Transition Lab

During every presidential transition, flocks of people parachute into agencies across the federal government. From November to January, these agency review teams serve as the bridge between the president-elect and the mammoth organization they will soon oversee, relaying information back and forth to prepare for a smooth handoff of power. Organizing these teams is no small task, so today on “Transition Lab,” we speak with Melody Barnes, who co-led this work for former President Barack Obama’s 2008 transition, about what she learned. 

Melody Barnes is a distinguished public policy expert, attorney, and political strategist with a decades-long career that spans government service in both the legislative and executive branches, as well as leadership roles in think tanks, the private sector, and academia. Currently, Barnes serves as the executive director of the Karsh Institute of Democracy and the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. During the Obama administration, Barnes was an assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, where she played a crucial role in shaping policies on health care, education, and economic mobility. She was also a co-director of the agency review working group during the 2008 Obama transition.

Read a complete transcript of the episode here.

The federal government seems broken, but it might not be for the reasons you think. In this episode of “Transition Lab,” Yuval Levin talks with us about the surprising ways in which a the U.S. Constitution—despite being centuries old—could help us address our most pressing modern social and political problems.

Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the founder and editor of National Affairs, a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. Earlier in his career, Levin worked on Capitol Hill and in the George H.W. Bush White House. He’s the author of five books and numerous articles in several mainstream media publications. His work explores the role of institutions in American life, how they can and should operate to form citizens, and how they fail to do so today, with grave consequences for democracy and American political culture.

A complete transcript of this episode can be found here.

A law on presidential transitions bears former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt's name for a reason: he wrote the book on managing the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next. Twelve years ago, Leavitt built “the ship that never sailed:” the Romney Readiness Project. He memorialized this work in a book by the same name, creating a playbook and record of what many experts consider to be the best, most thorough presidential transition ever organized. Today, as our first returning guest on Transition Lab, Leavitt shares his wisdom on how to build a cohesive and committed transition organization and steer it through the tumultuous waters of our current politics.

Leavitt served three terms as governor of Utah before joining the George W. Bush administration as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and later as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2012, he became the chair of Mitt Romney’s presidential transition team and led a robust transition operation to ensure a seamless transfer of power that never came to pass with Romney’s loss to President Barack Obama. Leavitt subsequently worked with the Partnership for Public Service and Congress to apply lessons learned from his experience with Romney to create a law modernizing the 1963 Presidential Transition Act. The Edward "Ted" Kaufman and Michael Leavitt Presidential Transitions Improvements Act of 2015 now makes many of the practices that that Leavitt implemented on the Romney Readiness Project law for future presidential hopefuls.

Read a full transcript of this episode here

We remember the 2016 election as one of the most bruising, knockdown, polarized elections of our time, but behind the scenes, representatives for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were quietly preparing each candidate to transition into office. Today, we speak with Ann O’Leary, co-executive director of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, and Rich Bagger, leader of the Trump for America transition operation, about what they learned from the 2016 transition, how to prepare for a transfer of power during a polarized election cycle and what advice they would offer this year’s candidates.  

Ann O’Leary is a longtime Democratic political figure and a self-described policy wonk. She has held a wide variety of roles over the past thirty years, beginning with serving on the Domestic Policy Council in Bill Clinton’s White House in the late 1990s. She then became legislative director for Hillary Clinton’s Senate Office before spending more than a decade at the Center for American Progress. She returned to politics with Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, first as a senior policy advisor and then as the co-lead of her transition team. Since then, Ann has worked outside national politics, practicing law and serving for two years as chief of staff to California Governor Gavin Newsom, during which she guided his transition into office and steered his administration through the COVID-19 pandemic. She now leads the Government Controversies and Public Policy Litigation Practice at the law firm Jenner & Block. 

Rich Bagger is a born-and-raised New Jersey corporate executive, politician and government leader. A lawyer by profession, he spent the 1990s and early 2000s as a New Jersey state legislator. From 2010-2012, he served as Governor Chris Christie’s chief of staff, using meticulous planning and political savvy to spearhead several legislative successes. Rich briefly returned to the private sector until 2016, when Christie, chairman of the Trump transition team, appointed him to run its day-to-day operations.

A complete transcript of the episode can be found here.

Red versus blue, Republican versus Democrat, liberal versus conservative. Today’s politics are driven by intense partisan conflict, but things haven’t always been this way. In this episode of “Transition Lab,” we talk to Lee Drutman about how our two-party system and winner-take-all elections have inflamed our political divisions. Not to worry, though: He also tells us how we can reform our government to reorganize our political conversations and create a healthier, more productive democracy.  

Lee Drutman is a political scientist and prolific writer who covers a range of topics, from political history to voting reform to political psychology. Much of his work centers around the way that political systems and individual psychology interact with each other to create certain social and political outcomes. Currently, he’s a senior fellow at New America, co-host of the podcast “Politics in Question,” a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and the co-founder of two different electoral reform organizations. He’s also the author of two books, including “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America.”  

A complete transcript of the episode can be found here.

Once we leave high school social studies behind, government can feel distant, complex, impersonal and overwhelming. On today’s episode of Transition Lab, we talk with Eric Liu, co-founder of Citizen University. Eric established Citizen University to rebuild a civic culture in America and help individuals engage with one another across partisan lines and create positive ways for people to participate in democracy. He tells us about this work and the importance of the peaceful transfer of power as a civic ritual and proof of the rule of law. 

Eric Liu now serves as the CEO of Citizen University, a nonprofit organization working to strengthen civil engagement across the U.S. He began his career in Washington on Capitol Hill and then in the Clinton White House, where he worked as a speechwriter and domestic policy adviser. He’s worked in the media and the social sector, including as the executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Citizenship and American Identity Program, and he served on the board of Corporation for National and Community Service under former President Obama. He has written multiple books, given TED Talks and been a tireless advocate for people to embrace their civic power and connect across partisan divide. 

A complete transcript of the episode can be found ⁠here⁠.

As the 2024 presidential election approaches, you can almost feel the tension rising in the air. Today on Transition Lab, we talk with Harvard professor Archon Fung about why political discourse today feels so rough, why our democratic institutions feel so fragile and what we might do about it. 

Archon Fung is the director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the current Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He’s been at Harvard since 1999 and has authored five books, edited four collections and written dozens of articles for a wide variety of journals and publications. 

Journalist Judy Woodruff spent the last two years “reporting on America” by traveling the country to speak to people and try to find out why we’ve become so polarized. Today on Transition Lab, she tells us about how politics has changed since she arrived in Washington, D.C., during the Carter administration, how these changes inspired her current series, “America at a Crossroads,” and what she’s learned from it. Spoiler alert: the problems are as big as you imagine, but so are the ideas of Americans working to solve them. 

Judy is a senior correspondent and the former anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour. She has covered politics and other news for more than five decades at five major news networks. Since leaving the PBS anchor chair at the end of 2022, she’s been working on a new series, America at a Crossroads, where she speaks with Americans across the country to understand what’s driving our current political environment and what might be done to bridge the divide. Judy has won numerous awards during her career, including the Partnership for Public Service’s 2023 Spirit of Service Award and 25 honorary degrees. She’s also a dedicated philanthropist, championing causes including disability rights and women’s equity in the media. 

Do you know all the ways that America’s first presidential elections look like today’s? We sure didn’t! In this episode of Transition Lab, historian Lindsay Chervinsky tells us the story of America’s first two presidential transitions and how George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson established a tradition for the peaceful transition of power while navigating extreme partisanship, foreign interference and questions of democratic legitimacy. 

Lindsay Chervinsky is a scholar at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and focuses on early American history and the institution of the presidency. She’s the author of, “The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution,” and the upcoming book, “Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic.” She is a former White House historian at the White House Historical Association, publishes a weekly newsletter, “Imperfect Union,” and is a frequent contributor to numerous publications. Starting in July, Lindsay will be the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library.

A complete transcript of the episode can be found here.

Welcome to season two of Transition Lab, hosted by Valerie Boyd, Director of the Center for Presidential Transition. During the first season, we introduced the public to the inner workings of a presidential transition by featuring former White House chiefs of staff, members of Congress and other government leaders who worked behind the scenes to ensure the continuity of government from one U.S. president to the next.

In the second season, Transition Lab will explore the relationship between presidential transitions, effective government and a strong democracy. We’ll examine the peaceful transfer of power and why it matters, and we'll talk about the nuts and bolts of modern transitions with experts who have done this work before.

Join us every other Tuesday on your favorite podcast platform.

A complete transcript of the episode can be found here.