shares his book, the death of learning, which shows liberal education in the united states. he also talks about political correctness on campus, multiculturalism and the importance of western civilization forces. >> the commissioner should be torn, at least in colleges. 16 19 project, yeah, so as long as you had them also read thomas payne, jefferson, martin attacking, abraham lincoln,, not that i believe everything in the lab artist to be a debate, but i do believe that multiculturalism and viewpoints and ideas are crucial. >> john acosta, with his book, the death of learning, sunday night at 8 pm eastern on

c-span's q&a. you can listen to q and a and all our broadcast on our free c-span now app. five or 10 >> so this is a panel so,m going to, this is a panel where we are going to spend some time and each of our panelist is going to spend five or ten minutes introducing a particularly presidential transition and highlight a few of the big takeaways, interesting points, lessons learned. so we will go -- we won't go and program order, we're actually going to go in chronological order of the elections that they will be highlighting. we will do that for about 15 minutes or so and then open it up for discussion and conversation and discuss questions. so, i will go forth and introduce everyone at the top and then we will go in turn. so i will introduce, first in the order in which they are going to speak.

i love lindsey chervinsky, a senior fellow at the center for presidential history at southern methodist university. she's a historian of the presidency, local government, and the president. especially the book the cabinet. the first book the cabinet, the president needs to shunts -- it is now out in paperback. her next book, an honest man, the inimitable presidency of john adams is on their contract and will be published in the fall, 2024. i like that definitive. -- >> thank you. >> yes. >> just in time for another election. she will be talking about the transition of elections in 70 76 in 18 hundreds. second up is ted whitmer, ted is a real writer, librarian, and musician who is honors at currently. --

he also served doesn't buy should bill clinton animus an advisory to hillary clinton when she served as secretary of state. he is has taught at harvard, washington college, director of the library carlton brown library and director at the library of congress. his next book is lincoln on the verge, 13 as washington. he's also 2010 recipient of the guttenberg polish fellowship. it will be talking about the transition after the election of 1860. it's futile, we are choosing good ones. we killed sheldon is an associate professor of history and director of the record civil war era center, at sea university she specializes the long 19th three and teaches about slavery allocation, the civil war, and constitutional history. she's the author of washington brotherhood. politics, social life, and the coming civil war published in 2013 which received honorable

mention for the best first book on the american civil war. she is also co-editor with gary gallagher of a political nation. new directions of the mid 19th century american political history published by uva protests in 2012. our current book project, the political supreme court examined in the political world of the u.s. supreme court justices from the early 19th century to the 1890s. rachel will be taking on 1876. joshua sellers, associate professor of law at the standard in calmer commerce school of law. -- here is a j. d. and ph. d. in political science from the university of chicago service the article that for the university law review. he previously taught at university oklahoma college of law and was opposed doctoral fellow of law at syracuse university's school. before entering teaching he was a law clerk to judge rosemary bracket of the u.s. court of appeals for the 11 surrogate in associate at --

at washington d. c.. his principal areas of research of teaching our election law, legislation and regulation, constitutional law, civil procedure. his scholarship has been published in the panel of review, and why you law review, annual of, your stanford law view, among others. josh will be talking about hanging tad's and timorous it's white board. yes, you got, it election embers transition of 2000. last but hardly least, the remark track is a scholar of and participant in presidential that administrations and transitions at the school of business in dartmouth. in 2020, one he served in the biden ministration the ceo of the u.s. international development finance corporation. mark jack previously served as the director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan center for a presidential transition where he worked for the biden transition team transition planning efforts. he also spent 12 years as managing director of the carlisle group and held several positions in the clinton administration. they will bring us closer very close to the present day by discussing the 2020 transition. with that, i will turn it over

to dr. chervinsky. >> thank you so much for being here, i am very excited about this panel which i had the privilege to put together and it was really just an excuse to talk about the things that i am working on and was able to find people who were interested many of the same topics. i am sure all of you recall your history textbook lesson on the election of 1800, -- this is usually described as the first major transfer of power and light say that that is very wrong. and it's very important we look at the election of 70 66 and the elections i come over as two sides to the same coin. and we look at our constitution and what it says about presidential transitions, there are some more statutes about how these things are supposed to go. in 1796, there was almost nothing on the page. so, every single action from

how people would enter a room, how the transfer of power would take place, what they would wear, who would you present. everything had to be crafted from scratch. the context is really essential because in 1796, the last transition that most americans had witnessed was the french revolution. which was, of course, characterized by heavy use of gilles teen and blood running through the streets. so, not a great model to follow, ideally. everyone presents, everyone aware, everyone participating in this situation was acutely aware of the fact that this is pretty much unprecedented. never been done, it required extraordinary care and attention in detail to make sure that it went right. john adams wrote in his letter to his wife that he was gratified and surprised that washington and showing up.

that was not a guarantee. his presence was essential to giving the stamp of approval and he walked out of the room, behind john adams. i don't know that washington walked out of a room behind anyone in at least eight years, if not much longer. so that entire process was one of crafting something from scratch. crafting something with really no model to follow. having to be very thoughtful and attentive about those details and everyone that was president in the room revived later and how remarkable it had been that one stunt had risen in another had set and it had all been done peacefully in the nation hadn't fallen apart. that sounds kind of hyperbolic, because we know how it all went and we know the nation survived and it was there were other elections, but they meant it. they were not being mellow traumatic at that moment. a few now, it's just to sort of remind us of the timing of the transition and how this worked at that time because there is

no social media, because there is no cnn, there was no decision desk. there is no they've -- saying i've seen enough. they weren't really sure what the results were going to be. they feel confident enough on december 30th, 1976, several months after the auction had begun to write back to abigail that he knew the outcome but that he wasn't sure, he wasn't sure until he himself opened the results on february 8th, 1970 1897 and claims of the winner. that actually left him just about a month for the actual transition. the timeline, i think, is essential there. fast forward four years, of course the result was a little bit different. by the time he came around to opening the -- by the time thomas thomas jefferson open the result in 1801, it was pretty clear that everyone knew that john adams had lost. it wasn't clear who had actually won. just a bit of a refresher, of

course, erin burr and jean pence gemstone tied in the election, took 36 ballots to select who was indeed going to be the next president, and in that process john adams, thomas jefferson, in aaron burr were all invited to meddle in that process. to put their thumb on the scale to determine who is going to be the right person. as these deliberations are taking place, john adams invited thomas jefferson to a dinner with the white house and it was deemed the white house at this point because he had just moved in. they committed to each other they would not meddle in the election they were the time to side who isn't going to be the next president. it must have been a spectacularly awkward dinner, because at this point they hated each other and had spent months criticizing one another and their supporters writing terrible things in the newspapers. analysts, they committed to this peaceful transfer of power and it was the first transfer

from one party to another. a couple of takeaways from this to these two elections together. peaceful transfer the power don't happen. they require attention, care or, they require commitment to that principle and the participants in 1796 and 1800 understood that. they understood how fragile these institutions were and they did not take peacefulness for granted. i think one of the greatest gifts to the people that came after them where that we could take it for granted, at least until 2021. so that commitment to ensuring the central peace of democracy, though i yet when i say that. a democratic republic. the commitment to ensuring that central piece was essential in and understood by early participants and i think one of the things that we have lost a bit and one of the takeaways i would like to bring up in our discussion. >> thank, you lindsay.

nice to see you david, who i talked with a lot a euro go and have not yet met in person but i'm happy to be here virtually with david and physically with all of you. i'll talk about 1860, which i think is still the worst transition of all-time. it is close. we may have a spirited debate and i think the verdict is still up in the air and after last night it was trump all over again there wasn't a guillotine in washington on january 6th. rachel is also an expert on 1860 infused in mind me that i was moderator a year ago on a panel on which she was the expert on the 1860 transition. >> that was supposed to happen on january 6th it was scheduled for them. >> at the massachusetts detour historical society. so why was it so bad? it revealed a fatal flaw in the architecture of our system, which is that the losers of an election would accept the

result. in 1860, as in 2020, a significant part of the population refuse to elect but they didn't claim the election was rigged they simply left the united states of america. that is the simple version of what happened, but at every level it was very, very complicated as the government slowly fell apart and was rebuilt by a complete outsider who, a little under a year under was so visible to people that in 1859 the book which listed the 21 most likely people to give the nomination in 26 -- failed to contain a rambling instagram. that's one the many things i discovered in a whole lot of research that was really on only 13 days of lincoln's train trip at the end of the transition.

in order to do all that research, i had to look at what the country was like before the election, during the election, and then in the very long aftermath between the election of number from her sixth, 1860, and lincoln's first inaugural of march 4th, 1861. it is just an extraordinary drama and i learned to my surprise how much of it was already planned and it was kind of akin to what we are hearing on tv about -- how concerted the plan was well before the election to a siren article in the enquirer saying that if a so-called black republican is elected we will simply leave the country and we will take the armaments and we

will conduct a new country from richmond and it's similar to what happened in richmond of 59, lincoln gives a speech and he is an extreme outside of this point. he says, if they fail to accept the result of illegal election, we will have to deal with them as we have just dealt with john brown. because john brown because lincoln was just on stickler for the lawn concert it before, during, and after years the transitional legal to secede from the union. so, there are these two amazing dramas happening at the same time. in 1861, the actual shattering of the union and the rise of a political supernova who was barely known. i think we overstate his popularity after the lincoln douglass debates of 1858, but it really is an extreme outsider and there are all of these very slight ways in which the doors open for him to walk through, one of which also happen 18 -- the republican party leadership

voted by one vote to have the nominating convention in chicago and not in st. louis. if it had not been in chicago, lincoln probably would not have received the nomination. so he isn't on course, he gets the nomination and it's an extraordinary campaign even before the election. they're actually four people running, the democratic party split and a half. into, it has a north south divide like the entire country. stephen douglas is the candidate of the northern democratic party and he violates a taboo by traveling and giving campaign speeches. so, i think for the first time in american history, lincoln stays our home and it is clear to all observers that he will win. the electoral strength in the midwest in north is such that think it is going to win the election even before it happens. then we enter the strange and

he does. snowy interchange highlighted for difficult month when it's not clear how the unites its government is going to keep together. there is a president, james from cannon, who is a weak president coming in in late 1860 he is really falling apart. it is a situation kind of the opposite of trump in 2020, it was the president just isn't doing anything. the schism of the country, of the body politic, seems to sundays are verse to also be happening inside of his actual body. his facial tics, trouble making up his mind even the smallest decisions. it is a bit like woodrow wilson at the end of his presidency. his cabinet is split, also there are a few northerners. there is a very strong southern wing. there are three cabinet members especially who are actively involved in dismantling the united states government under their charge to get ready for whatever is coming next.

the second -- the zoning john boy descending are minutes into the south island there is -- cobb from georgia who is essentially bankrupt-ing the united states treasury and the secretary of the interior is a mississippian named jacob thompson who is traveling around the southern part of the night states drumming up support for secession. he is also one in washington, reporting on cabinet meetings and sending all of the information back to the secessionists in south carolina planning to leave the country. it is, if i don't want to overstate the comparison to 2020, but it is as if there is another country ready to start and the people in the final months of the government are

putting all the strength they can in to this country that doesn't quite exist yet. there's a lot of activity in the south, especially in charleston, south carolina where they leave no doubt about their intention to secy succeed and there's a lot of militia activity. there are people walking around with rifles and interestingly, again in 2020 contacts, they talk a lot about 1776. they call themselves minuteman. the guards don't flag, the don't tread on me flag, is flown by them. i think we might, as historians do, need more work to connect very strange appropriation of the american revolution on january 6th with what is also going on in the south in 1860 and 1861 as they are doing the

opposite of the american revolution. they are tearing the country apart. south carolina sends a diplomatic to washington to begin negotiating for most favored nation status. larry, for a short time, south carolina is thinking that it is a country unto itself called the palmetto republic and it's the seeds on december 20th, followed by mississippi, alabama, georgia, louisiana, and texas. seven seats have gone out of the union by the 1st of february which is still over a month before blinken can get to washington. there is just a general panicky feeling in washington. the social quality of the city has evaporated, northerners and southerners can't even go to the same parties together. there is some violence, a congressman from new york is beat up while walking home from the capital one night. what a scariest is this winter, henry adams who is a very perceptive observer called a great secession winter, what a scariest is a feeling that washington is really extremely

vulnerable in a military way to southern militias that might come over from virginia, which is still in the union, but has a lot of hot heads who are pro south or maryland which is also full of hot heads. washington, d. c. it surrounded on all sides by slave territory and it would've been a matter with militias of taking over the capitol building and maybe a couple of other buildings and begin an operation of something that would have been very strange. it was a bit like january 6th, it, would have been a continuation of the buchanan presidency but without james buchanan. it probably would have been removed and his vice president would've wrapped been created as a kind of acting president. he lost to the 1860 election. he was the candidate of the the south.

two very impressive southerners stand up to their fellow southerners and prevent a takeover of washington from happening. what is winfield scott, still the commander. he is very elderly and not in very good shape, physically, but he's still the commander-in-chief of the united states. he is so old and infirm he cannot sit on a hearse horse anymore. he is in passive and returns the capital with cannons and loudly threatens to manure the hills of washington, of washington, with the bodies of anyone who threatened to take over the capital. so, he is a virginian defending the capital, u.s. capitol, from southerners in the crucial weeks of december and january in february. john c breckenridge who i just mentioned, the vice president

is a lot like, very much like mike pence. i was always astounded by these echoes of my ancient research and what was happening in 2020 in 2021. breckenridge has to provides preside over accounting of the electoral stiff it gets held on february 13th in 1861 in which just like on january 6th, that wasn't senate gather in the chamber and each states electoral certificates are opened and the presidents of john c breckenridge who was the person who benefited most from the decision to throw out the results. the electoral circuit themselves were sent to his office, so he might easily have lost them or declared that they were altered or not sign or sealed all of these ways which you can declare a document. to his internal credit, let me

know for he declared that the election was valid and from newspapers accounts that they were angry mobs chanting outside of the capital on the day of the county of electoral certificates. so, exactly like january 6th. the key difference was that once scott was there with his cannons the win that anyone in. so, the election came off as it should have. and then election happened, lincoln was already en route and the premise of my book is that the whole thing was just hanging from a very slender thread hand on the train he recently gamed strength, just the active coming into washington which had been very difficult for earlier presidents. one of the reasons william harrison may have died so soon after becoming president is that the trip came through with a lot of snow and rain -- the train moves fast, he could speak to large audience, he finds his footing in a way he had the campaign ever had. he stayed at home in the summer

but. his large size impressive to people and he seems to get a big bigger every day as the south seems to get a little smaller in the crucial days february 22nd. george washington's birthday, where lincoln gives a beautiful history, loving speech. sort of taking back the american revolution and saying what it really was about was about the declaration of independence and the promise of equality. jefferson davis, who is already the president of the confederate states, does nothing to remember the american. current a friend current events and choosing what you remember from earlier history is also pretty potent politics. lincoln and the very well.

>> i'm supposed to press this, here? okay, push. all right. it is great to be here. thank you to lindsay for organizing this panel. i'm going to check briefly about the election of 1876. anyone who knows anything about the election of 1876 knows how impossible that is because this is a ton incredibly complicated and difficult election and transition. i want to make three broader points about this election in how it relates to sort of our modern understanding of elections and electoral transitions, so also in what made this election different and unique in some ways. because of the context of partisanship and how partisanship worked in this period. the structures of federal government, governments, federalism and also the relationship between various branches of government. also, with the aftermath of the civil war.

the meeting of that for understanding sort of the context of how people were operating. so, just general reminder of how the election operated he you had with deferred behaves, throughout the country mohawk, facing samuel tate children from new york. in 1876 you need 185 electoral votes in order to win the election and as the polls closed it was clear that tilden had 184 but that there were four states in dispute. south carolina, florida, louisiana, in oregon as a result of sort of a rogue electoral vote problem. so, because of this, congress convened and what sort of onshore about what to do. debated for about two months and came together to create a federal electoral commission. the first of its kind in only of its kind. it has not existed again, despite ted cruz and insistence that it should in the 2020

election. and that body consisted of five members of the senate, five members of the house, five members of the supreme court chosen by their partisan affiliation. this is an important thing to remember going forward. over the course of february this commission heard all of these four cases and resolve them on a party line vote 8 to 7 in favor of rutherford b. hayes, just a couple of days before his inauguration. so, i wanted to talk about three sort of parts of this transition that i think were really interesting. though there are many others that we could discuss. one of them is that it is probably what's most alarming about this electoral transition, that almost everyone saw coming. this was not a surprise to congressman, they had been talking about the problems with

the electoral system for many, years. at least five years, because there had been problems before. in 1872 election, louisiana had, just as they win 1876, submitted two sets of electoral returns. this didn't end up mattering because grant won in a landslide. it could happen as they noticed, yet they did not do anything to inform this particular problem. there was also a rule in place known as the 22nd joint rule. people who are congress nurse probably are really into this particular problem. this is passed in 1865 and the basic idea behind this rule is that any, either of the houses, could object to returns from any state and then they would be thrown out. so, you can imagine how what would happen if all of a sudden divided congress, the house, the senate controlled by different parties decided that they want to get involved in different elections and can

evolve electoral votes. this would send this particular election into the house of representatives. they knew that this was a problem. democrats insisted that this was still enforced in 1876. republicans disputed this. there was not really clear resolution. one other really incredible thing happened in 1872, which is that the losing candidate actually died between when the election happened and the county of electoral votes. all these problems, everybody knew about, nobody had any solutions for this. i think that the real reason for this is that republicans in particular did not really see democrats as reasonable contributors into the conversation about how to reform the electoral process. because they were still thinking in terms of the democrats are the enemy. they are the enemy, they fought against us in the civil war, they do not believe in true small are republican governments or democracy. we do not think that they are reasonable to negotiate with and that created a real impasse in how any of this could be resolved.

second thing i want to talk about briefly is the makeup of the electoral commission. sort of the particular political and constitutional context there. as i said, the commission is fundamentally partisan and it is by design. it is parched by design, partisan it's makeup, partisan it's outcome. we assume that this is a bad thing because partisanship is a dirty word in some ways in our understanding of american politics. this is not the way people thought in the 19th century. whether there were plenty

people who are anti party, this is not a large group of the american public who wanted bipartisanship. not a word that existed in the 19th century. not a word that anyone would be in favor of because politics was a life and death sport in this particular period. having a partisan makeup of the commission was, by design, and this is not necessarily a problem. i want to say, in particular, that this is not necessarily a problem for supreme court justices who were on the commission. there are five members of the supreme court on the electoral commission. they are chosen specifically for their partisan background or for their partisan proclivity's in 1876. we have two democrats notice democrats, was elected because they're democrats, two republicans known as republicans selected because they are republicans. they do a little thing about why they are choosing these people because of the circuits, but in fact everyone knows what they are two democrats into publicans.

they are in charge of picking their fifth supreme court justice. this is one of my favorite stories and all of american history to tell you what happened, to tell you what happened with the electoral commission if you don't have the story already. with that idea was that the fifth justice was going to be david a this who was lincoln's campaign managed in 1860 while serving as a judge on the illinois circuit court and he had come to the court by abraham lincoln but was, you know, sort of dissolution with the republican party to the

point where he had been a presidential candidate in 1872 with a liberal republican party, not the same thing as the republican party. not an offshoot of the republican party. several separate party altogether. the idea in 1876 is that you had this guy who was going to be the fifth vote who is not republican and not a democrat. they called him independent, but that doesn't mean the same thing in 1876 as it does today. independent is a separate thing in the 19th century. i would be happy to talk more about that. they decide they are going to pick david davis. the illinois legislature, meanwhile, makes a decision that they are going to elect david amess to be the next senator from illinois. this happened just as the house and senate are passing the federal electoral commission vote. they decide they are going to tuesday this. this is done in part because children's friends, including

his nephew, who are convinced that if they were able to get davis this position on the senate that he would be compelled to vote for tilden on the federal electoral commission. it was sort of a bribe. this is how they understood if you read letters from this time. it doesn't happen because davis may be in an ethically good way decides of this is inappropriate and he can't possibly serve on the electoral commission once he has been elected to the senate because of state lenders slater in illinois. he declines and is replaced by joseph pew proudly, a republican, who votes with republicans and as a result you get this result of the election of 1876 where he's is going to become president. i want to stress again that this is completely understood to be a partisan issue and that this result is expected once you get proudly on the commission. some people think that maybe he will change minds but in general democrats i've been very excited by the commission. they've been pushing the commission in congress and they have sort of had the upper hand, because if the joint 22nd joint rule was enforce the election we go to the house and they were running the house, they might be able to get this election after all. i asked eunice bradley becomes the fifth justice there is an understanding that this is not going to go their way. the last thing i want to mention is that are sort of understanding of the election of 1876 in modern times, in the context of the last election i think is really a problem. they are sort of the assumption that 1876 worked. that it went well. i mean, some people think that it's the fault of the century. that is also a storyline about

the election of 1876. it didn't actually work very well at all. many of you, i'm sure, know the famous story of the compromise of 1877 which is a myth. it did not actually happen. that's the famous idea that haze got the presidency in exchange for ending reconstruction and pulling troops out of the south. lots of reason why this is a myth. one of them being that they were not very many troops left to begin with in the south and that south governments had reclaimed, southern democrats, had we clean power and much of the southern states and we are not really that concerned with the election from that perspective. they had engaged in the kind of role that they needed in their home states. the election didn't really matter as much as you might expect. the other reason why this, well one, of the other reasons why this compromise was a myth and is clearly a myth is that democrats it and not accept the results of the election. in fact, right after the electoral commission came down with its decision that democrats in the house voted on

a resolution that said children was the rightful president. so they did not accept it they did not attend the inauguration including most supreme court justices, who we, democrats did not attend the inauguration. and killed in insisted that his managers in the house in the coming years investigate the election. investigate what happened in the election to prove that it had been a fraud and famously, in 1878, with what was known as the potter committee which tried to investigate what happened with the point of proving that republicans had engaged in all kinds of corruption, it backfired spectacularly. i can tell you more about it but i don't take up too much

time. the things i think are the main takeaways about this particular election are that this was a real political battle that operated through partisanship in a way that people understood that partisanship could achieve certain kinds of goals. those are positive goals from the perspective of the republicans it was that we won the civil war, we need to maintain the way that things operate now. from democrats, it was well, you know, we want our power to. so from that perspective i think that there are similarities to today but it is also sort of a unique moment in american history. >> i had no idea about that. >> [laughs] >> i thought it was a compromise. >> everyone does, it's never textbook. >> i'm going to bring us into the modern era and talk about the election of 2000 where nothing happened [interpreter] , no. when we think of 2000 we think of bush versus gore, of course. that's the first thing that

comes to mind when you think about hanging chad so we think about maybe jeffrey toobin on national television fumbling around with a decision and trying to report on it quickly or something. with that protractive litigation lattice with was a really compressed transition period. something like 38 or 39 days when it was all said and done so that is one of the, i think, key features of this transition without it was very short until you would think that because it was short it would necessarily be kind of chaotic and disorganized, but the scholars who study this actually believe that this transition was pretty smooth all things considered and clay johnson , he was the executive director of the bush cheney transition has talked about how george bush told him as early as june, 1999 to start preparing for the transition. we might hear that and think that this is hubris on the part of bush or something, but i think there is an important lesson for us to consider about

just how long the transition actually takes and how much preparation is required to execute it effectively. particularly in the modern era, one of the biggest difference is from these past transitions to 2000 is that the size of the federal government. it is a massive bureaucracy now, incoming presidents have thousands of appointments to make. over 4000. we have a vast civil servants subsequent all the events we have the panel to be active prevention for civil servants. new president coming in trying to negotiate, race, the administrative state and think about how do i want to run this who are going to be my key personnel figures. so if, we are kind of context a framework for thing about transitions i think obviously the timing aspect and how early presidencies and would be president should start should be at the top of the list another important detail for

the first presidential election to occur after the amended presidential transition act that was a statute that was first and acted in 1963. but it had been amended over the years and actually has been amended subsequently. among other things what the statute does is it authorize the general services administration to give office space and staff compensation for members of the transition team. so, folks who worked on these transitions will tell you that there is a firm difference or market difference between the campaign staff and the transition team. thinking about how to finance the transition is another key aspect in trying to think of lessons we might take from 2000 and beyond and the presidential transition act and some subsequent amendments also requires there to be orientations actions between outgoing administration and the incumbent administration. as well as a transition directory. one of the sort of remarkable

things is that this still remains pretty law-less period. it is not a lot of rules and regulations governing presidential transitions. we will hear some of that are type of 2020. is kind of ad hoc in a lot of ways. everything about reforms you might think about statutory reforms that were formalized the or might formalized process. part of that is transparency. by requiring transparency directory, at least the public to know who are these individuals and what role are they serving in the transition. a little bit in the weeds, but soon after the transition march 2001 was the first time that the congressional review act which was a statute person acted in 1996 was used to disapproved of an agency role. what i mention that? i mention that because during the transition, the

presidential transition, the incumbent administration is often concerned with rare reversing a change in political party from one to another, reversing the regulations that came in in the last months of the outgoing administration. so if there are four to have midnight regulations. so, the congressional review act is a way for congress to, within a 60-day period, prevent some of those regulations going into effect. at the same time the incoming president will oversee what regulations and, they have individuals tasked with doing this, assessing what regulations are fresh, which are new, what we want to reverse, right? as a priority in the first month and beyond that. in terms of lessons we can take from 2000, something is to be said about the role of lawyers and private sector lawyers. the immigration relied heavily

on lawyers from the banking sector to work on the transition and so, again, if we are talking about reforms with its focus on we might want to pay attention to who is serving in these positions. we are interested, as well, in folks moving from the campaign staff on to the transition team and some of the ethical issues that might be raised from those kind of moves. again, you don't have rules and regulations to governor this process. we have a key, this is one of the key lessons i think from this transition, is gaining national security positions look after quickly. the 9/11 report talked about how the failure to have a lot of the national security folks in place contributed to maybe the oversize. if we are time of our personnel, filling those positional positions may be on the

fountain or four other positions with a priority for the central presidential transitions emphasizing this as a persistent problem leading back to the bush, cheney transition that still exists. i would also mention financing the transitions, right? this came up in 2000. again, we can do is protracted. the clinton administration said we have funds that we can release for a bush cheney transition, but we are going to do that until the election is decided. so, bush cheney transitioning team set up a 501(c) (3) four and they can receive donations for certain purposes through that vehicle. so, you have private financing of the transition teams. this raises campaign finance concerns, it raises ethical concerns, so reformers suggest

that maybe we devote more money through statutory command to the actual transition so that we don't have private funders that are actually financing the transition. so that is the concern, as well. of course, we have to talk about the judicial role in resolving elections. it is not only that elections have become so contested now that we expect federal courts and supreme courts to be involved during the presidential transitions. it is that some of the arguments that we are actually raising, they found themselves into the bush v. gore opinion are actually being resurrected now by some of the conservative justices on the supreme court. i am speaking specifically about what is known as the independence day legislature doctrine. the idea that state legislatures have autonomy and independents to decide electoral rules, particularly when there are cases of dissension or debate about whether certain vote should be counted or not in this argument

suggest that we should give unilateral authority to state legislatures to establish rules. so that would allow state legislators to override state supreme courts, for instance, in resolving these cases. the origin of these documents is -- as these elections become more contested in and we can anticipate, with, this is not the case but as we anticipate almost inevitable litigation in federal court during presidential transitions, those arguments first on bush v. gore right before grounded. so, that is a quick summary of some of the lessons that we can take from that transition that there is plenty more to discuss including the role of dick cheney who as, you may recall, was first tasked with

identifying a list of potential vice presidential candidates and concluded that, well, shaped the pool sites that he came off looking as the only real option. bush wanted dan john danforth from missouri but ultimately thought that exchange was the way to go. because i will say one more thing. if we're thinking this as sort of a social network. again, think about how we can talk about that from methodological process and how we study presidential transitions. social network theory might be something that we could work with, just looking at key figures whether it's clear johnson, dick cheney, look at who found themselves in the bush administration and these are all decisions that were

made during transitions. there are people who are known commodities. in this instance there are people who are known to the bush family, many have worked with h. w. bush and we can talk about the fact that john roberts and brett kavanaugh were players in this litigation as well. they found themselves on the supreme court, so i think there's something to be said about in transitions about the social network aspect of a mantra you with study that, necessarily. that is definitely a lesson you could take from modern transitions. >> great, thank you. david. >> thank you very much. again, i'm sorry i can't be there in person. i wish i could, but my son is graduating high school tomorrow so i should probably be there for that. hopefully he makes it until tomorrow. let me say it's great to see my friend ted whitmer, i did consult with him a lot during the last cycle and for those of you who haven't read his book on the train trip to washington it is wonderful. i was thrilled that lindsey another organized this panel for this conference because the president financial transitions are one of the least studied aspects of the american presidency. we have -- i have a book coming out with a

couple of coauthors in october on the history of presidential transitions, where we take a bunch of interviews that we have done with historians and protagonists in transitions and we study every modern presidential transition from carter forward, plus some of the worst transitions in history, including 1860 and 1932 and others. that book is being published by the university of virginia press in cooperation with the miller center at uva. when i interviewed eric, a historian from davis, tore into the book. he wrote a wonderful book on the 1932 to 1933 transition. i jokingly said, why are you writing not a book on roosevelt, there seems to be a lot of books on roosevelt. he said, well, i feel that 100 days before roosevelt took office were as important as the hundred days after he took office. most historians focus on the

hundred days after but i felt like the hundred days before it were as important. after all during that period, ted whitmer highlighted the horrors of the 1860 transition with seven states to seeding before lincoln good take the oath of office. in the 1932 to 1933 transition, the great depression peaked. we had bank runs in 25 states. hitler came to power. -- withdrew from the lead of nations, adding tension in asia. our european allies defaulted on their debt. there was an assassination attempt on roosevelt in miami, as you know. hoover's idea of cooperating with roosevelt was to try to convince him to go into the new deal. hoover worked at roosevelt and said this is a person who is feeble in mind and body and not worthy of the presidency and i'm not going to help him. what we have learned through

history is that the transition period can literally mean life and death for americans success and failure, prosperity or recession. and the presidential transition is challenging enough in normal times, as josh highlighted, the transitions are very challenging. in a period of 77 days, the president needs to develop his personnel, her personnel strategy. there are 4000 political appointments. they need to prepare a budget. they need to prepare first day executive orders that will survive legal challenge. they need to prepare their legislative agenda. importantly, they need to make that transition from campaigning to governing, which ted highlighted how lincoln date during his famous train trip. in 2020, and this is something maybe this group can -- a little, the nation faced four crises and perhaps the greatest crises that president elect faced since lincoln took

office. president biden faced a global pandemic, a huge, the procession with 25 million americans out of work, a racial and political reckoning over the killings in the united states of george floyd and others which led to protests, and also a political crisis. more americans died in january of 2021 than in any other month. 176,000 americans died during of the erecting a from covid. 176,000 americans. ken burns was nice enough to be interviewed for my book. he said, in june of 2020, he had an optimistic take on transitions. he basically said in the 233 years between the time when washington handed the reins to adams, and whomever the

successor to trump would be, no arms had been raised, no shots had been fired. there had been peaceful transitions of power. all of that occurred until this year. what we did in preparation for this transition, the potential transition, we did not know who would win the election, obviously, was we looked at history to figure out what lessons learned we can take from history to apply them to prepare for the potential of the most challenging transitions since lincoln took office. we learned from ted that a lot can change in a country during the political team -- we learned as josh highlighted from the 2020 transition, the 2000 transition, that every day counts. busch had 35 days compared to 77 days in a tropical transition. as josh said, that impeded his ability to get people in their seats. eight months after bush took

office, 9/11 occurred. at that moment, bush only had slightly over half of his national security officials in place at d.o.d., department of justice, which obviously investigated and deals with terrorism, and the state department. every day counts. we learn from the bush to obama transition that of a cooperation from the outgoing with the incoming is critical. bush actually, i think, gets credit for the gold standard for transitions. he felt like he was burned by his short transition. 9/11 occurred so quickly after. he basically set, whomever winds after me, whether it's mccain or obama, i will roll out the red carpet for them and cooperate. he instructed his chief of staff well in advance of the transition to cooperate with both obama and mccain to aid their ascension into office.

we were facing two wars and a great recession at the time of the transition. we learned from the carter and clinton transitions and that folks in the white house staff but, as a priority over the cabinet, is more important. carter and clinton focused on their cabinet. it set them back. biden and, actually, bush did a great job focusing on their white house staff versus the cabinet. we also learned from president carter that campaigns and the transition staff need to cooperate. this is something josh highlighted. carter was the first modern president to actually divert resources and put together a transition team. he had 50 people, devoted campaign resources. what he did not do was tell the campaign that he had a separate transition operation. about a week or two before the election, stories started appearing in the press about what carter had planned and of the campaign staff had no idea

whether -- stew went to win governor carter at the time and said, where are these coming from? he said, i have the transition staff, 50 people preparing for when i win. we worked with the biden team on all this. they actually took it one step farther. they decided to create a work stream which they called unconventional challenges. it was to try to anticipate all the issues they might face as a result of a president trump and being unwilling to cooperate or unwilling to accept the outcome of the election. working together, they anticipated a potential delay. not only because of the delay announced because of covid and absentee ballots being records, but also the potential delay of trump not authorizing the general service administration to ascertain the outcome of the election, which we know happened.

the actual cooperation was not triggered for over a month. they anticipated lack of briefings from the outgoing officials to the incoming officials. biden had teams to cover more than 100 agencies, 600 people to cover 100 agencies and to meet with them to figure out what is going on, what the priorities are, what the personal challenges are. it's anticipated not being able to launch those because of the delay. they anticipated delays in intelligence briefings. typically, as soon as there is a president elect, they start to get intelligence briefings. trump did not authorize those for sometime. most importantly, confirmation. josh highlighted this. personnel is everything during a transition. you need to get people in place quickly. the biden team focused on an unconventional strategy to get that non-cynic current officials in place as quickly as possible. on january 20th, they had 100

-- 1100 officials take office that were non senate confirmed. that's more than obama and trump had combined at the hundred day mark in their presidencies. biden knew that -- the senate would be slow and confirming people, not only because of the ascertainment and the problems of january 6th, also just because there was a georgia election on january 6th. the senate could not organize itself. and so, confirmation hearings were held. obama had 25 cabinet officers receive pre-inauguration confirmation hearings before he took office, and more than a dozen officials took office on inauguration day. biden had one official in place that was confirmed on inauguration day. the director of national intelligence, admiral haynes. the secretary of state, secretary of defense, they weren't confirmed until the next week. like we learned in 1860 and 1932, an effective transition

is a matter of life and death. the key thing that biden folks wanted to cooperate with, the outgoing administration was on the covid-19 vaccine strategy. i remember talking to jake sullivan, then the head of policy, now the national security adviser, about the most important policy priority on january 20th. he said, it is logistics. it's getting shots in arms. the delayed cooperation made it more difficult for the biden team to get their strategy in place because they couldn't work with a d.o.t.. they couldn't work with hhs. they could not work with the office of management on their distribution strategy. i would close with this, because historians love to repeat these issues. ted and i debated this quite a bit. i would say the best transition in history was bush to obama. it was the gold standard of cooperation. the laws josh talked about where put in place based on the

example that president bush shaped on his outgoing administration. and the worst transition in history, i think it has to be 1860, as ted highlighted. and then one can debate whether 2020 was worse than 1932. perhaps others can have a view on that. i'm thrilled to participate. i'm sorry it could not be there in person. i thank you very much for organizing this important session. >> thanks so much, david. thanks to all of you. round of applause to everyone. [applause] i want to open it up to questions and discussion. i have to -- i can't resist. i think of this very illustrious group. i happen to be maybe the only person who worked on both a campaign and a transition team. so much of what was said here, particularly josh and david, was making me think about 1992,

93. i was very young. one thing that was distinctive about that clinton transition was, one, that the line, and certainly i was in the little rock transition office, at the line between campaign transition was almost invisible. it was all the same campaign people. i think that raises -- all five of you raised some -- interesting animal where they are, are they political processes, are they administrative processes? when they work well, it is when some political person, when george washington meadows out behind john adams, when breckenridge counts the votes. or al gore can concede. there is a moment where somebody, or george w. bush says i will make sure whoever comes in, i'm going to do it right.

that, particularly in the modern era, that is so critical. the other thing that's reminding me of the clinton transition, yes, a bit too much attention on the cabinet. the white house was really the same people in their early 30s who were they campaign aides. that was part of one of the problems in the first year of the clinton administrate. there was not -- part of that, to, was -- and i'm curious what everybody thinks, i was struck by ted. your remark. basically, everything falls apart, so abraham lincoln has to rebuild the government. of course, that is the most dramatic moment. this institution listen and is the to shuttle knowledge, one striking thing about the clinton transition and the early white house was that really resolute turning away from anyone from the carter administration by and large. there were a lot of --

a couple people. in terms of the institutional knowledge, carter was a one term president. he was the last democrat who had been on the job. there was almost no institutional knowledge. there was so much resolute, you know, from outside washington. you end up with someone like matt, a business leader from arkansas, the white house chief of staff. incredibly smart guy. i'm from arkansas, that was one reason i was on the campaign. i can tell you, it's a state of 2 million people, it does not prepare you for that. that was part of the problem. you ended up with these junior hill aides, like george stephanopoulos. very, very high level consequential positions and a real turning away from anyone with institutional knowledge of the executive branch. that was a huge, huge problem. that is my -- those are my reminiscent's. it's so resonant thinking about

that we are a soft political, administrative, how is it being treated? how different actors, in 2020 you had an outgoing administration very much treating it as entirely political. >> i have a memory, very briefly, when bill clinton was elected governor, very young, in about 1978. then he lost. the only time he lost an election. one of the reasons he lost his because jimmy carter, president jimmy carter, sent an all those cuban prisoners into arkansas, which was very unpopular and helped clinton loose in 1980, i think. maybe it was payback for that. [laughter] >> i don't think so. worrying between democrat politicians. there are -- i want to open it up to discussion. if anyone has a question, comment. if you do, speak, please get yourself near these devices and press at the bottom where it says bush.

the green light comes on. the people in the outside world can hear. you any comments or questions? >> hi, ted from the university of indianapolis. enjoying this discussion quite a bit. trying to give something all of you, whether here in person or out in the either, could respond to. we talked about partisanship being a good thing. it strikes me that you probably have the only example of that where that is true. i'm more enduring for any of you, how you might see partisanship playing, whether it's 1796 or 2020, and how the american public thinks about partisanship in transitions. if we had a different view of that, how we might actually treat our presidential transitions differently. >> i would make one caveat. maybe -- i don't know if i say this directly -- maybe not a good thing. it wasn't considered to be a

bad thing. slightly different thing. what's important about that is that there is an option -- and assumption that it exists. it's a given that people will behave in partisan way. that partisanship does not have to go down the just a democrat or just a republican way, that we assume it is today, right? there were many parties in the 19th century. many parties interacting all the time. that's the important point of david davies. partisanship is more complicated than just there are republicans and democrats. it's a lot about legitimacy from that perspective. i will let others go. >> i would love -- i totally agree with that. i think so many, to tie into one of the other -- i think you made this point -- there have been several moments in most of these elections, actually, where it was really clear problems were coming and they were obvious. many years in a row. in 1786, hamilton, behind the

scenes had been trying to throw the election to the vp candidate and make sure adams lost. it was clear to people that this sort of electoral shenanigans were very much possible. and they sort of seem surprised when and it did happen in 1800. 1860, 1876. i would also say, in 2020, 2016 trump had said he would not accept the outcome of the election if he lost. and yet there was a debate that whether or not that would happen. we think t a lot of our problems with anticipating issues are that we don't expect partisanship to come into play. or we think there are positions that people somehow check their partisanship at the door. if we were much more open about, yes, partisanship can cause problems and be a very intense, nasty element of our system, but it's there, so let's own it and see what we can do to mitigate that, it would go a long way. tina, i don't remember if you talked about this or if i'm

stealing someone else's idea, but the person who is responsible for the ascertainment is a political appointee. it is responsible for their job to the person who they are potentially kicking out of the white house, which was kind of the problem in 2020. if you have a non political appointee, if you have a civil service person, if you have a commission, whatever it is, it's not that partisanship won't come into play, but let's be a little bit more honest about those motivations. >> yeah. david, -- >> i would add, up until this year in the modern presidential transition context, which i would say is since carter, and the transitions have been largely bipartisan. there is a conjuring of officials who have worked in incoming and outgoing administrations in transitions that cooperate, that collaborate, that chair experiences in order to facilitate the smooth transition of power. for example, the organization i was working with organized as a

transition conference every cycle, in which everyone has traditionally come together. for example, in the previous cycle, we had hillary clinton's team, bernie sanders's team, ted cruz's team, you know, there were multiple players that participated and they all collaborated. the romney team cooperated very closely with their successors. ron needed a very good job planning his transition. obviously, he did not win. but he took an approach much like a management consultant and had a very methodical plan which others benefited from. this year, it was an exception. hopefully, in the future, we can get back to a nonpartisan approach to presidential transition. >> great. yes? >> thanks. i have a question about the supreme court.

i think it is at least in the first instance mostly for racial and josh, but as i think about it, lindsay, with her sense of how in the early republic, back channel communications would happen, different branches of government quite openly. you have worked with and presented elections where the supreme court made a decisive rule. the rule certainly is a -- radically different. not everything needs to be better or worse but i'm just wondering to hear your thoughts. if you are to compare the roles of -- overtly political role, people of certain institutional credibility versus an institutional role played by people who we know -- right? both of them leave me uneasy. i'm wondering how you all -- anybody -- thinks about that. that role for an institution that, at least historically,

has been an important illegitimate or for good and ill. >> do you want me to do it? i will let you go. >> well, we know, of course, that resolving bush v. gore, and i don't think this is just because the legal reasoning is questionable, really damaged the institutional credibility of the court, you know? i am not aligned with many others when i think the court has continued along that path. for a lot of people, they push to bush v. gore and that's the first time when i questioned the court as a neutral arbiter and side as a political institution. it's inconceivable to me, at least, that the justices would play a kind of active role today as seemed to be the case there. i don't think we would gain anything by --

i do not think it would be necessarily preferable to have -- i don't want the court reserving elections, i guess. i don't want the court reserving elections, whether it's under the guise of neutrality. i don't want this court playing an active role in the resolution of elections. i'm afraid that they will. president trump believed that they might, obviously. some of the justices seem eager to do so. i don't want them playing a role. i don't think that there is much daylight, to be honest, today between the kind of partisanship that we saw in 76 and the kind of messages and signals that we are actually getting from justices today. i just don't think there is very much daylight between that. my suggestion would be, you know, criticize that. do our work of trying to expose when we see partisanship and

bias creeping into these decisions. i do whatever we can to keep courts out of the business of resolving election. i could talk at length about that and how we have precommitment reggie's and absentee rules established and such. having courts resolving these issues but, i think it is worrying. >> i would say, there has been a long history of graphical tradition saying there were many people in the 19th century that one of the court to resolve the 1876 election. you read a lot of books that compare the 1876 election to the 2000 election, in particular, and saying that. i don't think that's true at all, actually. i think there was a very small minority of folks who were really interested in the court deciding the election. they were mostly republicans because they expected the court would decide in favor of haze, because it was a mostly republican core. in general, i think the main point there is that the court did not have that kind of tower. it did not have the kind of

power to decide, really, anything involving elections. courts on the state level and local level played huge roles in the 1876 election. it's not true that courts were separate from the election itself. but the supreme court, because the justices had these political proclivities and people knew that, i mean, they couldn't be in charge, unless you really wanted to swing it for the republicans, which some people wanted. i would say, maybe the lesson is that the court should not have so much power. if you will accept that they are more of a political body engaging in partisan politics, in certain ways, right, you could still be an honest judge and have partisan proclivities. those things are not necessarily in conflict. if you acknowledge that and the court does not have as much power, then maybe it's not as much of an issue. i think there is an understanding going on in 1876. maybe this relates to some of the other comments. the interrelationship among

politicians in washington, all of the same people involved in all the same things. many of the lawyers presenting in front of federal electoral commission are people very close with the justices and part of their political campaigns and careers. there is no way of taking that out. it's just a much better acknowledgment that that is how things worked at that point. maybe it wasn't such a bad thing, as long as when they got cases, they were deciding them on the basis of the case and not the partisan issue. but in the 19th century, when you do not have final authority over the constitution as a supreme court, then it matters list that you have those partisan proclivities. other bodies and other people can say, no, we don't agree with what the court is due. >> if we take it a step further back, i would apply this assessment. i wrote down social network theory when josh said this. the early republic is just the

most incestuous place there has ever be. [laughter] one of the main plots between the election of 1800 watts from alexander hamilton who had written to john j, it's clear maybe the new york electors would go republican. john jay, who had been first chief justice, now the governor of new york, because chief justice was not prestigious enough, the supreme court was not powerful enough. he said, why don't we change the way the electors are reported? that way, we can swing them to the federalist case. jay just put that leather to the side, he didn't have to acknowledge that it happened so the election could go ahead smoothly. all these people knew each other. all these people had very close relationship. thomas jefferson and john marshall were cousins, they despised each other, which was what a lot of the supreme court animosities were about for the first decade in particular. they were able to draw a distinction between partisan

judges and super partisan judges. if i knew the partisanship was there but they were willing to accepted until they were so ridiculously partisan that jefferson try to get them kicked off the supreme court. [laughter] i don't know the early republic is a good supreme court model for what we should aspire to, but there is a space for partisanship that's accepted and acknowledged. i actually wonder if our supreme court, our relationship with the supreme court would be better if we stopped pretending like they weren't partisan and said, like, these are the spoils that come from the presidency. like, ago. approach it that way. >> yeah. i saw a hand over on the side of the room earlier. yes? >> i think this is on. >> yes. >> i'm rob baker, from georgia state. i'm having trouble formulating a coherent question here because my head is spinning listening to this wonderful roundtable. it has been just fabric. i'm struck by the partisanship

of the 1876 election. i gather a lot of people are. i knew the corrupt bargain wasn't real. i did not know that there was a celebration of partisanship there. that actually struck me because there are a lot of instances right around that time of people elevating constitutionalism and office. just off the top of my head, benjamin are curtis coming out of retirement to defend president johnson in the impeachment hearing, or lincoln, for that matter, in 1864 holding an election in the middle of a war. these are moves where they are elevating democratic norms above what would be a personal partisan interest, maybe. i'm wondering if there is a tension here with this appointment of the commission and the idea that it's a good thing that it's partisan. >> just accepted? yeah. >> i mean, i guess i don't want to believe that. i will put it that way. i don't believe you.

i want to see if you can -- >> i think my friend and coauthor, eric alexander, is in the audience in the back. we have written quite a bit about this. i think the key is to have a different understanding of what partisanship is and what it looks like in the 19th century. the idea that you have two political parties that are fighting each other out at all times is just not the case. there are lots of political parties and the idea that a political party is going to last forever is not universally held. i would say, in 1864, lincoln holds an election during the civil war. yes, that's upholding democratic norms but it's with a different political party he's trying to create and to his own political organization, the union part. this is not like, i'm a republican and i could become a dictator. it's, well, i need to build a political coalition and i'm going to do it in this way in 1864, as opposed to this other

way. i don't think all these people are super and principled. i think they had an understanding that, you know, if you wanted to achieve something, organizing a group of people into a party to try to advocate for a political perspective was the way you did it. when people argued partisanship, and they were often just arguing against one party, not both parties, right? just the idea that, well, i don't like partisanship but i'm going to organize myself into a party to fight against the party that exists. that's the know nothing party right there. i would say, it's an acknowledgment that partisanship is going to inflict the way people behave. if you understand that, you can better understand why people are engaging in what they are engaging in and a belief that the other political parties are not legitimate. your political party is legitimate, so i'm going to be partisan because partisanship

is important for me to achieve something. about the democrats, they are not a legitimate party because, of course, they supported the confederacy, right? it's more of a complicated relationship to partisanship than good versus bad, more of an acknowledgment from that perspective. i don't know if i've answered your question, or if i have convinced you. glad to talk more about it. >> can i answer the question? david, i would love to ask you a question, i'm sorry to put you on the spot, moving forward, we have another election coming up. in theory, there would be another transition coming up. how does a bipartisan transition work if one side will not play along? >> okay, great question. so, obviously, president biden has said he's running for a reelection. he and his team will hope that they win the election. they will also be required,

under the presidential transition act of 1963 as amended, as josh has highlighted, to prepare for a potential loss. therefore, he will need to instruct his cabinet, appoint transition coordinated councils, and instruct his cabinet to prepare memos and prepare a plan for if he does lose. there are requirements to report to the congress and public on the implementation of the law. at the six months mark prior to the election and the three months they mark prior to the election. ironically, in the last cycle, president trump's team and did a very effective job up until the election. there was a fellow named chris

who was the deputy chief of staff. he was also the person that ran that romney transition. he worked very under the radar screen to implement the law as required. only after the election, when president trump got involved, and did those plants kind of go off the rails. he was handcuffed, essentially. and so, president obama did this under the law as well when he ran for reelection. his team actually worked with romney's team to prepare for that that romney could have won. and obama, in 2016, that coordinate with both hillary clinton's team and with then

candidate trump's team. there is a law that requires this type of cooperation. the culture in washington, up until this year, has been that there is a group of bipartisan officials that care about transitions deeply and that work to create an environment where a transition is seen as this holy and very important part of american democracy where the outgoing cooperates with the incoming. that is the tradition. it's the law. hopefully, that will happen in the future. >> can i follow up on that, david? from my understanding, there are these memorandum of understanding that the respective campaigns agreed to, right? they are also ethics laws in place to prevent someone from, i don't know, coming in from a law firm and doing certain

things on the campaign and going back to the law firm, that kind of stuff. i don't know any of that is actual. what's the actual -- >> there are a series of obligations that the incumbent administration has to execute. a memorandum understanding with each of the candidates, after the nominating conventions, the law recognizes the nominees to be official nominees after the nominee conventions. they start to get, as you mentioned, staff, offices, access to government computers, a mobile phones. in one of the post 9/11 reforms, and they can submit names to the department of justice and the fbi to get security clearances so that they are people already during the transition to receive intelligence briefings and ready to go through the senate confirmation process. and then, there is also a memorandum understanding negotiated between the white

house and the campaigns or the transitions, for how the outgoing and incoming will cooperate. again, all that was done prior to the election under trump's -- the trump administration. it just was not implemented after the election because trump impeded the execution of the plan that his staff actually did a good job of pursuing prior to the election. so, that's one of the untold stories of the last transition. the people below trump actually did a good job up until the election. then, once the election occurred, trump did not allow them to execute the plan as required under the law. >> well, at least we know the laws are there. thank you. i want to thank all of our panelists in person and virtual. i want to thank all of our

audience members, in person and virtual. this has been a really terrific and interesting roundtable. i have a feeling the conversation will continue. thank you to all. thank you, lindsay, for bringing everyone together. >> thank you all. >> yes, thanks. [applause] >> c-span out as a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what's happening in washington, live and on demand. keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the u.s. congress. white house events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics. all at your fingertips. you can also stay current with the latest episodes of washington journal and find scheduling information for c-span's tv networks and c-span radio, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. c-span now is available at the apple store and google play. download it for free today. c-span now, your front row seat to washington, anytime, anywhere.