which has ripple effect in the private market insurance markets and the rest. so there's a real need to fix something. even if hillary clinton were elected, she would have had to go to the congress to fix something. these things are spiraling out of control and downward. there's a great opportunity i think out there for the republicans to step up and finally coalesce around an obamacare replace. and the devil's in the details. when i was on the hill worked a lot with many of the physicians as well as committee chairs to try and gain consensus. and i think they'll get there. i do. but it's, to me, probably going to be for them a priority and should be. mr. ellis: we're running out of time. i keep my promise to the lady over there. >> thank you, peggy, congressional correspondent for the "hispanic outlook."

i'm so glad you mentioned the kids act i wonder how many journalists don't even know that republicans wanted to pass a law that would legalize the children who were brought in illegally and the democrats completely stopped it in 2013. mr. cantor: where were you two years ago? >> i was there, but nobody wants to write about it. the narrative is such. that being said, there are other piecemeal deals that the republicans have proposed over the years that never get any coverage because it's only about comprehensive. do you think now that there may be a chance for some of those piecemeal deals like e-verify or expanding investment visas or maybe giving green cards to some foreign students? by the way there's over a million foreign students now in the united states this year. over a million mark. we start legalizing we better start talking about numbers. what about some of those issues in piecemeal, not comprehensive?

mr. cantor: i hope there is incremental progress abounding together with some these larger initiatives that president-elect trump will be about. it's always been the challenge because people by definition say piecemeal is somehow a compromise because you got a vision here, and just because you're not getting all the way there you are getting here, you are compromising the rest. i don't agree with that because i think every day, each month, you kept going, you ultimately get there. i share your sentiment. mr. ellis: you reflected president obama's remarks yesterday that it's not a straight line you zig and zag. in the spirit of new day and new hope and now historic phrase, i want to present you as thanks with the "roll call" make congress great again. mr. cantor: that's awesome. thank you. mr. ellis: thank you, eric cantor. we'll take a short break.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> thank you. it's good to be here.

if you were to go back and look at the tape from two years ago when i was on a panel, you will remember that i said that donald trump would be elected president of the united states. no, that's not true. i think the tape is lost, you'll just have to believe me. i'm excited to be here today not overwhelm because the election is over and we're still living and breathing, but we have a great panel. i asked a group of party strategists, these are real party strategists, not the ones you see on cable news. i'm not sure what they do for a living. but these are the people that have been working on these races behind the scenes, working hard for months now, years going

back, but this cycle. i'm excited to bring them in front of the curtain and talk about these races. on my far left, independent expenditure director for the democratic congressional campaign committee. martha, the two-time i.e. director for the democrat senatorial campaign committee. though not this cycle. she's playing that role today. jessica, legal counsel and i.e. director for the national republican congressional committee. and daniel, i.e. director for the national republican senatorial committee. that's a lot of -- i think i got all that right. what i want to do today is really just try to peel back the curtain and talk about how we got here. and the first question for all of you is, looking back, were there any clues that you -- any evidence that you missed or maybe dismissed that would have led you to believe that we would have the night that we had on tuesday night? >> that's a good question. for us, for jessica and myself,

that's a little bit hard to answer because our districts are just sort of piecemeal. daniel and martha would see the whole picture in new hampshire. they would see the whole picture in nevada, in wisconsin. ours were piecemeal. it's a little bit hard to say if we missed something in the data. what i think we did miss, at least i would be curious if this is true in jessica's as well, is how well trump performed in some of our districts. iowa won, for example. we had hillary clinton winning that handily. i think i read today in one of the morning newsletters that trump actually ended up winning that district. there is something that we missed there just in the data. but i don't really know if i would say that we missed something strategically that was sort of apparent or even in retrospect. you look at the poll and no poll's right 100% of the time,

but you look at what it says and you interpret it to the best of your ability. when it's sort of off by that, it's not that you missed something, it's that the data missed something. that's a deeper question that's going to take longer to try and answer. >> i think ty is right about that. you sort of -- look, the national polling, public polling, the major networks polling, everybody had turnout assumptions. that assumed a higher democratic turnout and a slightly lower republican turnout. it's safe to say based on the numbers from tuesday. so it isn't specific to me, it's not specific to the house or the senate or internal polling or public polling. i think it's safe to say across the board the majority of -- majority of the research that was done sort of was off on the turnout model. and i think it's ok to admit that sort of we made strategic

decisions with the best data we had at the time, but that turnout model was wrong. and i think that is an important thing for us to acknowledge and to learn from going forward. and i also think there is always in these elections particularly in wave elections which we have seen time and time again, this pretty significant group of late deciders, and i think in this election we were looking at a lot of data that said we were winning or we were tied or we were down, but that we had a significant group of undecideds. these undecided and late deciders had a very significant role to play in the outcome on tuesday. nathan: i know you two wanted the best-case scenario. did you see what happened on tuesday as the magnitude and scope -- >> i think one thing. i hope the story is written about diving into the polling because it was interesting for us as we were watching the polls

from very early on. the stories were being written in the media, trump was going to kill us down ballot. and we were polling and not really seeing that affected our house races. i thought, am i totally wrong? we weren't seeing it. that's in large part, the polling after the 12th cycle, where we did miss the boat quite significantly in a lot of ways. our screens were way too tight. we opened them wide up and taking in lot of these people that weren't typically voters. we were doing much larger cell phone numbers than we had previously. our polling was showing us that on the house level that a lot of our folks weren't going to be affected so much by the trump stuff as people thought they were. nathan: what were you seeing? >> the traditional polling had us down the stretch fair enough in the margins. the thing that gave us more confidence going into the election night, not that we

would win or hold, but be in the hunt, was the modeling analytics we had. that showed us trending in the right direction in several key states. and some of tghe abee data. abe data out of certain states. nathan: absentee. >> yeah. we'll know more when the files come back in january and february, but i think there is a serious turnout problem, huge turnout problem on the democrat side in several states. nathan: because the senate map overlapped with the presidential map significantly in some ways, talk about the senate races being in the hunt, what were you seeing with the trump-clinton numbers that may have led you to believe that he could have been elected president? daniel: in pennsylvania and north carolina, wisconsin, florida, ohio we finished ahead of trump. it's interesting if you look at the results between senate and presidential, we got there different paths. pennsylvania, for example, we dramatically overperformed trump

and in southeast pennsylvania he overperformed us slightly in western pennsylvania. we always knew we were going to run ahead of him in certain states. it's a matter of how quickly he could -- where he closed the gap. to say that we thought he was going to win, i don't think anyone is going to say that. but we knew he was in the hunt and had been getting significantly stronger over the last 10 days. ty: i don't want to say this is something that we missed, but jess made a point i want to double click on. we made a calculated gamble that political gravity would take over for down ballot. when we would be in like minnesota 3 and erik paulsen would be up by 10 in the head-to-head, up by 12, but donald trump was losing the district by 22 points. history would show that a house candidate can't overperform that much. and so i don't want to say it's like something he missed, but it

was a calculated gamble that at some point political gravity would take over. that's why i think that one of the most interesting things that we'll be able to do and most useful things we'll be able to do when we finally get the data back, find out how the president ended up doing in these congressional districts. to my point, if you were making that john or eric or barbara comstock aren't going to overperform by 20 points, but trump only leads the district by six points, that then your gamble will not pay off. nathan: looking back now thursday morning quarterback, is there a strategic -- would you have made any strategic changes? today in today's "roll call" my colleague wrote a story about the house. she had a quote from the director of the house majority p.a.c., she said had we seen more accurate numbers of what that turnout looked like, we may have made some different spending decisions and we may not have talked about trump so

much in some of these districts. how does that jive with -- looking back now, did democrats go too much in on trump, particularly on the house? ty: the quote before that was i should be drawn and quartered which is unpleasant as well. look, here is a fundamental point about house races. it is almost impossible to break out from the national narrative. so if you look at a race in new hampshire, right, we were buried under 135,000 gross rating points of television. in week one in the las vegas media market, there were 57 different political ads running. so when you are a house race, much more -- senate races now with the outside money, there was $130 million spent? pennsylvania. $120 spent in new hampshire. they can sort of create their own space and tell their own story. for house candidates, it's almost impossible to do that. to run something outside the

national narrative, you need a uniquely disqualifying piece of personal baggage, like danny tarkanian in nevada 3. and you need millions of dollars. we spent $5.1 million in nevada 3. you cannot do that in every race. for house races you are much more at the whim of what the national conversation is. and we made the conscious decision that you have to lean into that because that is really the only path we're going to take. the nrcc did it as well. a lot of their ads were about the iran deal and more national issues than kind of like local things. for a couple candidates they did local things. you are not going to beat barbara comstock because she voted against the silver line. you have to put your shoulder into some silver line riders out there -- yes, you will. you have to put your shoulder into that because you are very

much at the whim of the national race. i don't think that i would go back and do anything differently by any means. but we just thought that trump would not perform as well in these districts as he did. if you could go back and say what would you do strategically differently? not have donald trump run for president. all that to say we leaned in and that's what you should do and that's what you continue to do. we're going to get to a point with so much money in the system that house races are basically going to be a parliamentary election. we're going to long -- days of the john barrows of the world are going to be gone because you are very much going to live and die by your party. you just lean into that, i think. i could be wrong. nathan: one of the fascinating things about this election, there are many, is kind of an upheaval at the presidential level by electing donald trump. it's almost a status quo election in the house and senate. we're looking at plus two in the

senate. plus six in the house, maybe plus seven. but probably plus six. that's a fairly static election. daniel: early in the cycle we do an early polling. we had a battery of questions. the democratic candidate how much do you think he or she is similar to hillary clinton on a variety of measures? same on the house side. early on that was generic as ty pointed out. then as things progressed in the senate side and we did make it very much about local issues, candidate specific issues and get away from the national narrative, both our candidate and the opposition candidate in the senate races, they very much took on their unique brand. i think around late august or september we were able to separate from trump which is why -- ty: we had the exact opposite. we started off saying some sort of version do you think that erik paulsen and donald trump share the same ideas or policies

platform, however you want to do it, something like that. and it was a pair of chopsticks. originally it was like this then it just kept getting closer and closer. jessica: we were the opposite. i totally agree what daniel said. your point is accurate about the volume of ads. our share of voice in the market in a lot of these places. we realized if we do lean into the narrative, we're going to get swallowed. we were looking to differentiate our ads. in florida and iowa we did a lot of testimonial ads. tried to tap into some sentiments the people were feeling there we were seeing in our polling. we talked about how emily king was like hillary which was not something we did a lot of places. we saw that to be a big issue. we did try to bringing these issues back to the local level. that was helpful. nathan: the second biggest story of the night was the senate and what happened.

is there anything you think your side could have done differently? martha: if you look back we have had a number of wave elections. trump's certainly won in a number of places he wasn't expected to. but if you look back to 2008, in the first obama election, republicans lost eight seats, democrats picked up eight seats in the senate. on tuesday night -- guess it took until yesterday, but the democrats picked up two seats in the senate, which is hard to do when you're moving into headwinds. i think looking back illinois and new hampshire, are victories. certainly we have three -- four new women of color -- three new women of color joining the u.s. senate. that's a significant change. if it is a status quo election, i think we're making gains in -- two gains in the night where certainly expectations got away from us. it seemed like people were expecting more.

two is a good night. i think that there are certainly going to be things in each race, maybe, look back and things that you would do differently. i do think that committee deserves a lot of credit for recruiting a big map and putting a lot of seats in play, not all of those gambles paid off by electing a democrat to the senate, but i think having a big wide map and putting a lot of seats in play was definitely to the democrats' senate advantage. winning two seats, i don't want to pooh-pooh it, it's a big deal to pick up two seats when the other party wins a presidential race. nathan: one of the many points of strife within the republican party is about expectations. when republicans came in the majority, there was an expectation among some base voters that, all right, now even though president obama is in the white house, we're going to repeal the affordable care act. and then when that didn't happen it created some primary issues.

what did you see in your data this cycle, what are base republicans expecting a president donald trump and republican congress to act on next year? jessica: it is hard to say in some respects because we did try to focus on keeping these things localized. there were certainly places, my first election was the committee was 2010. that was totally a nationalized election. every single ad was a national issue. we tried not to do that. there are places like minnesota 2 where we realized obamacare was deeply, deeply unpopular there. that was the main issue that we ran that race on. we definitely focused on that. we really did try to look at smaller, localized issues, digging on the research. i wouldn't say our polling told us there was one overarching

issue or two that people are angry about and want to change. that wasn't what we thought this election was about. >> the issue people cared most about and the substance were totally different. much more so than 2014 and 2012. which was surprising. especially a presidential year. i think seeing that we ran very candidate specific, state specific issues and campaigns. i think the big thing here is economic issues, pocketbook issues, that those americans clearly feel like washington left them behind. nathan: we have a divided country. some tension. i'm going to force you to, all four of you, to acknowledge that strategic decision that your counterpart or your counter of the other party made you have to admire. ty: i'll tell the story.

i have been in politics for a long time. it was the -- one of the things the bravest moves, in fact you don't have to comment this at all because i read on the internet. some people in her party might be upset with it. they ran an ad in illinois the national republican campaign committee ran an ad that basically said bob dole is independent. he's going to stand up to hillary clinton and going to stand up to donald trump. that might not seem like a big thing, but for a party committee to say that a member of their party will stand up to their presidential nominee, that is a very politically risky move. in our polling, it was the right move. it was the right strategic move. that was bob dole's only path. he came up short. his only path was if he gets 10% to 15% of democrats in that district. that was his message.

when i saw that come up on the "national review" and i saw the ad, i was, wow, that is putting any sort of political calculus or what are the chattering heads in my party going to think? and saying like if we want to win this race, this is a hard path. and this is the only way we get it done. and be damned with whatever blowback i get on the internet, or the right wing sites, this is the path to victory. it was executed well. obviously, bob dole came up short, but it was right in the tenor of the campaign. i would encourage you all to go check it out because it was -- you can say it was sort of like profile in courage. but it was one of those times where i think a lot -- we don't make the right choice and say what is the right strategic choice versus what is the politically expedient choice. we had so many email chains with our consultants, with strategists in our party like

wow, they are doing this. daniel: the polling going into election day in illinois 10 i think hillary was going to win by 20. ty: i'm sure she did. look, brad ran a great race. i think brad will be a great member. >> again. ty: but that was a very smart move. martha: i think there is a tendency when you are feeling like you are in the bunker, which i assume that in a number of senate races the republicans felt like they were in the bunker sort of coming into labor day because they were feeling like they were down. there were moments in time, i think we have to acknowledge, there were moments in time when the clinton campaign was riding high. it didn't happen on tuesday, but there were certainly moments coming out of the debates.

there were moments when trump would step in a dog pile. there were things that happened during the campaign where democratic candidates moved up in the polls. and things that were within our control and things that weren't. but when that happens, when you're in the bunker and you're feeling like there is no way out, very often the knee jerk reaction to that is go to the stove and crank it up to power boil and just go after your opponent with the hottest, most personal ugly negative that you can. and sometimes it works, sometimes it's the wrong thing to do. so i will say in wisconsin where i assumed ron johnson was under water many, many moments in this campaign, he made a strategic decision sometime around labor day to invest more in positive. and although we all sit around talking about elections and i'm sure many of you lamented negative ads and say you wish we -- people had a reason to vote for someone and wish they were more positive ads.

when you are in that back and forth and decisionmaking, a positive ad feels like a gamble not worth taking the risk. i do think that i will give credit in wisconsin in particular and maybe other places, but ron johnson invested in a positive message in september and october that i think was the right thing to do strategically. i definitely felt this coming out of 2014 that when you are feeling the heat, the sort of tried and true path is to turn up the negative on your opponent and sometimes the right thing to do is to actually take a step back and begin to tell a story about yourself because i think we assume voters are paying attention a lot more attention than they really are. so making sure we're always -- making sure not always in every race, but in many races, making sure we're taking the time to give that positive story i think is important.

and i will say that i think in wisconsin it was a smart move on ron johnson's part that flew under the radar screen. jessica: i think there are several things. the buying strategy is always so fascinating to me. if you look back at the money that is spent, i think it's interesting they make strategy decisions about which candidates they'll spend money on and which they won't. florida 18, randy perkins, if he would have come to congress he would have been one of those richest members of congress we would have had. it's clear they made a decision not to spend money in a that race even though from day one it was one of the races. i thought that was a smart allocation of resources, because as much money as we raise it's always not enough. i also thought places like minnesota 2 some of the

strategies they used on the ads were interesting -- sorry, minnesota 8. rick nolan -- you all have a lot of members that vote conservatively. that sort of match their district. it makes it very difficult for republicans to attack them on issues because there are some things they are voting with us on. rick nolan is not one of those people. he voted for the democrats. he votes the party line. it was interesting to see the ads strategy change from this cycle to last cycle where it was the same two candidates. they made rick nolan look like anybody's grandpa. he looked like the nicest man in the world. the ad was fantastic. it made it hard for us to keep on beating this negative ideology, which was true but when you contrasted it with the ads, it was a very tough to break through. nathan: in that minnesota eight district, donald trump won that district i would which would have made rick nolan's path even more difficult.

daniel? daniel: i think the decision to cut off patrick murphy in florida. they went against the bernie sanders base in their party. they spent money in the primary against a popular populist primary opponent. they invested millions of dollars and everything else to prop up a double-a candidate in a major league game. they walked away from him and that took courage. nathan: martha, to put you on the spot, how much tension was there between making that strategic decision of hey, florida, we can better spend our money in north carolina, missouri, to parts of the party saying we have to stop marco rubio now. you have to look beyond. talk about that, the tension between the 2016 realities and what senator rubio might do in the future? martha: you play the game you're playing.

and i think it's clear that the committee -- i'll say i wasn't in the room while these decisions were made, but i can look back in hindsight and say that the money that was not spent in florida and you could say spent in hard money hard money or nevada. these are tough decisions when you are looking at a spread sheet. it feels like a lot of money, but when you are looking at a spread sheet of money and the amount of money it takes to run a week of television in these states on your spread sheet, it goes quick. in a state like florida which is an extremely expensive state, in excess of $3 million a week to run television, and you're balancing that with all the other races that -- where you are needed. it's a tough call. this is a tough business. i think that if the money that

wasn't spent against rubio was spent against kelly ayotte, that's the payoff that you have to make. i do think that it's important to run the race that you're in. and this was the 2016 race and not the 2020 race. i think that they made the smartest decisions that they could with the data and information that they had at the time. so i certainly don't think there's a lot of second-guessing about that. jessica:00 one thing that's unique, having served in other roles of the committee. in large part it's a thankless job because you are making these very, very difficult decisions. we're independent from the committee. we have been working with this group of people and gaining from their knowledge and having group discussions what is best, and all of a sudden the wall goes up and you're shipped off. and you can't have anybody -- you have a team, but the large people and the leadership of the committee you are separate from

them. these types of funding decisions are difficult especially knowing we'll rejoin the world. we have to look at the numbers and have their trust and respect. it's a really, really tough thing to do. ty: it's also the most isolating job in washington. if you are in the committee you are dealing with the candidates, the campaigns, the members. and all their teams. there is a lot of interaction. if you are at a super p.a.c. you are dealing with the others. if you are part of u.s.a., you are working with the senate p.a.c. -- nathan: outside groups can coordinate with outside groups. ty: it's -- there's three separate buckets. the hard side, which is candidates campaign committees. the super p.a.c. world where they can work together. then there's the i.e. we're all alone. you are sort of on the committee island. as jess said, some of that's freeing. but some of it is very isolating. you talk about strategic decision, making decisions on how to spend. we ended up spending $79.4 million. between you and your team. there's a lot there. nathan: i think we'll have time for one question from the audience.

whoever gets the microphone i can see first. my last question is, we had a presidential candidate who won who was dramatically outspent on television. his own campaign did not have a ground game to speak of. how -- are we -- what changes will there be -- has campaigning changed going forward into 2018? ty: can i make one point? donald trump was outspent on paid media on television. his share of voice on television was exponentially larger than hillary clinton's. that is a very important factor when you're trying to extrapolate -- god knows that for colleen deacon and the new york 24th, the today show wasn't doing three segments a day on her. before we start to make this blanket statement about how campaigns are changing, you need

to realize if you are looking at television as a medium, you flip on your tv the amount of time donald trump was on tv versus hillary clinton earned and combined is much more of a complete picture. i want to double down on that. daniel: i think campaigning has totally campaigning changed in 2018 if you have a candidate who has been a celebrity for 30 years, billionaire, and donald made national news coverage. ty: donald trump because of one thing that i think he was very smart with, he realized with 144 characters he can drive the news cycle. not always for the good, but i think that he sort of -- again, that's a following that's been developed for 10 years of the "apprentice" and "home alone 2" and 20 years at miss america. before we start saying, hey, you know, random house guys, who is

running in kansas, you shouldn't do television. like donald trump did. daniel: candidates up and down the ballot that tried to replicate that model failed. nathan: i'm hoping you-all stay involved in campaigns going forward. do you think you will hear from candidates, have to explain all this and say donald trump didn't do this or that. why do i have to run -- why do i have to go through the normal steps that candidates have to go through? martha: we can deal with that. what we had with president obama when he won in 2008 was all democratic candidates thought had you to do to raise money was put up a website and send a few emails. president obama, the big story coming out of that was the online fundraising was the future. it certainly remains a big part of how we raise money for candidates.

for a while we had people who didn't want to do any fundraising at all and put out a website and the money would come. i think each cycle there is a moment in time where people take lessons, the right lessons or the wrong lessons, and test them out the next time around. i just think it's going to be less likely that people who are running think that following the trump model of campaigning will be successful for them or healthy for them. i think that it will be -- what may change is how the press covers the president, right, and how the press covers the administration for the next two years and whether donald trump as president will keep tweeting and go arne the more traditional mediums of -- around the more traditional mediums -- as president. i think it's unlikely that people will say i want to run and i'm going to follow the trump model. nathan: daniel, talk about what

the committee did with digital and tv, how you handled those on the i.e. side. daniel: it's pretty technical, but long story short, traditional you have 1,000 points of broadcast television and then you change your message and however much cable you get behind that great. we threw that model out this time. spent more on digital than we have in the past, and changed our message progression, traffic, based on 1,000 points on broadcast, we reach an aggregate impression level across screen. for the first time totally married our digital and television media plans. which allowed us to buy fewer broadcast points on you higher reach programming and use cable and digital to drive frequency. that ability to deliver that much more of our message to the target audience was a big part of why we were able to overperform trump in certain key areas. jessica: it helped us from the very beginning to daniel's point, we spent more on digital

than we have in the past. one thing that allowed us to do that smartly was to create formulas where rather than just give what's leftover, typically what's been done, we looked at how expensive cost per point was, how much money the candidate had, how connected and wired the district was. then we assigned what we thought would be a logical spend based on factors. so we were looking at digital at the same time. we were looking at our other traditional mediums of the rather than giving it leftover money. there are certain places like maine 2, that is not a wired district. it's hard to get a message across in digital. there are other places like commuter district where you have to have a big presence on line. t nathan: we were years ago in the -- i was quarantined with a candidate from maine. had he a great mustache. i spent a lot of time with john during the anthrax scare. one question. ty: right outside of augusta. dairy farmer. i worked on the farm.

not on the campaign. on the farm. >> looking into the future, i know a lot of new members of congress are -- don't have political experience, but the republicans have done such a good job building that branch at the state legislature level and governorship level. when will the democrats realize thee need to focus on that, especially to cherry pick candidates for congress? martha: they did not have a bad night all around. i think we picked up a number of chambers. there were chambers that flipped. it was more -- it was not a clean sweep on the republican side in the state legislatures. i think nevada picked up both chambers. out west -- ty: alaska house. martha: there are recounts happening in arizona that have those chambers on the brink. not to challenge you, i do think that there's still time to sort of sort through winners and losers there.

i think that there might be some democratic breaks there. look, i think it's important for lots of reasons for us to fill the pipeline with people who are strong candidates, represent their districts wisely, take the job seriously. and frankly have ambition. we have a lot of -- as you know, we have these races every two years. we have seen change. six seats flip in the house when the other party takes the white house is not something to look down on. it's a big deal. it's significant. and i think we have to continue to make investments in recruiting good candidates at the state and local level. and then supporting them.

i think you're right to say that it's -- congress -- there isn't as much change at the congressional level as our districts, redirecting has made the districts more conservative or more democratic or more republican along the way. i do think that there is a lot of important work happening at the state level and we have to stay committed to it. nathan: ty? ty: i want to make one point about that and the down ballot stuff. the way that our society is moving in terms of information becoming disaggregated, some of us probably live in communities where we don't have a local newspaper. particularly if you live in metropolitan area, wjla is not covering the state legislature. we're all in politics so we probably know who our state legislature is, but many people don't. what democrats have fallen victim two, there have been two waves in the last four years, 2010 and 2014, with them nobody knows who their state legislature s they see a d and r. they wipe out the d's and bring in the r's. with president trump if there is a bad midterm in 2018 or bad

midterm in 2022, you will see more democrats than republicans. it's not because democrats don't care about it. i think we can always invest more in down ballot. i think democrats a lot of times don't realize the power of state houses. particularly our donor base doesn't realize the power of state houses. what i would say is it's not as much you don't care, it's just that voters don't know who they are and they see and d and r. when the r wave comes there will be more r's. nathan: my mind is twisted enough i'm already looking forward to the 2018 elections. ty: go to hell. nathan: it's going to be huge. stick with "roll call" and politics coverage. i'm also editor of the gonzalez political report. if you want a three-month free trial subscription, talk to beth in the back corner. i really appreciate you-all for

being here and giving us a behind the scenes look. thank you very much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> here is a look at what is coming up. virginia congressman don buyer tweeted this. i'm listening to veteran voices across northern virginia and senator deb fischer of nebraska says delivering remarks at the veterans day program thanks to our veterans, our future is bright. and dick durbin tweeted this says honor to join

annuals for chicago's veterans day ceremony. on c-span it's a look at presidential and executive branch transition. including josh bolton and mac mclarty. this is one hour and 20 minutes. this in 1998arted which we were often reminded is a long time ago, it seems like just yesterday. one of the things people talked drapesas measuring the was the equivalent of changing your socks in the middle of a winning streak in baseball. we just had to deal with the politicians would grow a

beard if they thought it would help win the election. the.itions ran against it is now commonplace for people to think it is a responsible for candidates to be measuring the drapes and thinking about what will they do if they actually managed to prevail. now the job of the transition is to convince people measuring the take downeparing to the drapes is the equivalent of not taking down your socks. the last panel was essentially what it is like to transition to the white house. this group of people have all walked into the white house on day one but another interesting aspect of the three people is that they have all walked out of the white house before the white

house -- before the president walked out and to the executive branch where the mission of the administration also goes on. this panel will be a bit about walking into the building and what that expenses like because they have had that experience and how do you take on the responsibilities of running what the president is only and the top part of the full executive branch which is one of the large organizations of the world, or the world's most powerful organizations in one of the most complex organizations, especially if you're interested in actually making a fit your ambitions. i will give you a brief synopsis if you missed the first panel. leadership is a team sport. it starts at the top. leadership is a team sport and practice matters.

regardless of whether or not you face the same game you think you're going to play, practicing together helps everyone. those are topics that these three people have had, what they are just learned last night is that not only did lisa brown walked into the white house with president obama, she also walked out of the white house with vice president gore and clinton. she has been on both ends of the spectrum. clay johnson started planning to walk into the white house even before governor bush announced he was going to run for the white house. that is there a portion of then governor bush and george w. bush's commitment, larceny personal commitment to making sure things are done properly.

he not only walked into the building with george w. bush, he walked out of the buddy with george w. bush and walked out of the building with a different part of the presidency. he was deputy director of management. the management and management. the same job that lisa brown was assigned to buy president obama and put a twist on it to make her key performance officer. i will let her talk about what that means. chris lu, likely johnson was the executive director of the obama transition planning group which means he was the guy who started way back before obama was a presumptive candidate. he was the guy who major to know what they were doing if they one and he is now midway through the m initiation has walked out of the building on his own into the executive branch and if you anything about the agency, -- he

is the person whose job it is to make sure ambitions of the secretary and ambitions of the president are the actual output of the agency. what i plan to do is ask a series of questions of each individual and author will have a check to, tell them because they all have a similar experiences. you have all walked into the building. you have all been part of the process before where your person was just a candidate and now the president-elect and he walked into the building and did the

job and what i would like you to do is think back to the end of the secondly, not the first week, the second week and ask yourself if you could only draw on that two-week experience, what thing would you tell your successor that would help them walk into the building with more confidence and strength. >> ferc, what to say thank you. thank you for the bush library for hosting and the moody foundation for making all of this possible. i think both mac and just talked about this. you want to come in with a very clear plan and roadmap for what you want to do clearly for the first two weeks and there are executive orders unannounced and that time period, you set a tone very quickly. what you want to do is know when you walk into the door, we had a

very clear set of we knew it was happening on day 1, 2, 3, specially for the first two weeks. i was to have a clear plan but also be willing to be flexible. we are always trying to balance is being proactive and josh mentioned this, we hope the next president will have a honeymoon period. and it is a remarkable time we can get things done. you want to take advantage of that. you also don't know what is going to happen. you also need to be able to be agile when something does happen so that you can respond to it. >> i agree totally. i want to expand the common which is you need to take charge of the kind of president you want to be and want to be confident and comfortable and assured that you will be able to be. one of the first -- one of the things you want to do in the first two weeks? educational things, statutory

things, whatever you want to do. one of the things that could be risks if they showed their own things, whatever you want to do. we face or opportunities where our countries threat, unlike ever, their economic risks. xxxxxxxx what are the things that could be risks if they could be show their ugly face or could be opportunities? our country is in threat now, unlike the way it has been ever. and there are economic risks and health risks and so forth. so the president needs to be thinking, how prepared do i want to be to deal with a threat to our country, or a health risk, and so how well staffed do i want to be in the key areas in those departments, how well briefed do i want to be, how knowledgeable of the potential circumstances i might get faced

with? make sure that happens. the key is, the thing that is not secondary or should not be a variable but should be fixed is, what the president, with a candidate for president today, what kind of president do they want to do, if they want to be those first two weeks. without a doubt, do they want to be? you think about how much time to i have between now and then that is not fixed. time fixtures in terms of man days, do you have someone working on it? two or three people, a three people man month, but if it is 300 -- am i devoting the resources, and my expanding the time, adding more days to the calendar them really exist by adding more people to really be prepared, have people around me in key positions to deal with

stuff i will want to accomplish if nothing else, encourage? and those other things that might occur help from a national security standpoint. take control of that. that is the picture of success you want to accomplish, that you want to have painted it your two weeks in the presidency and own that and take responsibility. >> this is why the transition period is so important. you want to come in and hit the ground running. you want to start governing the minute the president is sworn in, instead of, "where is the bathroom" equivalent. using that seven days or 34 days as best as you can, so that when you do governance like clay just described. you can immediately start acting and setting the tone for your presidency. mr. sullivan: and not really 77 days, that is president-elect. he did not start thinking about the transition on election day,

right, chris? started months ahead of time. every one of those days, it is growing opportunity to be prepared. mr. lu: we started planning in may of 2008, maybe actually april, before candidate obama had even grabs the democratic nomination. we understood the importance of planning in a very positive way. planning a transition is one of these really unique experiences where you cannot ask for an extension of time. on the noon of january 20, you have to be ready. that time goes very fast. many decisions you make during transition ultimately affect the success of your presidency. the key to all of this is understanding that the matter how great the planning is, you have to be prepared for the unexpected. in the beginning of 2008, the spring of 2008 we started planning, we had probably a dozen different policy groups looking at everything from education to health care to the environment, economy was one of them.

he was just one of the 12 to that we had. by the fall of 2008 as the financial housing market started imploding, the economy expands to take over everything else. so you have to plan it also be nimble as well. host: planning is partly about the people you want to put in place and what positions they have and who is going to be the best fit for the president's ambitions, but it is also about the ambitions themselves, right? the ability to pin it were an unexpected event which like a crisis, everything else is already in place.

it is easy for -- i think it is hard for people to understand is the president could actually say, something is on fire, and is really important, but i have got other things to do. don't mess this up while i am gone, but i have got to do this other thing. so the president's ability to give it during a crisis depends upon the fact that notion, while he is focused on a crisis, the left of the government is not standing still. there is a general policy being pushed forward by others that depends upon him and that matter to him. so this planning stuff that you do is not simply, what are we going to do the first couple of weeks? i have to give a topic beach on

this day four, but where is the president's agenda, how far advanced, how well organized? now i have got to focus on this other thing that i know was expected. that is a part of the transition as well. everyone agree with that? so if we set that out as an objective, first set out the president's agenda, and then how can we use that agenda to help him for the things that are unexpected or her, toward the things that are unexpected? where does the personnel fit into that? the nice thing about the campaign is the ready group of people of the now president-elect is now familiar with, but there are now all these other people like mac and josh talked about you to draw in from the washington community. you are not clear what their objectives are. this is a question for clay. you have this responsibility. how do you decide who the

president needs from washington, and how do you decide who the president needs from the campaign? mr. johnson: the president is charged to me when he was governor. i was the appointments person for the governorship, which is the equivalent of president to personnel. you decide who to recommend to me to do the work we want to get done while i am governor or president. so for his administration, what does he want to do? that is the goal every we all want the people that do the best job of our desired work accomplished. and so he did talk about politics, done in a political environment, and is very important you have to understand first of all what you want the deputy secretary to do, or whatever or the assistant secretary overseer or the head of fish and wildlife for the

parks and recreation, what do you want them to do? so the first thing you do as residential personnel, you go to the corporate policy section or national security or whatever, in the white house and say, what does this administration want from parks and wildlife to take care of, or whatever? and the health department or hhs, what do they want? in the three or four years they will be in the particular job, we want them, we think they should accomplish this, this direction, south, north, reduce or add it. then you confirm with them and others what kind of person they want to do that. a change agent, subject matter expert, management expert? you want someone publicly associated with the issue or somebody for very different reasons have no association because they will be a lightning rod?

what kind of person are you looking for? and then you go out and you say, here is the target of the person i would like to recommend so i can explain to the president, this is the person we recommend because you want to get this and this and this done, this person wants you to get this and this and this done because they are behind that. so you do that and go out and find people in the various ways networking. so what happens to politics? we did not try to do with the political matter as well as the accomplished matters in the personnel office. personnel was charged with confidence the matters, the other was political. their charge was, make sure we don't do anything stupid politically. or politically stupid. mr. johnson: anymore.

so they would recommend people that were politically safe or maybe people that were sure to be loyal to the president, like-minded as the president and so on. maybe they were people that did not come from them, but they would check their political background, people that worked in the community, who would be acceptable. it all started with what kind of person are you looking for that is best qualified to accomplish what this president wants to do? he was very clear charge again from the conversation with the president, find the person best qualified to get the work i, we want to get done while i am president. mr. sullivan: so you do that without reference to a set of names? mr. johnson: without reference

to a set of names? mr. sullivan: you were describing the charge is, described the person we want, for the department of labor, secretary of labor, what does that entail, what kind of person do we want, all within the context of, we don't already know who that chris lu is? mr. johnson: you have to be disciplined to go and decide that. somebody, an overseer might as soon as you get to finding them -- i can tell you, chris lu would be a fantastic secretary of labor. or i think chris lu would be a fantastic -- we would find out, what are the policy, what do the policy people, what do they suggest a labor be focused on in the first three or four years.

and if chris lu is qualified to do that, has the skill set to do that, because it means working well with congress or doing this operationally within the agency or as a manager or fiscal or whatever. so you are not given a name. your first job is to place these people in management positions. maybe it did not happen with us. mr. sullivan: on the other hand, you are directing, and the obama transition, you are directing 600 people that are looking at agencies that are basically agency experts, policy experts, people like that. are you telling those people that they are the policy people that have an in-depth understanding of what it is like to deal with employment training or something like that, because that is what they are interested in in the department of labor? are you also saying that? also keep in mind there is no way he will meet all of the cases to be the assistant secretary of training. or do those people go to work only because this is their

ambition? ms. brown: people join because they care about the government and to be honest, they hope they will go into the government. we were very clear you would not necessarily be given a job. we put together a transition team, we were very clear with folks that while we welcomed the participation, they should not necessarily expect a job. you hear about people drawn to, people prove themselves through the job. and then they are thought of when you are looking to see who will be your deputy secretary of justice. mr. sullivan: did you guys start with -- did the obama team start with a profile? ms. brown: can i say at one thing? i don't know if it was mac or josh earlier, but we had our transition team was completely distinct from the campaign. so what we did was, we actually drew a lot for the agency. these were teams, individual agencies that tried to learn as

much as they could very quickly so they would know the secretary came in, not only would they know what the president wanted to accomplish but also they would hit the secretary in the face when they walked in the door. whether it was regulatory or legislative issue. we chose people who had previous government experience. if somebody had worked in justice previously, you knew they went in knowing about the department, knowing about the issues. you don't really want somebody who is trying to get up to speed on this set of issues.

when you were talking about the balancing of the campaign and people with previous experience, often that was the half that would be from previous experience. mr. sullivan: the people from the campaign, why is it that the transition planning people are sequestered from the campaign? mr. lu: it is not that you are try to keep them separated. the whole goal is to win a campaign. they should not be looking over their shoulder, trying to cut around quarters at their next job. if there is a moment in time when they think about it, and truthfully, the skills one needs to win a campaign are often different than what it takes to govern. there is a lot of people that campaign and transition over into administration.

some people can't because it is not their skill set. mr. sullivan: whose job is it to tell them their skill set will not land them in the administration? mr. johnson: everybody has a place. there is a key and appointments which is how to say no. and personnel types, we say the president makes the appointment and the others make the disappointment. mr. johnson: so the question is, how do you disappoint somebody? mr. sullivan: sure. mr. johnson: you never say you -- something negative. you never tell senator so-and-so about his person is not going to be, you know, the king of something, a small country at his request. you never say your constituent, something negative. what you say is, something will happen, why, and i am very

interested in your qualifications -- which is all true. your ability to serve and campaign. and we hope that you will hang tight because of all kind of different roles. they can be challenged. mr. lu: i think the challenge also is you have to hear out the different to people on campaigns. your senior people, policy people all have a role. there are real challenges, what do you do with the 23-year-old field organizer who has camped out in a battleground state for the last six months and has organized and really has given up a huge part of his or her life to help win? trying to translate that skill to governing is a harder challenge. mr. johnson: i don't know how many of those people there are, but i think it is 15.

there is no sense of limit, and it generally works about 1700. this lower level, very important job in key areas, the person who is camped out in ohio for six months and just did yeoman work and went up to ohio because -- generally is an ideal person to go and be this person over commerce and this person over health or whatever. and also that person i would expect to be assistant secretary for nuclear defense, it is just -- there is a fit for just about everybody in the campaign if they want to be involved in this administration. mr. sullivan: you don't have to say no very often?

mr. johnson: you might have this person over here, and how about this? you know what this is that the time. but again, the key is, you are trying to fill positions. you are trying to get work done. the first step in that direction is, find them qualified, lead the work needing to get done. mr. sullivan: the work you are doing is the agenda the president is pursuing. that is the defining anchor. ms. brown: people are policy. you think about your priorities, and you will do your cabinet quickly. you want to think about, what are the key things the president, the candidate has, the goals they set on the campaign? what do you want to quickly do you come into office? you need people to implement those.

one of the challenges is what the senate confirmed, what mac was describing in terms of the cooperation that he got on the hill, is more of a challenge today. and so one thing and incoming administration needs to think about is also taking advantage of the positions where you can just appoint someone, and getting people into agencies in those. there are more than 4000 positions, is that right? it is a lot, so inevitably something where it slows down. for an incoming administration to try to back that up as much as possible, so when you come in, you have people or slates lined up you can start to move and get an agency that will be important. mr. johnson: what is an example? the question was, somebody had said -- i just got an idea yesterday. norman would be a great democratic member of -- senior member -- of our administration.

and i said, we found some great thoughts. he knows housing. i'm sorry, transportation, he knows transportation as well as the chairman of the whatever committee. and i say great, what do we want the secretary of transportation to do? be really effective at working with the congress. mr. johnson: touchdown. so he has that background, well regarded in congress, both sides of the aisle and so on. it is win-win. but that came up originally because he was a democrat looking for a political thing of, the whole thing is this is bipartisan.

the thing that drove it primarily was the nature of the background, and that fits exactly, what the policy people said they would want at the head of their department. mr. sullivan: so to take this example, transportation and country's airline infrastructure was not george w. bush's primary policy structure. it is probably 13 out of 13 on the list. how do you decide to pay attention to that nomination and that, the qualifications of somebody who is not obviously in the cabinet? skip the cabinet because you have got to fill out the cabinet. how do you go out feeling below the agencies? do you focus on the agenda or find -- we can fill out the entire transportation department in one fell swoop.

do you go for the guys you can get in and stand up that part of the government whether it is important to the agenda or not, or do you fight what you have to fight for the people that you really want because they are key to the president's education agenda and you want the education department filled top to bottom to promote the president's agenda? mr. johnson: you tie it to the work you want to get done. and so you fill up the transportation positions. he has been asked by the president -- it has been announced. norman and i are good friends. now. and he comes in and he says, i have a whole bunch of people i want to bring with me into the transportation department. and i said, i kind of went, i said, here is the way we would like this to work.

you, nobody is recommended to the president that you don't recommend for future positions. and nobody is recommended to the president that we personally pushed out. so we will name, and you have to agree. so maybe you have 15 people with 17 jobs, and we will be looking at it from a different perspective, perhaps more focused on other things than your relationship. but if she agrees that is the right thing because she is the one held accountable for filling the ranks and transportation for people that can get the work done, the president wants to get done, then you will be happy, she will be happy and is recommended to the president. if you can't agree that this person is significantly more successful getting it done, this person is the risk and so on,

then you agree to disagree and find somebody you can both agree on. mr. sullivan: so you take it to the president? mr. johnson: no. you argue your relationship with the secretary. they feel good about everybody on their team. but we have had, we have had people, in who were governors of states who remain nameless, and their suggestions for who they want on their team all caps from that state. they were all came from their staff as governor. every one of them. we said, you know, this person is going to be the secretary of x for the united states of

america, not united states of whatever. this will not work. this is -- it is not going to work. we can't agree on this. we will take one job at a time, he can we both have to agree. it is harder to do it that way. i think nixon told his cabinet, you, you can pick on your own people. b your team. disastrous. others have said, i will pick all the people. and i will tell you your team, who your direct reports are. disaster, because you are an extremely well-qualified person. your the secretary of something, but you have never met your direct reports before. you have no relationship with any of them. i don't believe i want that job. it is a mistake looking for a place to happen. mr. sullivan: and the guy that says, i will take that job is not the -- mr. lu: i will add diversity. it is not only diversity as gender, race, it is people that

bring variety of experiences whether it is state and local government, private practice or nonprofit, you look for people that do not just come out of the typical washington establishment. washington lawyers, bankers -- to be sure, there are jobs for which specialized experience is necessary. you are head of the faa, you want somebody who knows who knows aviation. you want a good, smart manager who has got some level of policy with political savvy. mr. sullivan: is diversity something you expect the democrats to talk about and republicans not talk about? in other words, this attitude you have because democrats typically are thought of his having a giant coalition of a whole bunch of groups that have a bunch of different interest, so the number she dashed so that notion of diversity is a critical way of doing business in the democratic party, because it is a big tent with a lot of different voices, and the republican party is one voice articulating one position -- didn't seem like that to you? mr. johnson: no, here is the way

we did it. the president said about a month in, by the way, let's every once in month tell me how we are doing on various types of diversity. ethnicity, gender, by washington insiders versus washington outsiders, by different ways of -- because if it is all different -- if it is only the usual suspects, you are going to get only the usual type of

government. so you want new thinking, you want fresh thinking, you want -- and all these studies about the more diverse a group of people is that is making decisions, the better the decision it is. diversity can be defined as many different ways as you want to. tell me how that compares to higher administrations. so we have talk of how many washington inside the beltway people we have pointed, outside the beltway, what percent are from mississippi, whatever, alabamians, whatever. let's work harder for whatever. but it turned out that we, the first time we started looking at it was probably march. and we were very diverse. it is not a conscious ring. there were no quotas are goals. we were pretty proud of the way we, you know, had done that. mr. sullivan: is that something

that gets decided before he is president-elect? mr. johnson: what is decided? mr. sullivan: this thing about diversity. mr. lu: president obama said early on he wanted an administration that reflected america. there is no specific quota, no saying, we needed this and this and this. xxxxxxx we needed this or this or that, it was just we should look for diversity of people and as clay says, every study that has been done on this in the context of organizational dynamics says the more diverse set of views around the table, the better the decision-making. >> diverse could be age. >> i don't think that democrat versus republican, it is about a well-managed organization.

>> i agree. >> when you do the policy panels going agencies, do you see that as a concern? or it just another policy expertise? do you sit down and say, look at this group. they're going to the labor department and they are all this one kind of person. they all have a strong union background, for example. >> these agencies are huge. the agency review teams are relatively small. the expertise is that the that you focus on the most because you want somebody who knows the faa and the fair labor standards act and the substantive needs are great at that point. again, you also keep in mind that you wanted to be a diverse group. you want to make sure you have a variety of perspectives.

>> one thing about transportation may have been 13 on president bush's list of top agencies based on his agenda, but come 9/11, leon panetta is making a lot of important decisions. sometimes you set yourself up to pivot to an issue that is unexpected but how you set up the personnel that you want. >> a good example, you want to find the best qualified people because you asked never know, even if an item is not your top agenda, you never know something will come up. when the big things that happened during the first term of the obama administration was the deepwater horizon spill which devastated the gulf coast

for about three or four months. we appointed, we nominated and confirmed that a secretary of energy, a physicist, a nobel winning physicist and while his agency did not have the lead in the response and recovery efforts, have a physicist on staff who then got detailed down there and could actually help design the mechanism to cap the oil well, that falls under the category of others duties as assigned. -- other duties assigned. that is what you want to get the best people on your team. >> to sam not necessarily looking for the best but to do the work, who would say that? who would do that? so late out there as what your goal is, we are finding the best people to do the work. turned out he was a fantastic guide to be the secretary of transportation. but we knew, we predicted that going in internet when 9/11 hit,

important that transportation be led by an extreme we knowledgeable person, we had one. >> someone congress could count on. ironically, i would say one of the most effective cabinet members we had was ray heard, republican congress and from illinois that was placed as secretary of transportation. i'm not sure anybody would have said at the outset that this 12 or 14 term republican caucus room -- congressman would end up being an effective secretary transportation but he was because he was good at what he did. >> talk about the demands from having someone from the other party. if anything you think about when you are -- is that it than you think about when you are sitting down to identify the cabinet? >> if the person is incompetent. >> is that an advantage? among the five people that would do a good job, does it matter

that one is a democrat. >> diversity is good. when the cabinet is seen around the president and the president throws out a sizzling issue are in a cabinet meeting in some of the other party sitting there, i can tell you, this may not go down well, diversities good. all different standpoints, diversity is good. >> can you talk about how come you start with the candidates and have been assigned this responsibility, he had taken care of the transition, you have walked into the white house and now you have this job for three or four years we are carrying out the ambitions and the agency and you decided is time to go do that job down in the weeds. how do you make that decision?

>> i will tell you having this decision, we have all had a multitude of different jobs, when the president asked you to do something you do it. i do think there is value in having people move throughout the government. many jobs and political jobs are really high-level project managers. it helps to have expertise in those areas. the people who understand how government works and understand how to craft and implement, you

can use those people throughout the government. >> everyone of these people made the decision at some point to lead the white house and go into the better of government, into the executive branch. >> you are in the executive branch in the white house. the president suggested to me, i've been the personnel guy for two years. got almost all the positions filled and he said, you want to think about getting of the role? i want to make sure you don't get burned out. i said that is great. but i would like to do is be the deputy director for management. >> why? >> i bring method to madness. that is what i do. there's a lot of madness and the federal government so there's a lot of method and i think i would be good at it. and he said go get them. i got nominated. he brought up the idea.

time to get people -- make sure they're not a flat learning curve. excited about the daily challenges. in my case, i had enthusiasm. >> why labor? >> i had not worked on labor issues that i had a passion for what the department of labor does. we help people find jobs and when we get the jobs, we protect them on the workplace. it was hard for me to see a more noble way to spend my career. it was also a chance to work with a really dynamic secretary of labor with tom perez people are reading about these days. and working hard challenges. i had spent most of my career as a political person but what i

lacked was true management experience. when you are the deputy secretary, you are the coo of a massive organization if that means budget and hr and i.t., these are the nuts and bolts of the organization and that was a challenge i wanted to make and i was fortunate and got that opportunity. >> getting down and focus to peace and/or prosperity. labor. >> most of the work of the government is done in the agencies. a lot of young poets come to the white house at think, i'm in the white house, i don't want to go anywhere else. i encourage them to because the practical expense to get, you are working on programs, most people out of the country know much more about the department of labor thing to do about the lip -- white oak. you can make a difference in those jobs. >> you want to office of

management and budget as well. >> that is because the president asked. >> not because you bring the madness? >> it was similar to clay that it was a management position and ended up being interagency work. >> is there a point at which you sit down and say, on election day we had these tell things, these were the 12 banks most important to the president that made up the big book that just talked about. key items. and they are all gone. we either succeeded or we swam our length of the relay and it is time for something else to pick it up. out there and executive branch,

there all caps of responsibilities. someone has to make sure the faa radar system working and that is not terribly sexy thing but that is an important part of the government so you get to a point where you say, we are replacing the president's agenda with this regulatory responsibilities of maintaining the government. there's been seven years and we have done all we can do. there's still a lot that we need to do as opposed to want to do. somebody still have to do these things and that is an important part of the labor agenda of the democratic party. how do you keep doing that everyday knowing that there is a time it is going to run out and you need to be preparing the next generation, if there's going to be another democratic administration, you have been in this situation where there will be a successor of possibly the same party.

how much time to do you spend on preparedness to get ready with the problems facing labor or management regardless of what party? they are the statutory things. not the big legislation. do you know what i mean? >> fortunately, or unfortunately given the state of gridlock, you never at the point where you have gotten everything done. until the very last day you will keep trying to push her agenda forward. as we have learned and i think future presidents will learn given the dynamic in washington, the agenda of your agency will be the agenda of the administration. we will continue to have

divisive government. the billions of dollars of grant money that the federal government gives out, the multitude of regulations and initiatives that derive from government agencies is the, makes it a competence of the white house tried to push. >> the record of the administration will be what you have done the record administration that we set out in this big book that josh was talking about we want to check the things off, didn't, didn't, didn't wear in the end administration is just the list of things we checked off we did? >> we got health care past. those of the website of a competent. did we get a comprehensive i'm a change legislation done? no.

but we were climate change treaty we have signed. we have done significant changes in the missions of motor vehicles -- emissions of motor vehicles and trucks. you can either go about it with one big legislative a which is what people often think about or 10 regulatory changes which may have the same affect. >> it is not an on-off switch. you're continually working on the priorities of the administration. during even when vice president gore was running for president, the clinton administration was working very hard to a cop was all the things that president clinton wanted to a copy. also to the other part of your question, you have a discrete set of people that are working on transition and so it is not an either/or. >> is that an important thing? if you're worried about transitions, he need to have a discrete people -- group of

people whose job it is to focus on that. >> if you want to get anything done, you have to have discrete people. all generalizations are false including this one. here's another one, the primary reason every government organization, every government in the world does not work to satisfaction is because they don't have, they don't govern with desired outcomes in mind and there's little transparency about how well they are performing relative to the goals they do have. that is the case of the federal government and every country and every state. the goals are outcome oriented and are specific enough attached to the money available and not

tied to time frames. it is hard to govern if you have specific goals and if you make the goals transparent, fairly clear and you make transparent how your performance into the goals. i've proposed to the president, a president, i propose to him that his next data being addressed said this is what i want to be held accountable. actually proposing to his speechwriter. here what i want to be held accountable for the next four years. a compass any of them, they have civil so little regard for federal government that you will be held accountable for what you are going to do that they will be stunned that you have proposed this.

maybe it is too big an idea. the genesis of that, the essence of that is why government does not work better. there is no, here's the we promised and here is that we want to do and what we need to go faster on and so forth. there is little transparency to how we are performing relative to that. >> some of that is the gotcha game. >> why do we want to make it well known what is not working? did you ever taken eighth-grade civics class? like china's somewhat on democracy and wonderful things happen. that is what that is. we need to figure out how to springboard some might to what people -- sunlight to look up or

to accomplished. let's put a man on the moon at the end of the decade. mountains move when that happens. the president's management agenda, bush 43, to find outcome and goals -- defined outcome goals on a quarterly basis with how to perform relative to the goals. issued a scorecard, red yellow-green. agencies notice and were highly motivated. we celebrated when they got the green. it was incredible. the congress resisted it because it is harder for them to be members of congress.

you can't get bridges to nowhere if you have goals. in general, that is listed as he got through it. there is for a little list making with what we have accomplished. you are sharing with your stakeholders how you believe you are doing well. >> what is the question now? i'm a believer that you set clear goals and make your best efforts to do them. i'm not convinced there is one way to accomplish those goals. the traditional way of passing laws, the school rock version, it will be a long way -- time. >> can we talk about other ways executive in nature? how much do you depend upon -- if you are setting aside a team, that team is set aside to help prepare the next administration, is that he mostly the political people you have brought with you

that represent the agency at the administration and person or is it a group of civil servants who are the professionals who face these problems day in and day out and have faced these columns all day of all their lives? is it possible to sit down and say president obama has a long list of goals and the department of labor that we have yet to accomplish and we will fight for those every day until the day we walk out of the building and the responsible decisions that have to be made to help the exit administration get ready, we are going to lead to the professionals who have faced these problems and the transitions to new

administrations regardless of party. >> i don't think it is an either/or. i don't think it's the political people running through the tape until june 20. in the career people are doing the turnover, handover. regardless of who is my successor, because the party, i have a lot of things i want to talk about. what you do realize and i know you do, what other states realize is that the majority would have in the government is not partisan. it happens regardless of who the administration is. there is a broad agenda. the notable to government in terms of the programs with minister are not partisan. you just want them to work as well as they possibly can. >> same for management? >> any administration in the last six months trying to launch new ships, better well prepared to fail at that.

it will not happen. the important thing is that the white house and his agency leadership, department leadership agree on what we are going to what our priorities are in terms of how we will run our business for the last six months. they would all agree that they're not going to try to get some new bill passed or cut this thing in half because it will not happen. you get agreement. you will not have some rogue agency out here going off and getting three new balloons launched when it is impossible. the second thing is, because as we have talked, because the standard for handoffs between outgoing and incoming and

administration has been set so high, from your objective viewpoint, because the work by the obama coming in and push going out, that is a standard that the obama administration has to live up to and they are mindful of that because they were the benefactor and they praised and they wanted tell them -- be held in the same regard as the bush administration to be held in. it is a very high priority. you don't want to get second-rate status to that responsibly. the third thing, the agency primary responsibly for welcoming the new team and is the career staff. identify this new career people who are going to lead this effort and say, is talk about what the priorities ought to be, what the proponents of a well-organized welcoming strategy ought to be in here so we ought to do and here's the

information and you are in charge. they are highly motivated to implement that the company really want the new boss to like them. that is human nature. make that the best welcoming party and get them up to speed. the agency will benefit from that. >> six months from january 20, 2017 -- >> july 20. >> have you had this conversation? >> it sounded exactly like this. it is not to say we will not

continue pushing agendas and stop setting the table for the next administration of purchase we help implement, we are also sort of thinking about what are the longer-term transition issues, what are the documents we want to prepare for the new income secretary and the new incoming team. >> we will turn questions to the audience now. wait for the microphone. >> getting back to transitions, there was no discussion about the transition of congressional leadership as a goal or idea for an incoming administration whether it is a really good administration. it seems to me that the gridlock, and a lot of people in

america think it is because the leadership in congress. i'm talking about both the house and senate. any attention paid to that? it seems to me, if i were president which i will not be, that i would want my guy, as much as possible to be in charge of the senate and in charge of the house. my guy or gal. i recognize that that has some problems in and of itself. >> they have no control or influence on that. they are elected. >> that is part of the

environment. >> executive branch meddling in the legislative branch. >> george w. bush of texas was not trying to figure how to get rid of the public and leadership in the house and senate on the way to be president. >> that was not part of my plan. >> the way the congress looks as to whether congress looks and you have to deal with that as an issue. it is not something the president -- >> it is set up to be independent. >> early on after election day you set up a series of courtesy visits between the president-elect and the congressional leadership, whoever he or she may be 80 tries hard as he can to form good relationships and find

areas of common agreement. that becomes more challenging in this political dynamic. >> is there any thought of personnel that there would be more continuity of the same people regardless of more bipartisan and that may be a staggering of taking over and something considered in the future? >> that is the way the state of texas does it. positions are termed as though a third of all positions turnover every two years. these are full-time positions that run all our state agencies. there have been some such a solution -- legislation that has reduced the number of senate confirmed positions and kept them as political positions removed them from some confirmation. i think about 160 or something reduced out of 1200.

there is recognition of the opportunity but i don't know that there's a clear thing that ought to be done that has not been done. >> i think that has a lot of merit. there nothing democratic or republican about homeland security or national security with the faa and i do think having everybody turn over on monday creates -- one day creates risks. any new president wants his around people and their and that becomes a challenge as well. >> the country of australia, where there a new administration come a jobs change -- eight jobs change people -- in the united states it's a couple thousand. at thousand senate confirmed positions. >> the director of the fbi is a political appointee and is confirmed by the senate.

aren't most regulatory boards termed? >> right. >> a fair amount of the administration is to find what it is common when it comes in. recognition that we needed federal reserve and the central bank working. there may be some vacancies but they are not, they don't all leave. [indiscernible] >> president obama said to the secretary of defense, please stay in place and tell your people to stay in place until somebody comes and stands you down. that is not an unusual practice. it's unusual either but it is possible to do that. >> it was not until i had the

privilege of being an appointee that i really understood the process. i come from the private sector and had the opportunity to serve president bush. i will tell you, it was my expense to relocate, it was a long process to go through the security clearance, fbi checkpoint and you really don't have any security in your job whatsoever. i came first term and hope we got a second term in fortunately we did. i was one that got to make changes from one department to another but i just want people to know that it is really quite a process from an appointee's point of view what it is that you are changing in your lives.

i did not come from the political campaigning even though i was active, that is not how i was not. i was recommended because of the position i had in the private sector in the community. it is something to recognize the thousand or two that make changes and alive to have the privilege putting forth the president's agenda and doing the work of the service of all americans. i want to say thank you to the three of you who have critical roles in finding people like myself who never got been in the years that we would have a chance to work for the president of the united states. i think you have touched on an

important topic about the many disincentives of serving in the government. i spent an entire career helping out would never have to go through senate confirmation and august the i did for this job. i had a relatively smooth confirmation but you are opening your life up to a lot of people. every aspect, when i was in college i wrote a column for the school newspaper and asked me to get a copy of every single column i had written 30 years ago. i said i don't have the. if you want to go back and pull them down, feel free to do that. they looked through all of my social media. once i got confirmed, because the department of labor regulates every company in the country, acted divest every single stock i owned. you make a lot of personal and financial sacrifices for these jobs. that is a disincentive for people serving.

>> we put a letter, i found a copy of the is one of involved in serving and it was scary. it was all the things chris talked about. you have to comport with this and everything that has occurred in your life. you have to live with it and take public blemish. we wanted to say, make your people have some understanding of what they might be getting into. i call the person that was the head of the personnel at the beginning of bush 41 and i said, look at this thing that want to put it on the website so many good to thought the application, you have to read it before. he said this is way too negative.

i said perfect. >> in some ways, a leadership is about getting people to do sacrifice. i think the amazing thing is there is an enormous number of people who are actually willing to sacrifice. >> people say to you, thank you for your service to our country. where else do you get that? a great privilege and honor and it is hard work. >> anybody else? >> how big is the transition team and how the transition team formed?

>> for bush 41, it was one person, beforehand. then the transition, ended up january 19, 2001, there were 600 people. some of them were just hanging around. it were 600 people doing a lot. by october of 2008, hundreds of people working in a suspect by the end of, we had 600 700,000 people apply electronically. you all have -- >> 400,000 people applied >> 400,000 people applied online. how many people on the staff? 600 just oner

agency review. that is the largest chunk of people, but we must've had 800,000. >> at one point it was just one person. and it always starts with just one person. a massive management effort. it is a lot longer than 77 days. we had a team in place prior to the election. >> additional capacity you have to start sooner. bush some point, george w. says to you, you are it. figure it out. >> yeah, that was a year and a half before the election. some point, barack obama says to you, you are it, figured out. and you, there are fortunately organizations like the partnership like you and