. they have to be out there in public, they have to be on the hill. the cabin has to be doing at the iwhite house staff has to be doing that. if you have a practice that leaves people feeling this was done to them it doesn't usually play out well. when you have a president who is not going to spend the time necessarily with everyone puts a lot of burden on the chief of staff to do that. but somewhere in the white house has to make everyone feel

connected to the decision-making process. i was relatively easy with president obama who is willingi to take time and be there. in the second term dennis probably had to do more intermediation than i did during the election year. and has to be in a way that sieveryone feels when there is a decision they are on board. a truly bad thing for administrational people going in five different directions and finger-pointing. it does not lead to success. >> every white house has moments of not the entire time they are there people are complaining they have been left out of the room. a secretary lou just said they try to keep the meetings relatively small that means people are not always happy this is played itself out. depends on the president as well. some presidents of bristle at the constraints of a process.

president clinton it would make late-night calls all of the time to people on the hill, two friends, to whoever but his staff would tell me they'd come in the morning and try to check the call sheet different who he talked to because you've gotta figure outhe for he comes and hd this great i do have a wonderful idea we should try this. >> especially when is dick morris.ll who but that idea has had? dick morris in particular xmas suite at the jefferson hotel. anyway,. [laughter] that really upset chris is a friend because he did not know about it he did not know the president's inc. regular advice. it's one thing to have a one off conversation with tom harkin he was getting regular advice from dick morris the president of pnine states did not tell zone chief of staff about that is a prescription for bad feelings let's just say.wa obviously the most recent president was famous for much worse much more dysfunctional

white house. his chief of staff took away or started monitoring his cell phone calls he called one of his aides and had them go to the apple store and buy himim anothr phone so the white house chief of staff would not know who he was talking to. now that, obama was not known for doing he was good about process i think again there are people i ams sure about there is talk about the boys club around obama through there were not very many women they did not go to play golf with him my friend mark were destroyed about this obama subdivided several people to play golf with him there's a boys club that people complained about broadly speaking he respected process. he respected you had to deal with their equities inside the l building. i do think this center lew knows better than i do it try because it went along because by the end he did not feel n like he needed to speak of a d process as he hd

but he did at least respected it was sound abusers some of the other presidents were. >> i think that's fair.th i tried to make that point to the second term. he's got a little bit of a bad reputation for the close circle. i was quite publicly a supporter of hilary clinton in the primary. i had deep roots in the clinton administration. by the end of the obama administration it was evident he didn't people to the inner circle. i'd been there for so long people thought it started out there. i think there were a lot of people in the inner circle who came from the outside. if you look at the people who were influential in the white house there were a lot of women in that circle. mention kathy a few months ago she was a very serious player she was a very serious player.

when sylvia was at omb and hhs very serious player it is it fair to say if you did not play basketball with him it was not necessarily a question of your gender. i declined the invitation because i said mr. president you will lose all respect for me. [laughter] asked james if you have a question? >> secretary lew you mention the debt limit it's not to move up markets today but it might be c the case that could be instructive for current purposes i am curious about what you learned from your multiple vantage points but the debt limit crisis means for the audience? >> it's a hard subject to do in two minutes.

i described it yesterday to a bunch of people in washington for something between groundhog day and ptsd. it is a terrifying concept to think you are on thehe edge of e cliff that if you miscalculate you could cause the default of the united states. nobody really knows the exact boundaries of how bad it is but it goes from bad to worse there is no good on that scale. in 2011 as at omb 2013 i was at the treasury back in the 1980s office.e speaker's i've actually work in the debt limit or most of the key vantage points. something changed in 2011. 2011 i went from being moment to negotiate some must pass a piece of a bill the opportunity to get something done. for change because there's a group that has now grown that's willing to contemplate.

i didn't 2011 we thought we were doing the right thing by negotiating an agreement on the appropriation bills in the spring. without were doing the right thing by engaging and the negotiation which was a good faith negotiation would give a separate conversation of why it failed but when it failed were at the edge of the globe and only barely skip the fall but putting together terrible piece of legislation the budget control act. after that it became clear if the budget control act was the end of it this time there it may not be a solution the next time. you cannot do something much worse in the budget control act and have confidence that it would work for it when we reach the conclusion by the time i was at the treasury without any real disagreement you cannot negotiate over and exit essential crisis like the debt limit. and it came out quite naturally at that time we had all been at the edge of the cliff. where we are today has taken

some time for the administration to communicate why we won't negotiate on the debt limit is almost essential puzzled because you cannot be where there's no solution you go off the edge. what the other hand is taking him a while to get to the point they made it clear there has to be a negotiation on fiscal policy separate from that and in my view the sooner they get started the better. we are at a moments now that's different than what it was when i was dealing in 11 and 13. having gone to the election for speaker that we saw we know the fragility of leadership turns on five votes. it is a terrible moment when you have to choose between your future as the speaker in the future of the country. that moment could easily be upon us very soon and that is

terrifying. >> i think we have some time for questions. and so we have a microphone so we would like to give priority to students if anyone would like to come up. i know we have several classes in the audience today including mine. i worked in executive secretary's office summer and went to of 2020 quite a crazy time to be within the department. was it difficult to be outside of the close inner circle of the white house formally being chief of staff and now you are across the street than the treasury department you see something one tv tonight i would have given the president the exact opposite advice and now you're in a different position if you could

expand on if you had any of the circumstances and how you dealt with i it? >> the treasury, at least in my day and i think since has been a different position than other cabinet agencies you are in the white house every day unless you are traveling you are at morning meetings were talking to people. for me the challenge was going to back to the room i sat at the head of the table sitting in the corner keeping my mouth shut if it was not something directly related to treasury or a burning necessity that i spoke up. because it's just not a good thing to go to a pretty big new job and look like you're trying to hold onto the old job. but again you're sitting in a room that you know when you have the discipline not to jump in on everything it's pretty well known i had opinions on almost everything. if i ever needed the president's

attention to hear what i was concerned about, i had it. in general it's not just going with the position of white house chief of staff to treasury. as a manager you have to become confident of the people are going to make decisions differently than you even if they are different it's not necessarily bad. sometimes you just have to step in and even the fear of someone saying you're disempowering them. it's a little bit like that if you don't cross the line too many times you can share your views on whatever you need too. it did not come up that often. at least in our circle everyone knew each other very well. there were a lot of sidebar conversations. there was sufficient access to the president you did not feel shut out. i think other white houses are a little different sometimes.

i've only been into but it don't think there's probably a single answer. >> thank you. >> hello my name is melvin walker on my graduate students. i'm also an army veteran. a lot of discussion that we had reminds me a lot of leadership in the importance of t teambuilding and in that vein this is regarding secretary lose comments about partisan gridlock what would it take to repair the partisan paralysis specifically how can a president build a team or staff or an administration that can effectively navigate this? [laughter] >> 30 seconds or less go. >> you can each have a minute. >> my short answer to that is i

don't know any president can. in and of itself up by himself or herself at this point we made that the asking a lot of an individual.to joe biden came and promising to do that. that was certainly his intent and his desire.e. it's an inclination to be a dealmaker reach across the aisle he has managed to get bipartisan votes and some good legislation is not healed the partisan wounds in the country right now and i don't know it's realistic to expect a president to be able to do that the structural divide right now is so wide and so pronounced it's beyond capacity to change it overnight. we are polarized not because of donald trump and he was at manifestation of the polarization that arten existed when he came into office. he chose to accelerated or exacerbated. my most recent book is called the divider about truck for that very reason he profited off politics he chose to pursue

unlike every other president ever covered as part of politics every president other than trump believes in the idea there's a greater obligation is president of the united states to be a uniter not a divider to use george w. bush phrase. president obama use that phrase not a red america or blue america where the nine states of america. we are in a tribal moment and our country. it doesn't mean were always there that's the place wean find ourselves. we do not want to listen to the other side. we are geographically living further and further apart more and more people we tend to agree with the number of states that send summit to the senate from a different part of the present they vote for has shrunk to almost none used to be about a third period we do not want to see the people we don't agree if we took polls in the 60s and asked if it botheredrr you if yr son or daughter married summit from the other party about 5% said yesterday it's about 50%.

i don't want a republican at my christmas table and i do we do not want to talk to each other. we drift to different parts of the internet. thank god forka the remarkable proliferation of information it's a wonderful thing but it also means we are fragmented ourselves we can go to places and news or the internet or social media will hear from people we agree with. and we don't listen to anyone else or another someone else to listen do we have a different fact set when i grew up there were three networks in a couple newspapers and wire service and newsmagazine we started from the samefa effect set clear at livig a a different factual universes all of this seems to be more than a single president can do more than a single staffing question and it's probably the work of regeneration. >> i guess i would just say peter is right and eloquent on that. no president can change that reality the fact we are tribal and we are polarized.

i think presidents can some come defy expectations. i think no one thought joe biden would be able to pass bipartisan legislation in january 2021. and i think he did succeed in defying those expectations. it took a lot of persistence, a lot of stubbornness. but at the two year mark biden was able to more bipartisan legislation passed that most tht observers would have predicted. part of that was joe biden's persistence and bullheaded notice. part of it was also being clever about how they did it. does anybody remember "build back better"? that went down in flames. but ultimately realized this white house chief of staff there was a way to get at least half or not more -- make at least

half a loaf. he went to joe manchin and chuck schumer and said look, you guys just do this because he knew it man should could not be seen to be giving joe biden a victory but if it could be joe manchin's victory anything was possible. and asfl a result we got the inflation reduction act. it is still possible to make some progress. >> i do not fundamentally disagree with anything that was just said. i actually think looking at the white house for that change is fundamentally upside down we have to m look at ourselves in e mirror. it is people voting that creates the dynamic we are talking about. i am a little more optimistic than peter because swing voterst independents are going both ways. the difference in the outcome of the elections this last cycle from what was expected was because of that.

it was areas that voted for democrats. aries voted for democrats going back and forth.or i think we are going to need more people to vote if we had more people voting our politics would be different. >> thank you very much. >> we are out of time. i see an alum standing there. it's good to see a comment welcome back up. it could be a very quick question we will do it pretty quick short. i graduated in 2009. my question is for secretary lew something you brought up briefly during your remarks was about the ukraine sanction policy. since she leftn office and even when you are still an office about the risk of overt use of sanctions. i wanted to get your sense of what the sanction policy it looks like with a full-scaleon invasion. and the use of other components

of the administration such as industry and security at the commerce department to capture at the justice department and how enforcement has changed since you were an office versus now. >> sure. the sanctions policy in 2013, 2014, 2015 was a continuation but in some ways in advance on what we had done in the past. he was taken to a new level of sophistication the ability to target sanctions and to accelerate gradually if you needed to, to bring more pressure to bear to try to achieve your goal of changing the policy without having massive unintended consequences. it was informed by and need to have unity with our european allies. and remember the world was

coming out of the great financial crisis recession at the time. not to throw the world economy into a tailspin. i thought it was important to write something and i did in my last year at treasury i gave remarks they became a pretty widely discussed documents of principles to inform that. we'd spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. it partially was our obligation to leave behind a template for anyone who thought it made sense to understand what that rationale was. i think the current administration has used the principles that were outlined there extremely effectively but very different circumstances a much more aggressivera russia ad much more rapid escalation of the attack on ukraine sovereignty. in a much more willing european partner to go further faster. it's a subject for another discussion why those principles

are important. i think they've actually preceded extremely effectively including using tools outside the treasury department. i do continue to worry that sanctions are used too widely without the careful consideration that i've written about and i have just described. the backlash becomes you don't trust the united states we do not want to do business with the united states are we a good partner? first of all sanctions won't whatworkup we don't have partne. it's just not possible to stop the leakage if we don't have partners.. and it is a dilemma. if you want to be as tough as she can possibly be at the moment is always pressure to do more. but it might not work and might lessen your ability for tools in the future. i get the bite administration a lot of credit for being very tough but being very principled and how they have done it. and i don't think they have crossed any of the lines that

would weaken the ability of the united states you sanctions in the future. there are other circumstances that could arise that would test that. i think it is important to keep a cautionary consideration and minds. i know when we decide in the obama administration there is an active debate at the six room table as to where to draw the line. it was not in any way because there is disagreement about how bad it was for russia to have invaded eastern ukraine through people who were not wearing russian uniforms at the time. it was because we had principal views about how to be most effective at that moment. moments are different depending upon the facts. >> thank you please join me in thanking ouror panelists. [applause] ♪ if you are enjoying american

history to be sent for our newsletter is the qr code on the screen to receive the weekly schedule of upcoming programs like lectures and history, the presidency and more. center for american history tv newsletter today be sure to watch american history tv every saturday or anytime online at c-span.org/history. >> all of this month watch the best of c-span q&a on sunday journalist historian analyzes american presidents to the lens of the book they have written read inhis book author in chiefy night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span q and eight you can listen to q&a and all of our podcast on a free c-span now app. correct c-span now app through

to and hearings from the u.s. congress white house events the courts, campaign and more from the world of politics all at now app. with floor proceedings and hearings from the u.s. congress white house events the courts, campaign and more from the world of politics all at your fingertips. say current place episodes of "washington journal" and find scheduling information for c-span tv networks and c-span radio. plus a variety of compelling podcasts. to spend now is available at the apple store and google play. scan the qr code to download it for free today or visit our website c-span.org/c-span now. c-span now at your front row seat to washington anytime anywhere. ♪ weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on suny @booktv brings you the latest funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more including cox.