now, i don't know about you -- but as a first foot offering, i think that beats a lump of coal. and then next summer, every newborn baby across our country will receive a baby box filled with clothes, nappies and toiletries. friends, the baby box is a part of our belief that all children should start life on a level playing field. that's what inclusion means in practice. and our skills, raising the bar for all and closing the

attainment gap, opening up opportunity for every child, that's the number one priority of our government. it is my personal defining mission. that's why we're directing more funding to areas of greatest need. it's why we've announced our intention to reform school governance, to put parents, head teachers and classroom teachers at the same sort of decisions about children's learning. it's why we're working with teachers to reduce workload, and it's why we're bringing greater transparency to school performance, so that we can measure the attainment gap accurately and set clear targets to close it. but if we are to live up to our ambition, we have a very particular duty to those most in need. we have to get it right for every child. recently, i've been spending some time with young people who have grown up in care. some of them are here today.

we welcome you to our conference. their stories have moved me deeply. these young people have challenged me to accept scotland's pledge to listen to 1,01 care-experienced young people over the next few years and use what they've told me to make it better. i've accepted that challenge. don't get me wrong, many young people who grew up in care go on to do great things, and the staff and the foster careers who work with the kids do an amazing job. let us thank them publicly today.

and real progress is being made. school exclusions are down. the number of children living in permanent, rather than temporary placements is up. but we cannot ignore the reality for too many children in care. only 6% go to university. nearly half will suffer mental health issues. half of the adult prison population are people who lived in care when they were growing up. and worst of all, and this breaks my heart, a young person who has been in care is 20 times, 20 times more likely to be dead by the time they are 25 than a young person who hasn't. conference, this simply has to change, and i am determined that it will change.

so, i am going to do what these young people have asked me to do. i am announcing today that we will launch an independent root and branch review of the care system. it will look at the underpinning legislation, practices, culture and ethos, and it will be driven by those -- [ applause ]

and it will be driven by those who have experience of care. conference, this is not something that any other country has ever done before. we will do it here in scotland first. you know, the young people who speak to me make a simple but very powerful point. they say the system feels like it is designed only to stop things happening. and of course, it must have safeguards and protections, but children don't need a system that just stops things happening to them. they need one that makes things happen for them. they need a system that supports them to become the people they can be, one that gives them a sense of family, of belonging, of love. my view is simple, every young

person deserves to be loved. so let's come together and make this commitment, to love our most vulnerable children and give them the childhood they deserve. that's what inclusion means in practice. conference, if there is one institution in our country that embodies the values of inclusion and compassion more than any other, it is our precious national health service. today there are more staff working in the health service than ever before. our doctors, nurses, auxiliaries

and all of our other health professionals are helping to deliver some of the lowest waiting times and some of the highest satisfaction levels ever recorded in scotland. so, i will never tire of saying th this. our staff are heroes, each and every one of them, no matter where they were born, deserve our deepest gratitude for the work that they do. over this parliament, we will increase health spending by almost 2 billion pounds. that's a necessary commitment, but it is not sufficient. to make our nhs fit for the future, we must reform as well as invest. that will involve tough decisions, but the challenge of an aging population demands it.

it's why our government has integrated health and social care, a challenge ducked by every single administration before us, and it's why we are expanding stand-alone, elective capacity through five new treatment centers, but we must go further. the nhs of the future must be built on a real shift from acute care to primary and community care. so, the commitment i am making today is a landmark one. by the end of this parliament, we will increase spending on primary care services to 11% of the frontline nhk that's what doctors have said are needed and that is what we will deliver. and let me be clear what that means. by 2021, an extra 500 million

pounds will be invested in our gp practices and health centers, and it means for the first time ever that half of the health budget will be spent not in acute hospitals, but in the community, delivering primary, community and social care, building an nhs that delivers today and for generations to come. that is what our government is determined to do. friends, today i have set out our determination to build an inclusive scotland. i've talked about our ambitions for our nhs, our economy, our education system and our children in care. i've talked about our hopes for the next generation and for the generations that come after that.

hopes and ambitions that are shared by men and women the length and breadth of scotland. so, as we prepare to take the next steps in our nation's journey, whatever they might be, let us always remember this. there is more, much more, that unites us as a country that will ever divide us. yes, voters and no-voters, remainers and levers, all of us care deeply and passionately about the future of this nation. so, whatever our disagreements, let us always treat each other with respect, and let's work harder to understand each other's point of view.

you know, in a strange sort of way, the events of the last few months might help us do just that. i know how upset i was on the morning of the 24th of june as i came to terms with the result of the eu referendum. i felt as if part of my identity was being taken away. and i don't mind admitting that it gave me a new insight into how those who voted no might have felt if 2014 had gone the other way. likewise, there are many no-voters now looking at the brexit vote with real dismay and wondering if independence might be the best option for scotland after all. let's build on that common ground.

let's resolve that whatever decisions we face in the years ahead, we will take them together, respecting each other every step of the way and let us in the snp lead by example. you know, this year marks 30 years since i first joined this party of ours. now, i know what you're thinking, how is that even possible when she's still only 25? or maybe that's just what i'd like you to be thinking. but in all those 30 years, i have never doubted that scotland will run day become an independent country, and i believe it today.

and i believe it today more strongly than i ever have before. but i've always known that it will happen only when a majority of our fellow citizens believe that becoming independent is the best way to build a better future together. so, we need to understand why in 2014 that wasn't the case. some of you voted no believed that staying in the uk offered greater economic security, a stronger voice in the world and a guaranteed place in the eu. back then, it even seemed possible that there might be a westminster labor government at some point in the next 20 years. but the future, the future looks very different today. and make no mistake, it is the opponents of independence, those on the right of the tory party intent on a hard brexit who have

caused the insecurity and the uncertainty. so, it falls to us, the advocates of independence, to offer solutions to the problems they have created. of course, independence would bring its own challenges. that is true for every independent nation on earth. but with independence, the solutions will lie in our own hands. it will be up to us to chart our own course and be the country we want to be, not the country that an increasingly right-wing tory government wants us to be. i promised at the start of our conference that we will seek to protect scotland's interests in

every way that we can, and we will. we will work with others across the political divide to try to save the uk as a whole from the fate of a hard brexit. we will propose new powers to help keep scotland in the single market, even if the uk leaves. but if the tory government rejects these efforts, if it insists on taking scotland down a path that hurts our economy, costs jobs, lowers our living standards, and damages our reputation as an open, welcoming, diverse country, then be in no doubt, scotland must have the ability to choose a better future, and i will make sure that scotland gets that chance. and let us be clear about this,

too. if that moment does arise, it will not be because the 2014 result hasn't been respected. it will be because the promises made to scotland in 2014 have been broken. and above all, it will be because our country decides together that being independent is the best way to build a better, stronger, fairer future for all of us. friends, we know what kind of country we want scotland to be. and i believe it's a vision that unites us, an inclusive, prosperous, socially just, open, welcoming and outward-looking

country. the question now in this new era is how best to secure it. let's resolve as a nation to answer that question together. we have already come so far. our homeroom journey has given us new confidence, new self-belief, a determination not to be taken backwards, but to finish building to tomorrow's scotland. friends, the time is coming to put scotland's future in scotland's hands. let us get on with making that case. let's get on with building the country we know scotland can be. thank you.

♪ ♪

♪

♪

♪ florida began early voting yesterday, and democratic presidential candidate hillary clinton campaigns in coconut creek, florida, today, in what's

being billed as an early voting rally at broward college north campus. c-span will have live coverage of that beginning at 2:15 eastern. and republican presidential candidate donald trump is also campaigning in florida. he's holding a rally outside the tallahassee car museum. you can see live coverage of that starting at 6:00 eastern on c-span2. on election day, november 8th, the nation decides our next president and which party controls the house and senate. stay with c-span for coverage of the presidential race, including campaign stops with hillary clinton, donald trump and their surrogates, and follow key house and senate races with our coverage of their candidate debates and speeches. c-span, where history unfolds daily. here on c-span3 tonight, american history tv prime time continues with a look at the life of alexander hamilton starting at 8:00 eastern with a

visit to the morris-jumel mansion, the oldest house in manhattan, and then a look at how close "hamilton" the musical follows history and also a look at hamilton's legacy. that's tonight at 8:00 eastern here on c-span3. after i came up with my idea of reproductive rights, i went and researched with recent events that i've heard about in our news. i knew i could find information on that, and that would also help me figure out what points i wanted to say about it and how to form my outline for my piece. >> i don't think i took a very methodical approach to this process, which i mean, you could if you wanted, but i think that really with a piece as dense as this, i would say, it's really just the process of reworking and reworking. so as i was trying to come up with what my theme was, i was doing research at the same time and coming up with more ideas of what i could film.

i would come up with a idea and think, okay, that would be a great shot, then that would give me a idea of something else i would focus on, so i'd do research about that, and really the whole process is just about building on other things and then scratching what doesn't work, and you just keep going until you finally get what is the finished product. >> this year's theme -- your message to washington, d.c. tell us, what is the most urgent issue for the new president and congress to address in 2017? our competition is open to all middle school or high school students grades 6 through 12, with $100,000 awarded in cash prizes. students can work alone or in a group of up to three to produce a 5 to 7-minute documentary on the issue selected. include some c-span programming and also explore opposing opinions. the $100,000 in cash prizes will be awarded and shared between 150 students and 53 teachers. and the grand prize, $5,000, will go to the student or team with the best overall entry. this year's deadline is january 20th, 2017. so, mark your calendars and help

us spread the word to student filmmakers. for more information, go to our website, studentcam.org. former white house advisers and transition staff discuss the history of presidential transitions and challenges for the new administration. speakers include a former policy adviser to president clinton, former staff to first lady laura bush and former transition director david eagles. this is 1 hour 15 minutes. >> welcome. i'm chris adams, the director of training at the national press foundation, and i'll be introducing our panel here in a second. since sandy told you her transition story, i'll give you my one, brief transition story. 2000, the most interesting transition in my lifetime. i was working at the "wall street journal." i was in the midst of a long-term project that had nothing to do with politics. and so, everybody in my newsroom was working on the transition but me.

so, we're going to talk today about transition. we have three panels, a panel of experts, a panel of reporters, and two experts who are going to talk about the revolving door issue. basically, what we're trying to help you figure out is what actually happens when you wake up on a cold day in january and all of your sources are gone. for reporters, that's what today is about. i mean, strategies on how you can prepare for it, what stories you should be looking for, you know, how you actually build new sources in the new administration, and the stories that you'll want to do, like the old standby stories. for the politicians and the administration, it's a matter of efficiency and speed in getting the president's new agenda enacted. now, these are some numbers from david eagles, center for presidential transition. a new administration is likely to get its appointees confirmed fastest in the first year of its

administration. it has only 73 days to do so if it wants to get them in place by the start of the administration, and there's 4,000 presidential appointees to try to get through the process. and so, that's what we'll be talking about today. our three experts, david eagles, the director of the center for presidential transition at the partnership for public service. he's going to tell you what pivotal role they are playing in the transition this year for both potential administrations. anita mcbride, executive in residence at the center for congressional and presidential studies at the school of public affairs at american university and a veteran of incoming and outgoing transitions with the reagan, george h.w. bush, and george w. bush administrations. and william galston, a senior fellow for the governance studies program at the brookings institute and a veteran of the transition process. this first session is 75 minutes. each of them will give a brief,

you know, a brief view of some of the most important things they see and that they have experienced in their transitions, and then we will aim for 30, 35 minutes of q&a, because i think that's what most of you want to do. so, we are going to start with david. david eagles. >> very good. thank you. thank you for having us. appreciate your time. thanks for talking about presidential transition, right? so, what i want to do is take a quick step back here and understand just the sheer scope and magnitude of what we're talking about here. i mean, these presidential transitions are massive, and this is part of our message to the incoming teams. they're inheriting a $4 trillion apparatus. there are hundreds of federal agencies. as chris mentioned, there's 4,000 political appointments, 1,100 of those have to go through the senate. and there's only 73 days, to your point, and there's generally not a lot of experience in this process, right? there aren't a lot of folks leaving, traditionally in history of the presidency, and there generally aren't a lot of folks coming in. what's happened historically is this has become a re invent the wheel exercise, a groundhog day

exercise that every team has gone through. not only is it big and it's complicated, it's also a period of vulnerability for the country as well. so, by and large, the white house is virtually virtually e. the original files are virtually gone. there are no hard drives or they wiped the hard drives for the incoming team and historically they haven't had instruction manuals when they've come in. so there's an interesting period of time around the inauguration where it's very vulnerable for the country as well. i also say no incoming president really has done this very well. and because it is a reinvent-the-wheel exercise, this is the first time you've seen both teams planning this effort early with now because of the new legislation they have space and logistics provided by by the government. this is only the second time in history we've seen that. governor romney went to town on it, he had several hundred people pre-election focused on this. i go back to -- this whole thing is one big epic corporate takeover except the big

difference is 4,000 of your top people all quit the exact same hour. in this process you get no due diligence so you don't know what you've bought until you bought it, effectively, after the election. consider, too, if you were to buy a small business, a coffee shop, a restaurant, it's a six to 12-month process. you have ceo succession plans in place. you reviewed the financial statements before you bought it. here there's nothing and there's an opportunity to do so much better. what do i mean by that? every president coming in nearly a year after they've been elected or getting less than one-third of their people in office. so think about that, they're not getting their top people in place, even today in the federal government this is not on president obama, this is every modern president. one in five senior positions are vacant in government, so about 20% compared to the private sector where it's 4% or 5%. we asked ourselves why? why is this issue? what's happening? why is it taking so long? why are there these senior vacancy rates? we found a couple things. one is that first of all these

teams are not starting early enough so they're not managing this process strategically. that's why we feel if these teams step back this is an opportunity to make governments more effective. it's the only time these teams can basically understand how they want their government to work. it's very difficult once you're in office. all our research and interviews show once you're in the presidency you're hit with ufos, unforseen occurrences, all the time. it's very difficult to take a step back. this is the time they have to maximize. so they historically haven't gotten their people through and once you're in office you can't catch up. that's why you're seeing these vacancy rates we see out there now. secondly, from the campaign promise perspective, right? we're still in the midst of -- 20 some odd days left of the silly season of the campaign. they're making campaign promises. transition connects the campaign promises into the government, understands how to execute them. so they will develop teams now or develop a 100-day plan or 200-day plan thinking about

their campaign promises, how do you execute them within the federal environment, this is an extremely complicated business that is the u.s. federal government. the largest most complex and powerful entity on earth. and so if you want to keep this country safe and prosperous, these teams have to start now. we cannot afford it. particularly in the post-9/11 environment and this is why the bush administration also started early. and so that's what i wanted to leave you with. i'm david eagles, part of the center for presidential transition, we're part of the partnership for public service an we're committed to making government more effective. we're also non-partisan and nonprofit and we've been working with the teams since the spring. in april we actually convened all five senior campaign officials at the time, the candidates who were still in office, we pulled them aside for two days to talk about governing the country and it's the first time in history we've seen that this early. as an american, i'm super proud to see a safe, non-partisan environment where these teams can talk about governing this

entity, which is the u.s. federal government. since then we've been working closely with the teams, both teams are committed to an effective transition which is very exciting and they understand the importance of governing this country. i want to leave you with that. >> well done, david. really well done. thank you. thank you, david, that really helped to frame things. i'll talk from the practitioner point of view having been in a number of transitions and i want to pick up on something sandy mentioned which is you never know who your sources are going to be for information. i think that was very illustrative if i can just speak that for a minute. in 1994 when congress flipped from democrat to republican after almost 50 years, there are people who are in the loyal opposition working behind the scenes that could be in leadership at some point so it's really important to be cultivating those relationships and particularly when it comes to transitions on the senate

side who's going to be in the position overseeing the nomination's process for any senate-confirmed appointments because they could be a stumbling block to the nomination of a president-elect or they could be a real help. i think that was really a good illustrative example of knowing who's on the hill. chris, thank you for inviting me to participate i want to focus on a couple of key areas which is what role does the outgoing administration play in ensuring there is a smooth transfer of power? my answer is it plays the most important role because they set the tone. the outgoing president and his team will set the tone on how the transition is viewed by the american public, how the transition is handled by the

incoming team. and i think it will take a lot from the first encounter that the president-elect and the outgoing president have. particularly if it is a dramatic change. if donald trump wins, given all the rhetoric that has happened in this campaign, that will be a moment that everyone will have eyes on and will be a -- set the tone for what may happen because it has been such a visceral election. obviously if it's mrs. clinton these are two people that know each other, he's campaigning for her. my assumption is all of the assets and resources that an outgoing team can provide will be there and that the tone will be set very early as a positive one. so the role of an outgoing

administration, ensuring a smooth transfer of power, is setting the tone. it's really important that the president do that and do that well. and by extension, that they give direction to all of their staff, not only in the white house but to the departments and agencies as well to be open and transparent in providing all the information that an incoming team would know. so what are the greatest obstacles for an incoming team. greatest obstacles is they don't know what they don't know. and particularly if it is a trump presidency, part of the people who -- if this is an election based on dramatic change and overhauling the government from top to bottom the anticipation that there will be people that want to come in and blow the whole thing up is probably pretty highly likely so with who are -- what tobe ne is

going to be set by the incoming team, to learning how the government does work, as david said, extremely complex, trillions of dollars, thousands and thousands of people work -- hundreds of thousands of people work in these federal bureaucracies and then you have 4,000 pivotal positions to put in there to run the government the way you want it to be run. so a great obstacle for the incoming team is admitting what they don't know, having good people on their transition teams which are in place now to really understand what is happening in the agencies, what are some of the things on the table, what are some of the things in the hopper that agencies through regulation or policies are getting ready to do. how is that different from be what you have campaigned on and what you promised to do and the personnel you need to select and be ready to go in at the end of

the 73-day period to execute on what the electorate has asked you to do. how has the transition process changed? you heard chris mention the transition 2000. that is one no future president should ever experience. in a post-9/11 world, it would certainly put any white house and the american people by extension at great risk. you think about the number of days we did not know who was going to be president of the united states. the decision was not made until december 12 of 2000 so there could be no official transition proce process, there could be no conversations between an outgoing administration and the incoming team so the -- george w. bush, the president-elect and -- actually, i can't even say that, the george w. bush campaign team was operating in

arlington, virginia, in offices that were acquired by that vice president -- well, dick cheney, the candidate acquired by him, paid for privately. there were no government resources. people like me who had worked in previous transitions were called up. i was never expecting to go back to -- into the government. i had my time working for ronald reagan and george h.w. bush but i had been in personnel and management administration. i'd been director of white house personnel, i know how to off load people, how to on board people i know security and personnel management administration so i was asked to come help and it was a very dramatically different experience because you were kind of operating in the shadows. you were trying to be ready and have things ready to go if the

decision was going to be that it was george w. bush to become president of the united states. but if it didn't then all of those resources just collapsed. but private money had to be raised to make those offices available once the decision was made by the supreme court then all of these assets and resources through the general services administration things provided by by the government could kick in and you have a quick turnaround to move into transition space which was downtown closer to the white house and you could have conversations but the conversations you can imagine were not all that easy. that was a very tense period of time. it was called into question by vice president gore that this was really the right decision. there were personnel tensions, of course but nonetheless the process worked and there was the

smooth transfer of power that all of us expect and americans are entitled to have once the campaign rhetoric is over and the business of governing begins. but that was a very illustrative experience for george w. bush and for a lot of us on the team basically with the underlying premise for him, for any president-elect, it was not the way we should be doing business but we learned from that. then, of course, came 9/11 so the stakes were even so much higher in a transfer of power. what it led to in late 2007 early 2008, president george w. bush really executed an executive order creating a transition coordinating council and began to put a framework around -- an early framework around having conversations

between the outgoing administration and whoever the incoming team may be what did that look like? that meant every department and agency and white house office was charged with putting together documentation we put it all in binders, all well documented, provided by, tabbed with what you can expect on a day one, what are some of the things that this particular office -- then i was chief of staff to laura bush, to the first lady so what are the things in a calendar year you can anticipate. but that was done in every office so there was a handoff of excellent documented information that provided a template and framework that we still are using to today. once there was the decision, november 6 in 2000 an early

meeting between barack obama and george w. bush and we began to have with incoming teams that had been named by president-elect obama that came in and met with us in our office in the white house, began to have an exchange it was a very dramatically different experience than 2000 where we couldn't talk to anybody or certainly couldn't talk to anybody openly so despite how the outgoing team may have felt emotionally about the -- losing their jobs, not knowing what they were going to do this was what they were charged to do, to make sure there was a smooth transfer of power that they gave confidence to the american people that despite the rhetoric of the campaign, which was pretty visceral back then as well, that things were going to move on well.

so the new president when he came in on day one, to know what would be on his desk particularly from a national security point of view there were table top exercises that had taken place between the national security team of george w. bush and the incoming national security team of barack obama that was really important. again, post-9/11 world, the stakes were very different, the fact that we were a nation at war, in two theaters of war underscored the fact that serious deliberations, conversations, had to take place so the last thing i'll leave you with is not only the business of government being transferred and the personnel that has to be put in place to execute the policy of the new president but there's also a change in the residence of the white house. a new first family coming in, a first family going out. there's a lot that goes on to make that happen smoothly and to make that comfortable for a new

first family and not to be diminished. because the white house in its setting is this stage for our diplomacy and is the stage for the business of our government on a day to day basis so that has to be a smooth transfer as well. thankfully, there are 94 people on the white house staff that serve administration to administration that make that happen. >> so, bill, if you could go next. i should note we are in the space of the university of maryland and bill you are a professor in college park so -- both at brookings and in college park so if you could talk about your experience and the research you've done on transition since you were in one yourself. >> sure. i'm going to adopt the perspective that i know best which is of an incoming administration. you just heard, i think, a very

full explanation of what things look like from the standpoint of an outgoing administration but from the standpoint of an incoming administration, a transition is a discrete series of tasks and each of those tasks can be executed well or badly. and people like you will be watching and making judgments every single day about the competence or lack of competence of the incoming team. job one is the selection of the white house staff. and i really want to underscore at this point. for the first six months of a new administration the white house is the locus of action. the white house staff is the locus of action because however well however well organized the confirmation process is, it is the nature of things slow.

the department and agencies won't be up to full strength and operating at full speed so the white house is more important in the first six months than it ever is again. the white house staff has to be appointed first. here's the rule of thumb for a transition. if the transition is doing its job well, almost all the white house staff will have been named by thanksgiving. and the transition that i was involved in, the clinton transition, got it backwards, spent almost two months focused on the cabinet and the white house was almost an afterthought and i speak from personal experience because i got a call to come down to little rock on january 10. i was a professor that the

university of maryland and my syllabi were typed and the students had registered for my courses, the books had been ordered and a funny thing happened on the way to the spring semester. it was a very interesting experience for me and totally unexpected but i would not recommend it as stan standard operating procedure for a presidential transition and of the people who are going to be selected for the white house sta staff, keep your eyes first of all on the chief of staff. who will the chief of staff be? secondly, the personnel director, that's going to be a huge locus of action early on, if the personnel director is someone with experience and if the presidential transition gives the incoming personnel director the human power and the resources to do that job on multiple fronts then you're setting the stage for a

reasonably with well-organized and orderly process. if the personnel director is not given enough help and he or she has to function as what an old boss of mine walter mondale called a one-armed paper hanger, then disaster is around the corner. and finally the person who is in charging directing scheduling for the incoming president. get those three things right and the odds are the transition is going to go reasonably smoothly. then there's the confirmable position. you've heard the number 4,000, that's true, but there are a handful that are incomp rabbly more important than the rest. and focusing on the key cabinet and subcabinet posts, your cabinet ought to be named before christmas.

and an interesting story to follow is the perennial question of who gets to choose the subcabinet. you can tell a lot about an incoming administration from the degrees of freedom and discretion that the nominated cabinet officials are being given to help select their immediate subordinates, highly centralized white houses with lots of political debts to fill, frequently try to take as many of those decisions into the white house as possible and not disperse them to cabinet -- to incoming cabinet officers. there are various points in between, jimmy carter notoriously gave his cabinet officials carte blanche to select their immediate subordinates, that did not work out so well. and so there are various ways of splitting the difference but that's a big story. here's a third interesting story for the cabinet. has the president-elect and has

the chief of staff and the senior advisors to the president given any thought to the way teams of people who will be working on similar overlapping issues are going to work together? because if your treasury secretary doesn't get along with the director of the national economic council and the director of omb or if the secretary of defense and the secretary of state can't stand each other -- which happened during the reagan administration and a few other places i could name, etc., etc. and under bush. third job, the substantive beginning of the administration. what are you going to -- you have made hundreds of promises, and in the nature of things, the bandwidth of a white house is narrow, the bandwidth of a congress is narrow. what are the two or three legislative items that you'll

focus on in the first six months? you must make that decision early. and then you must organize the issue teams and the political teams during the transition to begin to exercise -- to execute those top priorities. and that is a very interesting political story during a transition because especially if you've made promises on many, many fronts, you haven't focused your campaign on just a handful of key issues but have made -- but have in effect entered into transactions with a number of different groups who make up your base, lots of people will be disappointed. who? how are you going to handle that? that's both an agenda issue and a political question. of course it's not all legislative. and during the transition a separate team will be beavering away on executive orders that a

president can sign on day one because that's something under the president's control. you can set a tone by determining which executive orders will be signed and made public on the first day of the administration. makes a difference. are you going to dump them all at once or release them like time release capsules day by day so people like you have something to write about everyday? there's an art to dribbling out decisions so the ones that matter get their day in the sun. as part of is subsanative the -- how am i doing on time? >> you've got a couple more. >> good. as part of the substantive preparation for the administration -- and keep your eye on this one, too -- there needs to be coordination between the issues agenda and the budget development because many of an incoming president's key legislative proposals will have

fiscal consequences and believe me if those consequences are knot factored into the budget then nobody on capitol hill is going to take him seriously. let me tell you a war story for the first month of the clinton administration. one of bill clinton's key domestic promises -- as a matter of fact probably the most important one -- was to end welfare as we now know it. and there were going to be substantial ongoing transition expenses connected to the fulfillment of that promise but there was question about whether that money was going to be slotted into a budget which was by presidential decision early on going to be an austere budget to bring down the deficit, reduce long-term interest rates, encourage business conversation, et cetera, not a typical decision for an incoming president and not a universally

popular decision and then there was a big fight, well, is there going to be provision made within that austere framework for the $5 billion annually that will be needed to fund welfare reform? and the answer to that question eventually was no. and everybody who understood the process understood that whatever was going to happen in year one, welfare reform was not going to be part of the agenda. so you demonstrate seriousness by coordinating budget development with issues development. speaking of inaugurations, there is an inaugural day to be planned, there's an inaugural address to be drafted.

and two other key tasks, first of all congressional engagement and secondly press relations. especially if an incoming president is facing divided government, which will almost certainly be the case, the next president of the united states will not enjoy the luxury that barack obama had on day one and for the next 13 months control of the white house, an ample majority in the house of representatives and 60-vote majority, filibuster proof majority if it held together in the senate. whatever the outcome of this election, the next president will not have that kind of freedom of maneuver so the ability to establish good relations with the leaders of both political parties in the congress will be essential to the agenda whatever it turns out to be. and finally you.

any smart transition will pay attention to the fact that you have stories to write. many of you will have stories to write everyday. what are you going to be writing about? trust me, if the transition doesn't think through the answer to that question, you will try to come up with answers of your own. [ laughter ] the answers that you come up with are not to be quite as helpful to the incoming president as the answers that the transition team might come up with. the transition team, if it's smart, can give you something on the issue front, the personnel front, or the scheduling front to write about everyday and preferably some cocktail. so those are some of the benchmarks that you can use to gauge the competence of an incoming administration. i could spend a lot of time

given this template that i just offered of key tasks talking about what the clinton transition got right and got wrong but rather than telling war stories, let me stop now and if you're interested in any of them, that's what the q a&a session is for. >> well, we love war stories so think of your best war story. i have ask a couple questions then i'll turn it over for full q&a. david i was hoping you could give us a sense of your center, when you got started. there was some legislation that passed in the last six years that has released money toward these transition efforts, maybe explain that for us? >> a couple pieces there. one is you have to know that modern transitions are completely different than they were eight years ago. it's a totally new legislative environment and mandate that these teams now have from

congress to actually plan early. so three pieces you ought to be aware of. one was passed in 2010, this was the law ma moved government support earlier so to anita's point historically it was election day, you looked around, you tried to acquire resources from the government at that point, now that kicks in at the convention time so this is only the second time in history we've seen early support, logistical support, provided by by the gsa that kicks in. this provides a mandate and safe space for these teams to play out and rethink how these transitions are done. just having looked at these, having served on romney's transition four years ago, they're completely different. they will have in place on election day potential options for candidates and also very -- progressing very nicely on the development of their 100 or 200

day plans. also, the number of their senate confirmed positions so this number was closer to 1400, now it's above 1100. so it's reduced to 169 or so so that helps from a processing standpoint to get folks through, not as relevant but know there are lower numbers of folks, non-political jobs that have been taken off. the 1,100 number is way too many. these are both policy-making jobs but also good management jobs in there as well that we would argue that we would consider taking off the list. the third piece was signed this year by executive order by president obama to comply with the law, this is the first time the outgoing administration has started the coordinating function this is early. so they're required by law this year six months before the election to start the coordinating functions. again, think about it eight years ago. your incoming teams did nothing or if they did something it was in the cover of darkness prior to the election. very small quiet teams focused primarily on just the top cabinet.

so you've seen for president obama for example he got seven people in by inauguration. seven of 1,100. think about the outgoing. the outgoing administration historically has not participated very fully with the exception of -- there's been several examples but no formal process or planning that we've seen. this is the first time now there's both a white house coordinating council at the political level and an agency career director's counsel that's been convened several times with active engagement of the incoming teams. first time in history that we've seen this. then there's the folks staying through transition, the career civil servants. and historically every agency has prepared for transition completely differently. some agencies put together in one case 80,000 pages of briefing materials for the incoming team. that's not even a door stop, that's beyond the door stop. some agencies do very little.

so what's been great about this cycle, the administration is committed to much more consistency with the agencies so there's a standard template every agency is using, a process and coordinating function. this is the first time you're seeing coordination of outgoing and incoming and the folks staying. that should drastically change how these transitions happen and we should see much better results so to bill's point we think by inauguration day you can get your top 100 cabinet and subcabinet officials in place. four years ago governor romney was on a similar trajectory but that was the intent. you may say it's not possible but the data shows we have 70% of the time getting people through is not the senate, it's the transition teams finding these people, putting them through a paperwork process, this stuff is controllable, sequenceable and can start now.

this should be the new measuring stick for modern transitions and presidencies. get your people in, it's easier to go fast than slow, there's a halo effect from congress to get them in, there's a halo effect to execute on your promises to the american public. why waste your first several hundred days spinning your wheels, finding mo who these people are when they can be ready on the first day, this has been part of our message with the income teams for the last six months or so. historically we've been on the phone trying to find folks that did it 10, 20 years ago. we're going through george w. bush's boxes trying to find out how he stepped up his white house. this is the groundhog day exercise we've gone through historically so we at the center for presidential transition are trying to be the repository of information and best practices connecting people who've done it before with experts to map this whole thing out. if you go to our web site, presidentialtransition.org, you'll see the entire process mapped out, what the teams ought to be doing literally today to focus on this transition process and at the end of the day i think we can see much better

results for an incoming president, much more people, a better ability to execute on their promises and much more planning around that period of inauguration so we can say safe and prosperous. >> now i'm going to ask one more question then i'll go out to -- first of all note that everybody should have a book let from the center of the presidential transition that lays out what he's talking about, so that's yours to take home so thank you for bringing that along. so the notion of the election being rigged and the poisonous political atmosphere we have right now, what sort of an impact is that going to have on transition on both sides if, you know, a huge section of the country is hostile to the outcome of the election, does that -- what kind of impact does it have here in d.c.?

and also david i was hoping you could answer, donald trump's campaign has been very hostile to the process in general or the system. is his team working well with you all? and are the people who are working with you the same folks we see on tv or is it an entirely different apparatus? so will this rigged talk hurt us and how is trump behaving, basically? >> i'll -- thank you. i'll just very briefly say -- reiterate one thing i said to you initially. the tone that is set by both the person who wins this election and particularly the person who loses this election, they have to set the tone and say they accept the decision of the american people and that there's far more important things now to be focused on.

i take comfort in what governor mike pence said on the news, that if donald trump loses the election they will accept the decision of the american people. i keep reiterating that and i hope on the other side, too, i hope mrs. clinton's team says the same thing. >> yes, i agree with that, just a few comments. we've seen some very interesting debates so far in this campaign but the one i'd like to see is the debate between mike pence and donald trump. [ laughter ] starting with syria policy and ending with the legitimacy of presidential elections butt he me stop there and say that it's not just a question of what the

defeated candidate does, it's also what the president-elect does. if it's former secretary of state hillary clinton i think she will have a job from day one of reaching out to the responsible leaders of the republican party and emphasizing that despite the tone and temper of the election that there are people in washington starting with the president-elect who are really dedicated to the process of governing the country and the national interest and who are prepared not to abandon partisanship but to try to see beyond it where common ground exists and where coordinated action is possible. and this election has

surprisingly turned up some areas of common ground between the political parties on key issues ranging from infrastructure to assistance for families with young children who are trying to balance work and families so the president-elect can set a tone -- if it's secretary of state clinton -- not only with a very explicit and continuing serious outreach to the leaders of both political parties but also in the selection of key topics, agenda items to lead off the new administration with. there are some that would be confrontational and others that would tend towards cooperation. never underestimate the extent to which the initiative lies in the hands of the president-elect and the incoming administration. >> very well said. >> david? >> so a couple things, one is

first of all as i mentioned before we've seen both teams committed to effective governance of this country and that's been exciting and both teams we began working with in the april time frame, both teams are organized around the key functions of transition so you have ahead of appointments in trump and clinton's race, a head of the agency and policy implementation focused on key campaign promises and cataloging them to develop 100 and 200-day plans. as an american, i've been extremely, extremely pleased these teams have in their own words put their swords at the door to talk about governing the most complex and powerful entity on the earth. you have to do that. job one is win the campaign so we don't want -- they don't want distractions focused on governing the country while they're trying to run their campaign so i'll respect that and the process they want to adhere to and how they want to release publicly the people

involved but both teams are staffed up, organized, taking it seriously and at the end of the day we'll see much better results from both. >> so we have plenty of time for questions from the audience, raise your hand, we'll call on you, we don't have a mike to hand around so speak up. kate? >> so the only -- i can speak for everyone here but the only administrations i've really seen that i remember personally are george w. bush and barack obama and in both of those administrations you saw congress move way away from them and kind of refuse to work with them at a certain point. does that happen to every administration? and at what point does that usually happen and why? >> can i give a comment to that? thank you, that was a great question. i think one of -- and you're right the relations, of course, were difficult, naturally, in

2000. there were a lot of people on the hill who were not happy with the result and there was still this call into question of the legitimacy. i think a lot of things changed really after 9/11, the country really did come together, the congress really did work well with the president on a number of key issues passing enormous bipartisan legislation on the emergency plan for aids relief which we haven't seen anything that level up till now, $15 billion commitment to a single disease. so there were areas of cooperation that were actually very encouraging i also think what really led to some of this was personality driven. george w. bush really would work with the other side. ted kennedy was a frequent guest to the white house. nancy pelosi was a frequent guest to the white house, there were, despite what may have been public rhetoric there were

conversations behind the scenes over very key and important issues. i think drawing from an example, too, of how ronald reagan handled his congressional relations as well. i mean, it's very well known, he and tip o'neill tunnel did not agree on policy but they had a lot of frequent interaction as friends and after hours friends. those things go a long way in being able to on key legislative priorities trying to move the marker and get something done. we know the example for george w. bush. he was a member of congress, he had strong personal relationships on both sides of the aisle. in one key instance it didn't play out well for him when he -- with a conversation with dan rostenkowski, powerful head of the ways and means committee and agreed to raise taxes.

george bush made that decision knowing it would cost him the election and it did but it was the right thing to do for the country. so there are examples of where a president, again, sets the known by being willing to take some political risks and develop relationships to get big things done but i think one of the things i would say that has been a little disappointing about president obama, he was a member of the senate and it is pretty well known reaching across the aisle was not a strong suit of this white house and it -- there was a lot of contention around health care reform and other issues, but building personal relationships, i think that's an important thing to watch for, too, what is the extension of the olive branch to the congress and particularly to the opposition? >> that said -- and i agree with

all of that -- the job of reaching across the aisle is tougher than it used to be. because the political system is more polarized than it used to be. the divisions between the parties are deeper, more pervasive, there's less overlap between the political parties. a long time ago there were more republicans liberal than a lot of democrats and conversely a lot of republicans that we s - that were more conservative than republicans. that's not the way it is any more. so going across party lines is now mission very difficult.

and building on what anita said, never think campaign rhetoric is irrelevant to governance. the american people are listening and if you make big high-profile promises, breaking those promises, for whatever reason, is norm mousily politically costly and everybody remembers the famous lines that peggy noonan wrote for george h.w. bush, "read my lips, no new taxes." well, people not only read his lips, they heard his voice loud and clear and there are equivalent problems that an incoming president would have in 2017. if donald trump decided that maybe the wall wasn't going to be built or that mexico couldn't be forced to pay for it, or if

secretary clinton, then president clinton, decided that maybe tpp was just a fine and dandy agreement after all, there would be hell to pay politically so big promises matter. never imagine that they don't. >> very good point. >> i'm hoping you can talk a little bit more about the cabinet member selection process, particularly the lower tier, so like agriculture, labor, something like that. how do they go about compiling a list of potential nominees and narrowing that down? >> well, i think we both can speak to that a little bit but, yes, going back to the point, personnel is policy and although these may be considered lower-tiered departments and agency they are still running huge budgets and lots of services that get delivered out of these agencies so part of the process going on in both

transition teams now is compiling lists of potential candidates, is people with experience in these issues or maybe those who would be new coming from outside the traditional framework but may have skills in managing huge budgets and huge departments, they'll go through a vetting process to be in -- which is a much higher threshold, much higher bar to reach now because both campaigns don't want to bring if people with a lot of outside private-seconder baggage, particularly if they have been lobbyists. so it is a little difficult to have lengthier lists of names that would pass through all these high thresholds of vetting. you know, one place that a lot of transition teams have looked to are in the states at the executive level.

governors are great for positions like this, particularly governors from farm states for the agriculture position in particular. but they're going to look for people with experience, perhaps that have had some pass through a public life of their own and have come out of it fairly unscathed. >> i'll just say, the first question they ought to be asking is just what are these roles? so it's interesting there's not a lot of descriptions of what these roles are. so how do you source qualify talent if you don't know the requirements of the roles? so we've been working closely with them on defining what the positions are, what the requirements are. typically what we've seen now that they have more time to plan this out, this is only the second time we've seen real formal efforts starting so early, is that too anita's point they will create slates, they may create a half dozen names per top position so not just cabinet but also critical subcab commit positions and white house

positions at this point. they will not even notify often the candidates they're being looked at. our research has shown within one hour they go to their congress tile pa cocktail party and let their friends know -- ai'm being a little sarcastic. but to anita's point the political and financial vetting process so after the election, what we've seen after that time between the inauguration has got to be extremely tight. four years ago we defied a calendar so the day after the election the vast majority of time is with the president-elect making quick decisions on the cabinet, you're presenting them a late of options, you're presenting them the risks associated with each of these options allowing that candidate to make a quick decision. we'll see that this cycle as well. >> i wonder if i could just add a note. since both of you have referred to the vetting process. it is -- i speak from experience -- extraordinarily

complex, labor intensive, paper intensive and especially at the cabinet and senior subcabinet level it is a game for very high stakes. there is a tension between speed on the one hand and avoiding damaging mistakes on the other. there's no way of relieving that tension, it just is. but if you think of events that rivet press attention early in a new administration or even during a transition and can get a new administration off on the wrong foot, it's coming up with a senior appointment that needs to be withdrawn because of some embarrassing revelation that comes out too late. and so some people inside and outside the transition will be urging the team put your medal

to the metal, we need to get off to a fast start. others, including people who have been around washington a little bit longer and have experience with the amount of egg that gets splattered over a large number of faces when a senior nomination blows up in everybody's face will say wait a minute. i was involved after the fact in a high visibility appointment early in the clinton administration where nobody had bothered to read what the nominee had written on some very important topics. i was astounded because nominees with long paper trails may very well be saying things that the incoming president does not agree with. the incoming president will then be held responsible for those

utterances. at the very least, the incoming president is expected to know about that and, you know, an impression of incompetent is conveyed so, you know, there's an imperative of speed and there's an imperative of accuracy. and there's no way of completely eliminating that tension. >> so the calculation changes whether or not it's -- you're changing political parties or not. but what's the wisdom of keeping people around at higher levels that are already there, the carry over from administration to administration? how common is that? i would imagine most people want to clean house for the most part. do you think that's a good idea that there should be a critical mass left over at the higher positions? >> it's not common in the white

house. going to bill's earlier point, watch what happens in the white house staff. that's almost a complete turnover. there are about 450 white house office staff positions, just the white house office. 70% of those are political appointments so that will change because that is the center of the world for an administration. you're bringing in people who think like you are going to take your direction. is but there is a functioning bureaucracy there as well of career civil servants that keep the trains running on time. the departments and agencies i turn to david to speak to some of this because there are positions that will not change. they are career positions that will not change even at the highest levels at departments and agencies. >> you've touched on a

fundamental difference between a sane same-party transition and an opposite-party transition. with regard to political appo t appoint appointees, in a same-party transition the incoming president will pay less of a political price for allowing a certain number of political appointees from the previous administration to hold on to office until a replacement comes forward. and it's also the fact that even during opposite-party transitions, a president-elect can make a decision to retain a senior cabinet official from the other party. bob gates is an excellent example of that and i think that probably president obama is pretty pleased that he decided to hold over the secretary of defense. even though bob gates was

certainly no democrat. and so i do think that in this respect if former secretary clinton is elected she will face less pressure on the cabinet front because the people who are in cabinet positions now will be reasonably well aligned with her program anyway. so if it takes -- it is at least possible that she's not going to ask for mass resignations. i can't speak to that but she certainly has the option of being much more selective than an incoming president trump would be able to be. >> i'll just say, too, historically, there haven't been many same-party transitions. it's a friendly or unfriendly takeover concepts. in history, though, some of the most difficult presidential transitions have been same party. >> no doubt. >> it's counterintuitive but you

think why is that? because there has been an expectation of continuity that historically has never existed and you're seeing it now. if this person wins maybe i'll stay on. you hear a lot of that conversation. >> not going to happen. >> history shows generally the incoming team wants their own people in this case so i would expect nothing less. it's also interesting that, you're right, the hold over concept that secretary clinton ought to be focused on, who to carry forward, for both teams there are a couple of nonpolitical political positions, if that makes sense, that require all sorts of hoops to jump through to get this person in office. example, undersecretary of health at the veterans affairs office. if you were to let that person go and start the process again, the way that position is set up, it will take you two years to fill it. and that's a physician. so there are positions you want to hold over. data shows -- and this is awful data, but it's based on interviews and memory -- historically you will see a

significant senior level stopgap hold over. these positions may carry over into the administration blue do so temporarily. they won't be permanent holdovers so you may see that but me speaking personally. my advice would be send that letter of resignation out to everyone, ensure there's an expectation you will not have a job beyond january 20 to allow that incoming person to put their people in office. the expectation of continuity and one leg out and one leg in in my view is not a seamless and smooth way to do it. >> that request for letter of resignation needs to come from the current president. that would come from president obama as a directive to the departments and agencies that they need to smith their letters of resignation to give that maximum flexibility and freedom to an incoming president-elect. >> that's absolutely correct. my only point was that an incoming president clinton would have substantial latitude -- >> absolutely. >> -- to refrain from accepting

a large number of letters of resignation in the name of governmental continuity while the new team is being put in place. >> a heads-up on time. we have ten minutes. probably time for two or three or four questions and then between sessions we do a very quick transition and so we'll go over here next. >> i wasn't alive then, but my perceptions but of the clinton -- the first clinton transition from talking with my parents and watching old news interviews is that the press kind of ended up controlling that transition. for example, kind of refocusing the overall issue agenda on maybe clinton's personal character and also more contentious issues like days in the military so i'm curious if that perceptions but match what is you who were alive then -- >> [laughter]. i was in the white house. i remember. >> and also how that affected

clinton's ability to accomplish other items like health care first down the road in his first term. >> well, the clinton '92 transition was transition. >> no, i agree. >> it was, however, a very useful case study. some would say object lesson. so what went wrong during the clinton transition? well, first of all, as i mentioned earlier, this enormous and lengthy focus on the cabinet with the white house as an after thought. that was backwards. secondly, not drawing a clear enough distinction between the campaign team and the governing team. it is always a mistake to bring your senior campaign people lock stock and barrel into the white house.

third, and this gets to your point, the transition and the president elect did not do a good job of controlling the issue's narrative. president-elect clinton on november 16th of 1992, a day that will live in infamy, was asked the question based on what he would say in the campaign how he intended to handle the issue of gays in the military and he made the mistake of answering the question forthrightly, not a nuanced way, didn't give himself a lot of wiggle room. the result was a focus on that issue that was nonstop and relentless because it was an issue that people

could understand. welfare reform was difficult. gays in the military appear to be easy and then of course the fact that there had been no coordination with the relevant military leaders lead to an enormous pushback, and the white house learned that it was going to take a period of very careful consultation with the military services to get them comfortable even with some version of that idea. it was by no means clear what version of that idea they were going to get comfortable with. "they" being the military. it's also a case in a successful transition, there needs to be one authority. people need to be tapped on the shoulders by the president-elect, you are my man or woman with regard to x. that is more difficult to do if there's a lot of action in washington and a lot of action

in the president-elect's hometown, right? that tension is going to be easier to manage if there's a president-elect whose hometown is either washington or easy hailing distance thereof. but little rock, it turned out to be a world apart. instead of a circle with a center it was an ellipse with two full sides. i could go on but it seems to me that president-elects trying to design successful transitions now can learn from those and many other mistakes we've made. >> having been in the white house in january of 1993 and that morning and waiting even that morning to get lists from the president-elect clinton's team of who was going to be on the white house staff, people weren't even clear to come into the building. i think part of that, too, with

slower start, not focusing on the white house staff first was a problem. i also think after 12 years of republicans in the white house, there was an inherent concern about how they could trust that was in the white house getting this information and even getting people on board. we saw years later, there was a real lack of trust and in the white house with this fbi security files and all of these things that were improperly taken by the clinton team. there was some of that. in addition to starting late was an inherent not understanding, not knowing, not trusting what the institution of the presidency provided to them as well. it was very difficult. 2000 was difficult but 1992 and 1993 was pretty bad, too. >> so we only have time for -- we only have four more minutes so if you have a question, try to keep it pretty targeted and then for the answers try to keep

them pretty targeted. we'll go way in the back of the room there. >> i want to hear more about the synergy between the transition team and the folks that will be stepping into the roles. you made a point about trying to keep those separate. i'm wondering what the transition is thinking. >> the transition, i mean, once they're -- >> transition team and then -- >> well, let me distinguish very quickly. the transition team is one thing, the campaign is a different thing. and in my judgment, there's a lot of continuity between the transition team in the white house and not so much the campaign team in the white house. that's what i had in mind. >> there are distinct orbits. there's some coordination that happens at this point and they need to minimize distractions. they need to be doing what they need to be doing. you'll see weekly calls or something like that with the

campaign teams and you have an interesting exercise which is the campaign merger between both those entities. so really this hasn't happened ever where you've had a large scale pretransition effort with very large, in some cases, campaign staff moving into that. this the first time, both teams focused on that, how they integrate them, which positions they have and staff up the white house to bill's point in that period of time of transition. >> sure. >> one more question, quick as possible. >> the number of departments and agencies, epa, education, energy. do you foresee a situation where certain positions go unfilled because he doesn't agree with them if he were to be elected? >> there are a lot of positions that are unfilled now even though the president may agree with the mission of those agencies. underscoring just how difficult it is to get people through a vetting process whether they're senate confirmed or not.

and how much taerngs as bill -- attention, as bill said, who is your head and mobilize and get them filled. and this is not the first time we've heard a candidate say they wanted to take down the department of education. the the reality is, that is really, really hard to do. how much emphasis that agency or its mission may have, how much attention it may get by the president, that's a whole other question. this is not a new problem that we have, filling positions in departments and agencies to execute their mission. >> let me just add to that that most cabinet departments are established by congress through statute, so these -- they are not simply creatures of the president. they're established by law. there are laws that they are

charged with administering. so an ongoing -- there's a lot of ongoing business that will and must proceed regardless of the stance that the incoming president takes with that work or department or agency. so i wouldn't pay too much attention. ronald reagan was, i think people listening to him in 1980 were sure that the department of education was a goner. instead, it got stronger under his presidency. he appointed a couple of really good secretaries of education. go figure. >> both teams recognize they have to engage the career work force. they'll execute their priorities bhafr their -- whatever their priorities are. that's the mission of the career work force. both teams recognize it and they have done it before. and that's how they view it. they view it as an enabler and we should see much better early conversationses with the career workforce than we've seen. >> with that we need to draw this to a close.

the press contact or contact information for all three expert speakers are on the handout. the bio packet. they all would welcome contact from you and follow up questions. so thank you very much. thank you for the time. [ applause ] and we're going to make a very quick transition to the reporters panel. so we're going to add one chair and switch over very quickly. i'm the transition team. >> you're the transition team. florida began early voting yesterday and democratic presidential candidate hillary clinton campaigns in coconut creek, florida, today in what is being billed as an early voting rally broward college north campus. c-span will have live coverage beginning at 2:15 eastern. republican presidential candidate donald trump is also campaigning in florida. he's holding a rally outside the tallahassee car museum. you can see live coverage of that starting at 6:00 eastern on

c-span2. >> with two weeks until election day, this is the headline at politico.com, donald trump's window is closing. joining us on the phone ben schreckinger. thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having me. >> you have been talking to republican operatives. do they see a path to the presidency for donald trump? >> they do not. many have been warning since he was nominated it was going to be a real uphill battle for trump. at this point there are very, very few republican operatives who will say publicly or privately that they feel confident that trump has a path here. >> early voting is in place in well over half the country. so what do the trends indicate for the democrats, for the republicans? >> they are relatively encouraging for democrats. in florida where republicans

have consistently outperformed democrats in early voting, that narrow advantage has narrowed further this year and democrats stepped to outperform in in-person early voting, which is just now starting this week. in north carolina, republicans in 2012 totally dominated democrats in terms of early voting. that margin has shrunk considerably in both places republicans need those margins to be competitive. in nevada, we saw a very, very well organized effort by democrats with the help largely of unions this weekend to get people to the polls deploying a lot of surrogates. katy perry, for example, was out in nevada this weekend urging people to get to the polls early. overall, it's positive for democrats, discouraging for republicans. >> you write about utah which has not voted for a democrat

since 1964 when lyndon johnson defeated barry goldwater. right now the polls showing a tight race with an independent potentially picking up the state the first time since 1968. evan mcmullin, what can you tell us about that race? >> it is tight. polls tend to show mcmullen and trump neck and neck with hillary clinton not far behind. clinton is sending more staffers to the state deploying resources there late. privately republican operatives think mcmullen is actually the favorite here. so we could see this conservative mormon independent picking up those electoral votes. any time that you're a republican and doubt for you, it's a sign not just of trouble but potential catastrophe. >> another state where democrats are deploying more resources in new hampshire where kelly ayotte republican senator tough re-election battle against

democratic governor for that seat, what do the polls see in that race? >> polls have been neck and neck earlier this month. if anything giving a slight advantage to ayotte. she has struggled with her position on trump throughout this campaign. she has said she's voting for him but not endorsing him. then when this tape leaked of him bragging about apparent squall assault she totally disavowed him. last poll wmr showing her eight points behind, which speaks to the pickle republicans are in. there's a danger embracing trump. he has many diehard supporters that are more loyal to him than the republican party. when these candidates disavow trump they can face a penalty. >> where does this put hillary clinton when she tries to run up the score in the electoral college vote and pick up key senate races to put senate back in majority potentially and down ballot races where democrats are hoping for the possibility of

recapturing the house of representatives? >> they are going on offense now. they are refocusing in many cases on down ballot races. we haven't heard hillary clinton do much senate campaigning up on the stump but we did hear her this weekend go after pat toomey in pennsylvania. that was a first. we're likely to see more of that. we've seen barack obama come out and issue endorsements largely for house races trying to go on offense, pick away even further at the republican majority there. and to this is becoming in many ways more a story about just how bad the congressional losses are going to be for republicans. >> yet based on all of that, ben, how do the democrats make certain their voters still go to the polls on election day? as you point out, one of the biggest risk for hillary clinton and her campaign prematurely resting on its laurels. >> that's right.

largely it comes down to executing on your ground game, democrats again have an advantage here. donald trump is barely invested in the get out the vote operation. they have to execute on that and manage expectations. there is a danger for both sides concluding this race is over. voters will potentially stay home if they think it's a done deal. so managing expectations and executing on the ground game. >> so bottom line for donald trump and hillary clinton in the remaining fourteen days before the november 8th election, what can we expect from each candidate? what's going to be their approach? >> sure. with clinton we're going to likely see an increasing focus on congressional races and increasing focus on giving her the strongest possible hand to play in terms of the congress that she's going to be dealing with, as she now is expecting,

by all indications, to win this thing. with trump he has been a wild card. he'll continue to be a wild card. when things got really bad for him about two weeks ago with those allegations of sexual assault coming out, you saw him really ratchet up his rhetoric. it got more extreme. he posited those against him. as it becomes ever more clear where this poll stands he'll fend new rhetorical extremes to go to. it's possible he'll position himself not to be the fall guy, position others to take the plame for an expected loss. it will be interesting, given all the speculation about a possible post campaign media venture to see what he has to say about that. >> we'll look for you reporting online at politico.com, ben schreckinger. thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having me.

>> i will be voting for hillary. >> she definitely has the experience in office. >> i don't want someone running the country as a business. i'm a human being. >> if we want a hotel we'll call donald trump. >> the respect she gives every individual, that's what i appreciate from hillary clinton. >> i'm voting hillary. >> a nonvote is definitely a vote for trump. >> make sure you get out and vote. >> i'm hillary clinton and i approved this message. >> i'm donald trump and i approve this message. >> the man who murdered joshua is an illegal alien and he should not have been here. >> the killer hit him in the head with a closet rod so hard it broke in four pieces. he took him to a field and he doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. the hardest day of my life. >> hillary clinton's border policy is going to allow people into the country just like the one that murdered my son. >> on election day november 8th,

the nation decides our next president and which party controls the house and senate. stay with c-span for coverage of the presidential race, including campaign stops with hillary clinton, donald trump, and their surrogates and follow key house and senate races with our coverage of their candidate debates and speeches. c-span, where history unfolds daily. >> here on c-span3 tonight, american history tv prime time continues with the look at the life of alexander hamilton starting at 8:00 eastern with a visit to the morris-jumal mansion, the oldest house in manhattan. then look how close the musical "hamilton" follows history, also a discussion of "hamilton's" legacy at 8:00 eastern here on c-span3. the center for response ifr politics has online database called open secrets.org which tracks money and politics and

its impact on elections and public policy. experts with the center talk about their research and why they do it. this is about 40 minutes. >> get going with third and final panel. if you don't already use it, you should, it's the go to place for all sorts of campaign finance data, which i think most people do use but all sorts of other information that they are the repository for including disclosure information, lobbyist disclosure information, candidate and office holders financial information. they are going to talk about the revolving door which they also monitor and what happens, people in the administration now, where are they going to end up and what are the restrictions when

they do so. first go with vivica novack and the revolving door experts over there. they are going to talk between the 2011 them about twentyish minutes and then time for q&a and this session will go until noon. so vivica. >> as you've gathered from other panelists if you were able to be a fly on the wall or drone on the wall of congressional offices, even today in this moment you would see an awful lot of people putting out feelers and receiving feelers from the outside about what their next job move is, who might want to hire them. you'd see and hear a lot of people in the private sector as

we well, political consulting fimp firms, scheming how to get into the administration or a good office or who the best people are to hire coming out, sort of like nfl draft, who are the most desirable picks. it happens every two years, there are congress races every two years. every eight years since most presidents recently have served two terms is when it really happens in spades. so this is one of those witching years. you'll be seeing hillary clinton has a universe of people around here. they have been in politics many years who will be either angling to get in or stay in or maybe plotting their futures in the private sector.

and being able to cash in on their intimate knowledge of clinton world. there will be some people who will want to step outside and won't want to be in the administration. there are many people who won't get this jobs in the administration who will decide i might as well step outside and make money. make no mistake, these people are highly prized on the outside. there was a study where they looked at salaries of people who came out, who had been very well connected in congress, compared to other lobbyists, for instance. the people with connections made a good bit more money. another study showed that there's actually a shelf life to that money, which is if you're a member of congress you used to work for retires or is defeated, your salary is no longer going

to be going up and may even diminish. so devaluation, there is a very direct cause and effect there. now, one of the best examples i've seen of revolving door action was described in a story by eric lipton in early 2013 in the "new york times." he wrote about amgen and a provision they got put into the 2012 fiscal cliff location. am again really, really wanted a two-year extension actually, an additional two-year extension because they had one already, of a provision that essentially medicare was going to put price controls on some medications. they wanted an exemption for a very lucrative kidney dialysis

drug they made. they had lobbyists, including former chief of staff of max baucus, former chairman of the finance committee where all this was being put together and former chief of staff of mitch mcconnell, the senate majority leader. not only that, though, they had someone who used to be an amgen in-house lobbyist who managed to get a job as orrin hatch's chief policy person. he was the person in charge of meeting with all of the lobbyists who were lobbying on this provision, including amgen's. lo and behold they got the provision they wanted and nobody even knew it was in there -- most people, until eric lipton wrote about it. so the revolving door, reverse revolving door extremely

valuable to corporations. this is why you see a lot of companies when their people go to work for an administration or go to the hill, they are often, you know, paying bonuses, exit bonuses as their people leave, which, of course, they would not admit was connected to, you know, the government service. but there are many suspicions, right? these days one thing besides people who have worked in government and go out to the private sector or people who go from private sector into government, don't forget to look for people who have worked for super pacs or political nonprofits, some of these dark money groups that are much like super pacs but don't have to disclose their donors or charitable foundations that are connected to lawmakers. there are a number of those.

i guess, you know, i should probably -- the danger, as you've probably heard already today, of this revolving door is kind of obvious. you have people -- a high degree of closeness between the private sector and government officials who are supposed to be watching over and regulating the private sector. if you have continual, you know, flow of people going back and forth, that's not always bad. it's good to have the expertise. but the danger is something that, you know, we call regulatory capture where the overseers really aren't doing much overseeing except what the industry wants. you've seen that over and over again in agriculture and other areas. what's really in the public interest is subsumed by the

industry's presence in one way or another at agencies in congress. there's also the danger of playing devil's advocate. there's also a danger assuming it's always bad when people from industry go into the government. and assuming the public interest won't be served. exhibit a for this may be tom wheeler, the chairman of the fcc who everyone criticized at the beginning because he had been the head of a telecontrade group. he had lobbied on the hill. and he wound up actually being a pretty good chairman. you know, favored net neutrality and a bunch of policies people wouldn't have predicted he would favor. i guess i'm going to hand it off to dan and then we'll answer questions after. dan will get into more of the rules and regulations.

>> so the rules and restrictions on where you can go work when you leave the government and incoming from the private sector are relatively straightforward for congress. senators have a two-year cooling off period for lobbying congress. house members have a one-year and then staff pretty much has a one-year as well with some restrictions on them contacting their own offices that they worked for. the situation with the executive branch, however, is a little more fluid. the recent history basically revolves around executive orders. so when a president comes in, they kind of decide how restrictive they want to be. for instance, bill clinton using

executive order barred former officials from lobbying the people they worked with for five years, which is pretty targeted and, you know, was not a blanket restriction across the whole executive branch. george bush did not really have a similar policy. of course when obama came in, transparency and good government was kind of something he had made an important part of his campaign. on his first full day in office, he signed a couple of executive orders that said people who leave my administration and become registered lobbyists can't lobby the executive branch essentially. this -- there are underlying rules that were most recently updated in 2008 with honest leadership and open government

act. that kind of sets a baseline two-year cooling off period in the executive branch as well. obama's restrictions are widely regarded as pretty -- not draconian but pretty restrictive. their efficacy has been questioned. one issue is they apply to registered lobbyists, which is a little different than what a lot of people conceive of as a lobbyist. there are very specific definitions you must meet in terms of how much money you're making from a client. you have to have more than 20% of your time in that -- the registration quarter is spent for that client. so especially that 20% number is a big opening as a loophole for people to unregister. so one of the reactions to

obama's restrictions was a drop in the number of registered lobbyists. it went from about 14,000 to 12,000 during his first term, a number of registered lobbyists. there's not much reason to believe those people totally left the influence industry. a lot of them people who left the registration roles were working at the same firms under title and clearly still working under government affairs but had just technically not met their registration requirements. where in the past there was almost a pride about being a lobbyist and people would register out of an abundance of caution just to not