Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the preparations, personnel decisions and policy deliberations of Donald Trump’s transition. POLITICO Pro subscribers receive a version of this newsletter first. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren | Email Lisa | Email Megan As DONALD TRUMP’s transition quickly begins to take shape, West Wing Playbook called up MAX STIER , president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service — one of the few people in the country who obsesses over presidential transitions. The nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization that Stier helped found in 2001 specializes in how to make the federal government work more effectively, including the presidential transition process. Stier is deeply knowledgeable about how transitions work and he helped break down how we should be thinking about the JOE BIDEN -to-Donald Trump handoff. Stier argues the U.S. government is vulnerable during a transition between leaders, making a smooth transition a matter of national security importance. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Should the public be concerned that Trump’s team has not yet signed the Memorandums of Understanding with the federal government? Yes, definitely. You can’t just walk in and say, “Here I am.” The reality is that there’s a ton of preparation to understand what’s happening inside the agencies and certainly for Senate confirmation. There are plenty of reasons to believe that we can improve on the process. But unless you’ve gotten into the seat and up to speed, you can’t make those changes. So you ought to be utilizing the existing process as effectively as possible before believing you can blow it up. What insights can we glean from Trump’s 2016 transition? The first piece is that the pre-election planning that former President Trump’s team did in 2016 was extensive and extremely well done. It wasn’t just the firing of Gov. [Chris] Christie that was a problem. The throwing away of all the work product that the team had put together was really the more problematic issue. What you saw in 2016 was not only the blowing up of the pre-election planning effort, but also a failure to fully appreciate the process issues. And so the Trump team in 2016 was the slowest administration to vet, prepare and nominate its proposed leadership for our government. I think it’s worth taking a step back here and putting into perspective why any of this stuff even matters. It’s a national security imperative. The moment of transition from one administration to the next is also the moment of maximum vulnerability. The primary responsibility of our elected leaders and our government is to keep us safe, and that is put in jeopardy by insufficient or ineffective transition planning. And in order for a president and his or her team to deliver on their promises that got them elected, they need to do that through our government. They need to take it over effectively to be able to deliver. The obvious example of an ineffective transition process leading to national security threats is 9/11. Right. The contested election in 2000 meant that former President Bush didn’t get access to the transition resources until December. What that meant from the 9/11 Commission’s perspective was that they didn’t have their national security team in place early enough to develop the relationships that they needed to be able to connect the dots and to work out problems. This is not simply a question of getting people in place. It’s actually about getting people in place and getting the team to work effectively together, and that takes more time. Our government is a team sport and it takes a while for a team to gel. Trump and his team have talked about getting rid of some agencies and hollowing out the federal workforce. How are you thinking about that? While there is substantial latitude for the executive to do various things within the context of what Congress sets out, fundamentally, the agency’s creation, the agency’s purpose, the money that’s supposed to be spent — those are all things that aren’t within the purview or choice of the president. Trump may be able to reprioritize activities within certain agencies. But to get rid of agencies, they’re going to need Congress to sign off. To do that effectively, that requires an understanding of government and, frankly, working well with career civil servants. That is a fundamental question that’s on the table right now: will the incoming Trump team recognize that they get to set the policy direction of our government, but if they really want to get stuff done, they’re going to need to work effectively with the career civil service? Is there anything Biden officials can do to protect their policy accomplishments in the next three months? At the end of the day, probably not a whole lot. Trying to prevent changes at this stage of the game is not likely to offer that much return. My sense is that the Biden administration recognizes that their most fundamental and last goal is to do everything they can to make sure that this is as effective a handoff as possible. That’s a vital function of the outgoing incumbent president. For me, the metaphor is that we now have a new airline pilot. We’re all on the same plane. We want it to fly safely. Any advice to the Trump team? Three key pieces of advice. No. 1: engaging in the transition process as it is designed is fundamental to their ability to be ready on day one to run our government. That has consequences for our overall safety and for their own ability to deliver on what they promised. No. 2: running our government as a team sport. You have one president, but it’s a huge government and choosing people who are highly capable and committed to the public good is important. And the third: recognizing that our government is not a bunch of buildings, but it’s our career workforce, and we are lucky to have phenomenal talent there. Engaging that workforce is key to success. MESSAGE US — Are you SUSIE WILES? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here !
| 
