bush administrations, and bill galston, senior fellow out for the governors of study program at the brookings institution and a veteran of bill clinton's transition process. this first session is 75 minutes. we are going to come each will give a brief view of some of the most important things they see that they've experienced in their transition, and then we will aim for a 35 minutes of q&a because i think that what most of you want to do. we will start with david. david eagles. >> appreciate your time. thanks for talking about presidential transition. what i wanted to take a quick step back and understand the sheer scope and magnitude of what we are talking about. these transitions are massive. this is part of a message to the incoming games. they are inheriting a fortune dollars apparatus. there are hundreds of federal agencies. as chris mentioned there's 4000 political appointments, 1100 have to go to the senate. there's only 73 days to your plan. there's not a lot of experience in this process. there are not a lot of folks coming in. what's happened historically has visited a reinvented t

chris: bill galston, if you could go next. i should note that we are at the university of maryland, and you are professor at college park, both at workings and college park. so if you could talk about your experience and the research you have done on transitions since you were in one yourself. bill: sure. i am going to adopt the perspective that i know best , which is an incoming administration. you just heard, i think, a very full explication of what things look like from the standpoint of an outgoing administration. from the standpoint of an incoming administration, a transition is a discrete series of tasks. and each of those tasks can be executed well or badly. and people like you will be watching and making judgments every single day about the one is the selection of the white house staff. i want to underscore at this point, for the first six months in the new administration, the white house is the locus of action. the white house staff is the locus of action. because however well organized the nomination and confirmation