The 2016-2017 Transition Into the Donald J. Trump Administration

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The 2016-2017 Transition into

the Donald J. Trump Administration

James D. King James W. Riddlesperger, Jr. Department of Political Science Department of Political Science University of Wyoming Texas Christian University Laramie, WY 82071 USA Fort Worth, TX 76129 USA [email protected] [email protected]

Prepared for presentation at the Conference on the U.S. Presidential Election of 2016: Domestic and International Aspects, hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel, January 8-9, 2017. © 2017 by James D. King and James W. Riddlesperger, Jr.

“Though this be madness, yet there is mthod in ‘t” --William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene II

Throughout the long, contentious presidential campaign of 2016 there was one undeniable fact: with President Obama term-limited from seeking another term, a new president would enter office on January 20, 2017. The campaign became a drama in many ways unprecedented in the nation’s history, with rhetoric taking on historically polarizing characteristics. And the election of Donald Trump gave the nation a president-elect with no public sector experience for the first time in history. Trump’s campaign theme was one of

“disruption” politics, promising to give the government an entirely new direction—moving away from the “extreme incompetence” Trump saw in the conduct of government and “draining the swamp” of Washington, D.C. by bringing new faces and a fresh decision-making style to the nation’s capital. His message was aimed primarily at his opponent Hillary Clinton, who he promised to prosecute for criminal violations of the law in her email scandal, but also involved excoriating the decisions made by previous Republican presidents, including explicitly his two

Republican predecessors—the George Bushes, Sr. and Jr. In so doing, he alienated himself not only from Democrats, but also from the Republican establishment, with four of the five the most recent nominees of the GOP explicitly avoiding endorsing his candidacy. Only Robert Dole, the

1996 nominee, stood by the Trump candidacy.

A singular election might give way to an unusual transition. Yet, the core positions of government still had to be staffed, and the routine functions of government still had to be managed. In other words, while President-elect Trump is a larger-than-life personality who wants to impose his will on government, he still faces issues common to all incoming presidents.

As president-elect, Donald Trump has seventy-three days to prepare for his administration with a

1 host of tasks to accomplish during that narrow window of time. In this paper we explore the challenges facing Trump as he prepares for the assumption of office. How did his disruption candidacy yield a transition different from previous presidents, and in what ways did the common problems faced by all presidents elect constrain him to similar approaches to previous presidents?1

Previous Interparty Transitions

The Obama-to-Trump transition reflects the most common type of transition in the modern era, a transition that occurs when a new president representing the opposing political party is elected. These interparty transitions represent clean breaks with the incoming president having the freedom to build a team from the ground up. In the post-World War II era, the

Truman-to-Eisenhower, Eisenhower-to-Kennedy, Johnson-to-Nixon, Ford-to-Carter, Carter-to-

Reagan, G.H.W. Bush-to-Clinton, Clinton-to-G.W. Bush, and G.W. Bush-to-Obama transitions were of this nature. Successful interparty transitions occur when presidents-elect carefully assess their strengths and weaknesses, cooperate with the outgoing president, learn from their predecessors, move quickly in selecting personnel and developing budget proposals, avoid raising expectations regarding the role of the cabinet in the new administration, and establish a working relationship with Congress from the outset of the administration.

After a successful election campaign, presidents-elect are not immediately inclined to take advice from their predecessors. Implicitly or explicitly, the outgoing president has been the target of the incoming president’s campaign. Historian Carl Brauer notes:

1 Had she prevailed in the election, Hillary Clinton would have faced a somewhat different set of challenges as a president-elect in an intraparty transition, that is, following a president of the same political party. The principal challenge in these situations is establishing an identity distinguishable from the current administration in terms of policies and personnel, without severing linkages to the incumbent president. See: James D. King and James W. Riddlesperger, Jr., “Getting Started in the White House: Transitions in the Modern Presidency,” White House Studies 3 (#2, 2003):115-131.

The weeks and months after a Presidential election are not times when humility reigns in the victor’s camp. Rather, it is one when confidence, hope, hubris and infallibility run high, characteristics that contribute to, if they do not directly cause, some of the mistakes that are made.2

Examples of this attitude are common. Bill Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos (1999, 121) wrote later that “we saw ourselves as smart and tough and good; we had won, deposed an incumbent president.” Perhaps even more striking was the transition of Jimmy Carter in 1976 when, being determined to chart a course different from the Nixon and Ford administrations, the president-elect openly rejected recommendations from the Ford team about the necessity in the modern White House of having a strong chief of staff. Instead, Carter returned to the less- structured “spokes-of-the-wheel” model that had been used by previous Democratic presidents.

Speechwriter James Fallows acknowledged that the failure to listen to Ford administration people meant that “a year was wasted as we blindly groped for answers.”3 During the third year of his presidency, struggling to advance a policy agenda, Carter abruptly changed to a chief of staff model. His new chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan (1979), sent a note to Dick Cheney, Ford’s chief of staff, acknowledging that the hubris of the Carter people at the beginning of the term had not served them well: “Dick—If I’d only listened to you—A Former Spoke.”4

The perspectives of Fallows and Jordan on the Carter transition reflect an early decision a president-elect must make: how should the White House staff be organized? The growth of the institutional presidency that began with Franklin Roosevelt’s administration has continued with expansion of the Executive Office of the President and White House staff. Dwight Eisenhower,

2 Carl M. Brauer, Presidential Transitions: Eisenhower through Reagan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 258. 3 James Fallows, “The Passionless Presidency,” Atlantic, May 1979, p. 39. 4 Hamilton Jordan, Note to Richard Cheney, July 21, 1979. White House Staff folder, Chief of Staff Files, Carter Presidential Library.

3 drawing upon his experience in the military command structure, created the position of chief of staff to manage the expanded organization. For a time this arrangement was considered the

Republican approach to White House organization, as Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford adopted similar arrangements for the White House while John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson utilized less structured staff arrangements. Carter’s failed experiment of returning to the Kennedy and

Johnson approach marked the end of administrations with loose White House structures. Each president since Ronald Reagan has started his administration with a chief of staff commanding the White House operation.5

Success of the White House operation and hence of the administration stems from the president’s choice for chief of staff. More than any other factor, having a chief of staff experienced in the Washington policy-making environment is key to an effective White House operation.6 Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama had success during their first years in office, in part, due to the White House leadership demonstrated by James A. Baker III,

Andrew Card, and Rahm Emanuel as their respective chiefs of staff. Bill Clinton chose Mack

McLarty, a lifelong friend from Arkansas, as his first chief of staff and preferred separate meetings with various staff members. This arrangement hindered systematic, coordinated policy development in the Clinton White House and led to McLarty being replaced midway through

Clinton’s second year by Leon Panetta, the administration’s budget director and a former member of Congress and executive branch officer. The later arrangements of the Clinton administration, with a chief of staff with substantial experience in the nation’s capital paired with

5 Stephen Hess and James P. Pfiffner, Organizing the Presidency 3d ed. (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2002), and Shirley Anne Warshaw, The Domestic Presidency: Policy Making in the White House (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997). 6 On the characteristics of successful chiefs of staff in the modern presidency, see James P. Pfiffner, “The President’s Chief of Staff: Lessons Learned,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 23 (Winter 1983): 77-102.

4 senior advisors with strong personal ties to the president mirrored the very successful first term of the Reagan presidency, when Baker teamed with long-time Reagan associates Edwin Meese, who led domestic policy development, and Michael Deaver, who coordinated the president’s public activities. Obama utilized a similar model by bringing together in the White House

Emanuel, Peter Rouse (Senate staff), Valarie Jarrett (friend and advisor from Chicago), and

David Axelrod (2008 campaign manager).

Most visible for a president-elect are the choices for other key positions in the administration, notably the men and women selected to lead the various cabinet departments.

Choices that are made regarding who will serve in the president’s cabinet, in the Executive

Office of the Presidency, and in the White House Staff are key, for as Senator Elizabeth Warren reminds us: “Personnel is policy.”7 These are the people who will advise the president on policy, will promote the administration’s policy initiatives, and ultimately will implement policy. The challenges for the president-elect are that the choices are momentous, the process is complex, and the time frame for making appointments is limited. Certainly all incoming presidents feel as

Kennedy did during the 1960-1961 transition. “I must make the appointments now,” Kennedy remarked to economist and confidant John Kenneth Galbraith; “a year hence I will know who I really want to appoint.”8 And while the president-elect is mulling over lists of potential appointees, others are searching for clues to policy directions of the new administration. “The original cabinet is a symbolic show window for an incoming President,” Richard F. Fenno, Jr., writes, “and he must expect the critical scrutiny of all those interested in sizing up the administration.”9

7 Elizabeth Warren, “One Way to Rebuild Our Institutions,” New York Times, January 29, 2016. 8 John Kenneth Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), p. 7. 9 Richard F. Fenno, Jr., The President’s Cabinet (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), p. 82.

An element of the president-elect’s choices for the administration is providing reassurance to important constituencies, especially the business community and the foreign policy establishment, that the new administration will act in responsible ways. John Kennedy reappointed Eisenhower CIA director Allan Dulles to the same post in his administration, reached out to Republican businessman C. Douglas Dillon as treasury secretary, and turned to

Dean Rusk, a veteran of the State Department during Truman’s presidency and head of the

Rockefeller Foundation, for important economic and foreign policy positions to assure relevant constituencies that the young president would have stable, experienced advisors in critical posts.10 Other presidents have followed similar paths. Jimmy Carter named state department veteran Cyrus Vance as his secretary of state and experienced Washington insider Harold Brown as secretary of defense. Bill Clinton opened his presidency with Washington veterans in several key positions, including Warren Christopher, former deputy secretary of state and deputy attorney general, as secretary of state; Lloyd Bentsen, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, as secretary of the treasury; and Les Aspin, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, as secretary of defense. George W. Bush appointed Colin Powell, a man with thirty-five years of experience in the military who had served as the national security advisor under Ronald Reagan and as chair of the joint chiefs of staff under the first president Bush, to serve as secretary of state.11 Similarly, to lead the Treasury Department, Bush chose Paul O’Neill, the former CEO of

Alcoa Corporation whose governmental experience included a senior position in the office of management and budget during the Ford administration to provide a “steady voice” who would

10 Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Oral History (1964), John F. Kennedy Library, pp. 2-12); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), pp. 121- 140; David Halbertam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1969), pp. 8-10. 11 Jay Root, “Bush Picks Powell for Cabinet Job,” Fort Worth Star Telegram, December 17, 2000, p. 31A.

“calm people’s nerves, calm the markets, calm those who speculate in the dollar.”12 The presidency of Barack Obama continued in the same vein. His selection of Timothy Geithner, who had served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and had helped arrange the bailout of the huge conglomerate AIG during the financial crisis of 2008, clearly had the impact of assuring New York’s financial markets of having a stable hand in charge of the nation’s treasury.13 In a rare move for an interparty transition, Obama retained Secretary of

Defense Robert Gates as a signal that his administration’s policies concerning Iraq and

Afghanistan would not stray far from those of the final two years of the Bush administration.14

The selection of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state was unusual in the sense that she had no prior experience in that department, but as first lady and senator, Clinton had interacted with the foreign policy establishment extensively.

At the same time, presidents-elect must be attentive to the constituencies of particular departments. Tradition holds that the secretary of the interior will hail from a western state where public lands make up large percentages of state acreage and the secretary of agriculture will come from a state where farming is a key component of the economy. The secretary of commerce commonly is a businessman while the secretary of labor will have ties to unions or other working-class groups. The secretary of housing and urban development and of transportation will be chosen from a highly urbanized state. The secretary of veterans affairs will be a veteran of military service and preferably have experience as an advocate for veterans. A

12 Root, “Bush Picks Powell for Cabinet Job.” 13 Jeff Zeleny, “Obama Unveils Team to Tackle ‘Historic’ Crisis in Economy,” New York Times, November 24, 2008, A1; James W. Riddlesperger, Jr., and James D. King, “The 2009 Presidential Transition: A Preliminary Examination,” paper presented at the 2009 Meeting of the Southwestern Political Science Association, Denver, CO. 14 Peter Baker and Thom Shankernov, “Obama Plans to Retain Gates at Defense Department,” New York Times, November 25, 2008.

7 newly inaugurated president can expect both public outcries and congressional opposition if cabinet selections stray far from these norms.

The administrative organization and staffing are not the only major challenge during the transition, as presidents must also plan to work with Congress. Members of Congress also have just enjoyed electoral success and normally have won elections in their districts by larger margins than the president-elect. Laurin Henry warned that the president must pay “close attention—or neglect at his peril” nurturing relationships in Congress. James P. Pfiffner underscores Henry’s observation, noting that “courting of Congress should be done early and often.”15 In the age of polarized politics in Washington, developing working relationships with

Congress is now even more difficult, making the likelihood of success in working across party lines—as inevitably becomes necessary—lower but the need to have success in doing so more important. With the declining number of cross-pressured congressmen, those whose ideological leanings place them closer to the other political party’s core position than to the core position of their own party, a president must be mindful of how the administration’s policy positions mesh with the party on Capitol Hill.16

The principal responsibility of a president is presenting and implementing a policy agenda. A president’s policy legacy begins with the adoption of a new federal budget, a process that begins on day one of the administration. As a result, presidents are well-advised to put into place an accomplished budget staff—especially in the Office of Management and Budget—from the outset of the administration. While policy debates often dominate media coverage of

15 Laurin Henry, Presidential Transitions (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1960), p. 717; and James P. Pfiffner, The Strategic Presidency: Hitting the Ground Running 2d ed., rev. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), p. 188. 16 Richard Fleisher and Jon R. Bond, “The Shrinking Middle in the U.S. Congress,” British Journal of Political Science 34 (2004): 429-451.

8 presidential campaigns, the policy priorities of the new administration are best reflected in the budget that is put into effect in October of his first year in office. As far back as Kennedy’s administration, Richard Neustadt recommended that a budget director be appointed very early on so that the budget requests of the other senior appointees and their department could be reflected in budgetary action.17 The consequences of not preparing budget priorities are illustrated by comparing the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Reagan spent the lion’s share of his time in the early months of his administration focusing on the budget while Clinton’s administration lacked “discipline, order and focus.”18 As a result, Reagan was able to pass sweeping changes to the nation’s tax laws while Clinton’s administration often found itself addressing issues tangential to his budgetary proposals allowing his economic plan to be substantially watered down by Congress.19 President Obama immediately focused on a major economic stimulus package as he entered office and was able to push it through Congress, though almost exclusively with backing from Democrats. While there was debate about how effective the stimulus package was, it clearly reflected the early goals of the new president.20

Beyond the budget, presidents need to establish working relationships within the administration and across the many relevant constituencies influencing policy-making and policy implementation in Washington. Brauer notes that this early period is critical:

The first days and months in office present a rich opportunity to exercise that power. Although a long-term view would lead to skepticism about the likelihood of much changing when the Presidency changes hands, Presidents-elect, the press, the public, and even Congress are apt to take a more hopeful view. Man’s innate and Americans’ special fondness for the new, relief at the end of a partisan season and the passing of a fatigued administration, and celebration for the orderly

17 Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power (New York: Wiley and Sons). 18 Jack H. Watson, Jr., “The Clinton White House,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 23 (1993): 435. 19 Pfiffner, The Strategic Presidency, pp. 173-178; Bob Woodward, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994). 20 Peter Baker, “Education of a President,” New York Times, October 17, 2010.

transfer of democratic authority together create an atmosphere rife with possibility, which newly elected presidents should prepare for, nurture, and exploit.21

The passage of time has changed the nature of transitions to some degree. Clearly, political polarization has made the prospects of using an election mandate as leverage for enacting the presidents’ priorities more difficult.22 The presidents’ honeymoon period barely lasts until inauguration. But at a minimum, the transition marks a period of new beginnings, and new beginnings yield new opportunities.

New opportunities must be selected wisely. Presidents must identify and pursue their highest priorities lest they lose control over the discussion of policy. A prime example of this was Clinton’s “don’t ask don’t tell” approach to incorporating gays into the military. Clinton assumed that he could dispose of this campaign promise quickly and with little fanfare. Instead, a firestorm of reaction occupied the attention of the administration, Congress, and the national news media for several weeks, demonstrating that quick action on ill-conceived or ill-timed policy was a detriment to the administration’s higher priorities.23 Clinton’s successors learned the lessons of his difficult early months. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both highlighted their economic programs, Bush with tax cuts and Obama with a stimulus package that included both spending increases and tax cuts, during their early months and kept other issues out of the spotlight. What became the signature domestic policy programs of their administrations,

21 Brauer, Presidential Transitions, p. 267. 22 Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein, It’s Even Worse than It Looks, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2016). 23 John P. Burke, Presidential Transitions: From Politics to Practice (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2000), pp. 303-305; Anthony J. Eksterowicz and Glenn Hastedt, “Modern Presidential Transitions: Problems, Pitfalls, and Lessons for Success,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 28 (1998): 317.

10 education policy for Bush and health care reform for Obama, were pressed only after Congress had taken action on the administration’s proposals for the economy.

A key to avoiding many of the pitfalls that can confront a new administration is careful self-examination. Bauer notes that particular care should be given to weaknesses that the incoming president may have.24 Strengths of incoming presidents will naturally exert themselves. Political opponents, however, will quickly exploited weaknesses. These weaknesses can be overcome by appointing aides with strengths that can complement the president’s. Jimmy Carter had no experience in Washington before becoming president, yet he chose as his congressional liaison, budget director, and legal counsel Georgians who lacked

Washington experience. In contrast, Ronald Reagan, another Washington novice, balanced his appointments of long-time aides such as Michael Deaver and Edwin Meese with experienced

Washington hands such as James Baker, Martin Anderson, David Stockman, and Max

Friedersdorf.25 George W. Bush wanted to overcome his lack of Washington experience and did so by appointing an ultimate insider, Andrew Card, as his Chief of Staff. Card had served as a

White House aide and the vice president’s chief of staff during the Reagan administration, and as deputy Chief of Staff and transportation secretary during George H.W. Bush’s administration.

His Washington experience eased Bush into Washington life.26

The centrist nature of American politics means that extreme swings in policy do not occur from one administration to the next, even when partisan control of the executive branch changes. Nevertheless, with the change of party control of the White House comes the largest

24 Brauer, Presidential Transitions, p. 257. 25 Stephen Hess and James P. Pfiffner, Organizing the Presidency 3d ed. (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2002). 26 Elaine Sciolino, “Washington Insider and Family Loyalist Poised for Job of Bush Chief of Staff,” New York Times, November 28, 2000.

11 change in policy agenda. After all, the incoming president campaigned explicitly against the opposing party’s platform and differentiated himself in some explicit ways from the priorities of his predecessor. The law and order campaign of 1968 suggested that Nixon would differentiate himself from the “permissive” attitudes of his predecessors. The Watergate scandal prompted

Jimmy Carter’s promise never to lie to the American public--a direct slap at Richard Nixon and

Gerald Ford regarding illegal activities of the Nixon administration and Ford’s controversial pardon of Nixon. As a candidate Ronald Reagan promised a large, targeted tax cut plan, a plan born of the poor economic performance of the Carter administration and his philosophy favoring pro-business policies. The economy was the theme of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign as well and was built on the notion that George H.W. Bush had not been attentive to domestic issues. Barack

Obama campaigned with the slogan “change we can believe in,” specifically arguing that the nation required a new economic policy to recover from a deep recession in Bush’s last year in office. Foreign policy differences also appear, evidenced by Nixon’s 1968 pledge to end the

Vietnam War, Reagan’s 1980 commitment to increasing America’s military capabilities, and

Obama’s 2008 criticisms of the war in Iraq. These promises stem from failings—real or perceived—of the prior administration and define the new administration’s policy agenda.

For the most part, presidents involved in interparty transitions enter office in favorable environments. As seen in Table 1, the popular vote margins of incoming presidents in recent interparty transitions have varied greatly, from Eisenhower’s double-digit win in 1952 to

Kennedy’s slim victory in 1960 and Bush losing the popular vote in 2000. Electoral vote margins show a similar range, from the landslides of Eisenhower and Reagan to the narrow wins by Carter and Bush. More important resources for advancing the new administration’s policy agenda are public approval and party control on Capitol Hill. Except for Reagan, new presidents

Table 1 Political Environment of Interparty Transitions

President Popular vote* Party controlling Initial Electoral vote* House† Senate† approval rating§

Eisenhower (1953) 54.9%-44.4% President’s President’s 68% 442-89

Kennedy (1961) 49.7%-49.5% President’s President’s 72% 303-219

Nixon (1969) 43.4%-42.7% Opposition Opposition 59% 301-191

Carter (1977) 50.1%-48.0% President’s President’s 66% 297-240

Reagan (1981) 50.7%-41.0% Opposition President’s 51% 489-49

Clinton (1993) 43.0%-34.7% President’s President’s 58% 370-168

G.W. Bush (2001) 47.9%-48.4% President’s Split‡ 57% 271-266

Obama (2009) 52.9%-45.7% President’s President’s 67% 365-173

Trump (2017) 46.0%-48.1% President’s President’s 47% 306-232

Sources: * Harold W. Stanley and Richard G. Niemi, Vital Statistics on American Politics 2013-2014 (Washington: CQ Press, 2013), Table 1-7; and The New York Times (www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president).

† Harold W. Stanley and Richard G. Niemi, Vital Statistics on American Politics 2013-2014 (Washington: CQ Press, 2013), Table 1-10.

§ For 1953-1981: George C. Edwards III with Alec M. Gallup, Presidential Approval: A Sourcebook (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). For 1993-2009: Gallup Poll website (www.gallup.com/home.aspx). For 2017: Rasmussen Reports

website (www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ content/politics/trump_ administration/december_2016/trump_breaks_even_in_job_approval).

‡ The 2000 election resulted in an even number of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, giving Republicans control on Vice President Dick Cheney’s tie-breaking vote. Democrats took control in May of 2001 when Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party, became an independent, and caucused with Democrats.

in interparty transitions have seen their initial approval ratings well exceed their vote percentages, as the American public either found aspects of the new administration with which it agreed or simply gave the new president an opportunity to prove himself. More importantly, five of the eight interparty-transition presidents had their party in control of both chambers of

Congress. George W. Bush enjoyed Republican control of Congress for the first five months of his presidency while Republicans controlled the Senate during Reagan’s first years. Only

Richard Nixon faced opposition control on both sides of the Capitol. Political scientist Paul

Light has termed party support the “gold standard” of presidential resources for achieving a policy agenda and a resource that most new presidents appreciate and of which they take advantage.27

The Trump Transition

Transitions between administrations now are more structured than in the past. Before

2008, transition planning was done on an ad hoc basis, though some presidential candidates were more attentive to transition than others. Jimmy Carter was the first presidential candidate openly to plan for a transition into office prior to the election; candidates before that time feared that

27 Paul C. Light, The President’s Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Clinton 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p.27.

14 appearing to plan for office would be interpreted as taking for granted their election.28 Ronald

Reagan followed Carter’s lead, but the size and scope of Reagan’s pre-election transition planning led both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton to keep transition planning out of the spotlight.29 Nonetheless, transition planning is still fairly low on candidates’ list of priorities since the transition cannot happen unless the candidate is elected. This has led to the reality that

“you have the most important takeover of any organization in history, and it is done in a dangerous and terrible way,” Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, observed during the 2016 campaign.30 Legislation requiring the outgoing president prepare the successor through briefings has largely been a success as the 2008-2009 transition was an excellent model for future presidents.31 Under the Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of

2010, funding for transition activities was increased and for the first time the General Services

Administration provided office space to the major-party candidates to begin planning their governments months before the election.32

After securing a sufficient number of delegates to the Republican National Convention to guarantee his nomination, Trump named New Jersey governor and former rival for the

28 For example, John Kennedy asked former Truman aide Clark Clifford and Harvard professor Richard Neustadt to prepare memoranda on transition issues he would face if successful in the election, but kept their activities out of the public view. See: Brauer, Presidential Transitions, chapter 2. 29 On transitions of this period, see Burke, Presidential Transitions: From Politics to Practice, and Charles O. Jones, Passages to the Presidency: From Campaigning to Governing (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1998). On earlier transitions, see Henry, Presidential Transitions, and Brauer, Presidential Transitions: Eisenhower through Reagan. 30 Russell Berman, “The Most Important Takeover of Any Organization in History,” The Atlantic, April 22, 2016. 31 Martha Joynt Kumar, Before the Oath (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2015). 32 Berman, “The Most Important Takeover of Any Organization in History.”

Republican nomination Chris Christie to head his transition-planning team.33 Following the

November election, the president-elect expanded his transition team and named Mike Pence,

Indiana governor and vice president-elect, as director of the transition operation. The weeks following the election witnessed something of a bifurcated transition effort, as the Pence-led operation continued working in Washington while President-elect Trump remained in New York and met with various potential members of his administration at his offices at Trump Tower.

Political Environment

Conditions in Washington will provide a mixed environment for Trump. He enters office as the second president in sixteen years who failed to win the popular vote and with the third lowest electoral vote margin of the post-World War II era (Table 1). Most presidents-elect claim a mandate from the voters, if grounded on nothing more than simply winning the election.34 Any such claim from Donald Trump, however, will ring hollow. Also not providing a resounding endorsement is Trump’s job approval rating, which according to Rasmussen Reports splits evenly between those approving and those disapproving: 47% to 47%.35 Not only is Trump’s approval rating lower than any previous president entering office during in an interparty transition, his disapproval rating is substantially higher. First approval polls taken after a president enters office show between one-fifth and one-third of Americans as “undecided” about the new president. The public has no such uncertainty going into the Trump presidency.

33 Jose A. Del Real, “Trump Campaign Appoints Christie to Chair White House Transition Team,” Washington Post, May 9, 2016; Lisa Rein, “Trump, Clinton Planning Their Transitions Side-by-Side in Washington,” Washington Post, August 18, 2016. 34 The president-elect of the modern whose circumstance most closely resembled Trump’s was George W. Bush. To his credit, Bush made few claims of a mandate from the voters during the 2000-2001 transition but instead took a conciliatory approach. 35 “Trump Breaks Even in Job Approval,” Rasmussen Reports; www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/december_2016/trump_breaks_even_in_j ob_approval.

Additionally, Trump’s favorability rating, a metric used throughout the campaign, according to a mid-December Gallup Poll was at 42% with 55% rating him unfavorably.36 Viewed together, the election returns and opinion polls certainly will not convince Democrats in Congress to follow Trump’s leadership based on public support.

In Trump’s favor are the Republicans’ majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The 115th Congress will have six fewer Republicans in the House, but the GOP maintains a 47-seat advantage over Democrats. This will permit the Republican leadership to put forward legislation of its liking with little need to seek Democratic support. The Senate will prove more challenging to the new president. Republicans retained control of the upper chamber despite early optimism by Democrats and several pre-election forecasts of a Democratic victory.

But Republicans can expect Democrats to use the filibuster to block more extreme measures advocated by the president or congressional Republicans. Whether congressional Democrats will adopt a stance of opposing everything on the Trump administration’s agenda—as congressional Republicans did to President Obama in 2009—remains to be seen. What is evident as the transition moves forward is that President Trump cannot expect reflexive congressional sanctioning of his legislative proposals.

Appointments

Donald Trump has not filled all positions in his cabinet,37 in the Executive Office of the

President, and on the White House staff, as of this writing (December 18, 2016). However, the

36 Gallup Poll, December 7-11, 2016; www.pollingreport.com/trump_fav.htm 37 For our purposes, the term “cabinet” refers to the heads of the major departments of the United States government, currently totaling fifteen. It does not include individuals holding positions in the Executive Office of the President or on the White House staff whom the president grants “cabinet status.”

17 appointments made to date demonstrate breaks from the patterns of recent presidents (Table 2).

The most notable characteristic of Trump appointees is that fewer have experience in government generally and in the national government particularly. Of thirteen cabinet officers identified thus far, slightly less than half (46%) have served in either national or state government positions. This compares with only one-sixth of initial cabinet appointees in the six most recent interparty transitions. Whereas three-fifths of other presidents’ appointees to cabinet positions previously served in either the executive branch of the national government or in

Congress, fewer than half of Trump’s expected nominees have similar experience. Among initial cabinet officers, 48% in prior administrations but only 23% in the upcoming Trump administration held positions in the national executive branch. It is not surprising that Trump’s cabinet officers would arrive with less national government experience, as Trump’s campaign rhetoric emphasized his outsider status and included vows to change national government and its processes. Observers are left to wonder what the absence of experience among Trump appointees portends. New York Times blogger Neil Irwin comments that “Mr. Trump seems to be betting that nuts-and-bolts experience running government agencies and wrestling with the hard technical details of public policy just don’t matter.”38

The one form of experience where Trump cabinet nominees exceed prior administrations’ concerns career military service. Between the Nixon and Obama administrations, only three cabinet officers came from the career military ranks: Alexander Haig (State, Reagan), Colin

Powell (State, Bush II), and Eric Shinseki (Veterans Affairs, Obama), all former Army generals.

The Trump cabinet will match this number, with the anticipated nominations of former Marine

38 Neil Irwin, “Donald Trump Is Betting That Policy Expertise Doesn’t Matter,” The Upshot, December 1, 2016.

Table 2 Prior Experience of Senior Executive Branch Appointees: Interparty Transitions

Democrats Republican Trump presidents* presidents† administration§

Cabinet Departments

National government 62% 56% 46%

U.S. Congress 22% 15% 23%

National administration 45% 51% 23%

Department of appointment 18% 13% 15%

Governor 18% 15% 8%

State and local government 48% 41% 31%

Military (career) 2% 5% 23%

No governmental experience 12% 20% 46%

Business 28% 62% 54%

Law 52% 38% 15%

Academics 28% 12% 0%

Number of appointees 40 39 13

Executive Office of the President and White House staff

National government 53% 70% 40%

U.S. Congress 9% 10% 20%

National administration 49% 62% 20%

Agency of appointment 13% 32% 0%

Governor 0% 5% 10%

State and local government 29% 25% 30%

Military 7% 0% 10%

No governmental experience 27% 15% 40%

Business 16% 41% 60%

Law 27% 30% 50%

Academics 27% 38% 0%

Number of appointees 45 40 xx

* Democratic presidents include Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

† Republican presidents include Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.

§ Trump administration appointments as of December 17, 2016.

general James Mattis as secretary of defense, former Navy commander Ryan Zinke as secretary of the interior, and former Marine general John Kelly as secretary of homeland security.39 While there is no connection between Zinke’s appointment at the Department of Interior and his military career, there are direct lines between the military careers of Mattis and Kelly and their appointments to the Trump administration. Regarding non-governmental career experience,

Trump’s expected cabinet nominees are drawn from the business community in a proportion similar to that of other recent Republican administrations.

39 The appointment of Zinke has not attracted attention from the national media because he did not attain flag rank in the Navy. However, Zinke served in the Navy for more than two decades and entered public service (election to the state legislature) shortly after retiring from the military.

In contrast to recent administrations, Trump’s choices for positions in the Executive

Office of the President and on the White House staff are drawn much more heavily from the business world and much less from governmental service and academics. Trump’s choices for

EOP and White House staff positions demonstrate similar career patterns, notably less experience in government at any level, in the national government, or in national government administration than the appointees of recent presidents. And, contrary to recent practice, Trump has not selected for an academic for any position in the EOP. Posts such as the assistants to the president for national security affairs, economic affairs, and domestic policy and the chair of the

Council of Economic Advisors frequently are staffed by academics. National security advisor

Michael Flynn is a retired Army general and economic affairs advisor Gary Cohn is president and chief operating officer of the investment and securities firm Goldman Sachs.

As yet unclear among Trump’s cabinet appointments is his commitment to traditional constituencies of particular departments. The choices of Congressman Ryan Zinke of Montana and of Wilbur Ross fit the traditions of a westerner guiding the Department of the Interior and a businessman heading the Department of Commerce, respectively. At the same time, the appointment of business executive Andrew Puzder as secretary of labor is an undisguised poke in the eye of the Labor Department’s clientele and naming Ben Carson as secretary of housing and urban development, with little background in the department’s policy responsibilities, offers little confidence to the nation’s cities. Two important positions in clientele departments, secretary of agriculture and secretary of veterans affairs, are as yet unfilled. Trump’s selections for these departments will determine how the president-elect will be graded concerning his respect for departmental constituencies when making cabinet appointments.

Until 1933, the president’s cabinet was the domain of males of European ancestry. In the years that followed, the occasional appointments of a woman or an African American provided rare breaks in the pattern. Only with Jimmy Carter’s administration did a president-elect make more than a single appointment reflecting gender and racial/ethnic diversity.40 The three most recent presidencies have demonstrated significantly greater commitments to diversity, particularly in the cabinet (Figure 1). Assuming no changes in the president-elect’s announced cabinet selections, as of mid-December it appears that the Trump administration will not match the records for diversity of recent administrations. Only three of the thirteen announced cabinet selections provide diversity: Ben Carson (HUD); Elaine Chao (Transportation); and Betsy

DeVos (Education). Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota has been rumored to be named secretary of agriculture, a move that would increase representation of women in the Trump cabinet to the levels of the Clinton and Bush administrations. On the whole, however, Trump will not meet the standard of diversity in the cabinet set by his three immediate predecessors due to fewer minority appointments. Chao (Asian American) and Carson (African American) are the only minority cabinet officers identified to date. The new administration likely will be the first in nearly three decades without a Latino or Latina at the cabinet table. The omission is notable because Latinos are the fastest growing minority group in the United States and are an important component of the electorate in several key states. These factors, combined with Trump’s campaign rhetoric regarding immigration from Mexico, including derogatory characterizations of

Latinos and a promise to construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent further immigration, portend continued difficulty for Republicans with this influential voting bloc. The

40 James D. King and James W. Riddlesperger, Jr., “Diversity and Presidential Cabinet Appointments,” Social Science Quarterly 96 (March 2015): 93-103.

Trump transition’s selections for major positions in the Executive Office of the President and on the White House staff are less complete, but of the appointments announced only Nikki Haley,

Trump’s choice for ambassador to the United Nations, is not a white male. Again, this marks a significant departure from the patterns of recent administrations.

Throughout his presidency, Trump’s dealings with Congress will focus on public policy.

But the first interactions between the White House and Capitol Hill concern Senate confirmation of nominations to top-level executive positions. Throughout most of the 20th century, the

Senate’s response to presidential executive nominations was one of deference. Capturing this perspective was Senator Robert Dole (R-KS), who once argued that “the President of the United

States, whether he is a Democrat or Republican, has a right to choose people he wants to serve in 23 his Cabinet.”41 Since the Nixon administration, however, the Senate has acted more aggressively in challenging presidents’ cabinet nominations. It remains rare for the Senate to reject outright a cabinet or similar high-ranking nomination, but presidents can no longer take for granted Senate confirmation of their nominees and several nominations from a newly inaugurated president will encounter a significant number of “no” votes on the Senate floor.42

Early signals are opposition in the Senate will focus on five Trump nominations. Both

Republican and Democratic senators have expressed reservations about Secretary of State- designate Rex Tillerson because of his business ties with Russia; the bipartisan coalition might be of sufficient strength to force Trump to make a different selection.43 Senator Jeff Sessions, tapped for attorney general, was nominated for a federal judgeship by Ronald Reagan but failed to navigate successfully the confirmation gauntlet because of allegations related to attitudes on racial matters; the greater familiarity of Sessions from his time in the chamber likely will facilitate his confirmation as attorney general but opposition likely will arise. Secretary of the

Treasury-designate Steven Mnuchin will encounter difficult questioning as Democrats challenge his background in public policy and attempt to discredit the administration’s economic message by questioning how a Wall Street executive can relate to middle-class and working-class concerns.44 The pro-business stances of Secretary of Labor-designate Andrew Puzder on the

41 The Congressional Record, February 23, 1989, p. S1619. 42 James D. King and James W. Riddlesperger, Jr., “Senate Confirmation of Cabinet Appointments: Congress- centered, Presidency-centered, and Nominee-centered Explanations,” Social Science Journal 50 (June 2013): 177- 188. 43 Byron Tau, “Confirmation Battle Looms for Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State: Some Republican Senators Question the Exxon Mobil CEO’s Closeness to Russian Leaders,” Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2016. 44 Julie Pace and Julie Bykowicz, “Democrats Eye Confirmation Fight over Trump’s Treasury Pick,” Washington Post, December 16, 2016; Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Steven Mnuchin, Expected Treasury Pick, Is an Outsider to Public Policy,” New York Times, November 30, 2016.

24 federal minimum wage and federal government regulation of the workplace will likely draw opposition from Senate Democrats. Betsy DeVos’ nomination as secretary of education is likely to encounter resistance in the Senate as she has no prior governmental experience related to education policy, has been a vocal advocate of charter schools and using public funds for parochial schools, and opposes “common core” educational standards.45 There was early speculation that Secretary of Defense-designate James Mattis, a retired four-star general of the

Marine Corps, would be opposed because his appointment would strain, if not violate, the concept of civilian control of the military; this concern seems to have abated and is now probable that Mattis’ appointment will pass the Senate.46 A general concern is that the Trump transition team has not vetted potential nominees carefully and thus there might be surprises in store.47 It remains to be seen if Senate Democrats will garner a sufficient number of Republican votes to block any of Trump’s nominees, but few of the new cabinet members are likely to sail smoothly through the confirmation process.

Policy

Evaluating the policy preferences of President-elect Trump can become akin to shooting

45Tawnell D. Hobbs, “Education Nominee Betsy DeVos: A ‘Disrupter’ Willing to Fight: Trump’s Choice Is a Prominent Charter-School Advocate and Supporter of School Vouchers,” Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2016; and Valerie Strauss, “Trump’s Choice for Education Secretary Vows to ‘End’ Common Core,” Washington Post, December 10, 2016. There is an additional concern that a political action committee founded by DeVos did not pay a fine imposed by Ohio for illegal contributions during the 2008 campaign. If the fine is paid before the nomination is made official in January, the issue likely will be raised during confirmation hearings but unlikely to affect the vote on DeVos’ nomination. See: Matthew Daly, “Dems: Education nominee DeVos must pay $5.3M election fine,” Washington Post, December 14, 2016. 46 Federal law requires an officer to have been separated from military service for seven years before appointment as secretary of defense. A modification of the law will enable Mattis to accept the appointment despite retiring from the Marine Corps less than four years prior. 47 Damian Paletta, “Donald Trump’s Nominees Are Likely to Face Heavy Senate Vetting: Cabinet Picks Have Been Named Without Extensive Reviews of Their Background and Financial Records, People Familiar with the Process Say,” Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2016.

25 skeet—the target is always moving. Clearly, the constant changing of positions comes from two distinct factors: Trump is continually learning the nuances of public policy as he prepares to govern instead of running a campaign for office and he sees the job of president as that of “deal- maker” rather than as a bureaucratic leader. As a deal-maker, he actively takes “first positions” in negotiations. These are not the outcomes he anticipates or perhaps even wants. But rather, they are starting points in negotiations. Because of this, it is impossible to know what the president-elect’s real policy goals might be. Trump sees himself as “negotiator-in-chief” as he repeatedly said during the campaign.

Most dramatically, this strategy is revealed in foreign policy. Note Trump’s words about how to deal with the Islamic State (ISIS) in his first major speech on foreign policy during the campaign:

And then there’s ISIS. I have a simple message for them. Their days are numbered. I won’t tell them where and I won’t tell them how. We must as a nation be more unpredictable. We are totally predictable. We tell everything. We’re sending troops. We tell them. We’re sending something else. We have a news conference. We have to be unpredictable. And we have to be unpredictable starting now.48

While this statement suggests an approach in just one arena of policy, it reflects a more general characteristic that Trump believes he possesses: that of a master deal-maker. To be successful in deal making, the partner in negotiation is greatly disadvantaged if (a) there is no clear agenda for the opponent and (b) there are potentially negative outcomes if the deal goes awry. Because of his understanding that deal-making is the primary duty of the president, Trump is comfortable sending out conflicting clues as to his real goals, obfuscating his true purposes, and taking extreme positions rhetorically to keep his opponents off balance in negotiations and fearful of the

48 “Transcript: Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Speech,” New York Times, April 27, 2016.

26 possible negative consequences that Trump might pursue if no deal is reached.

Trump’s understanding of the office of the presidency, then, places him in an unusual position, combining elements of a Neustadtian understanding of the president as using persuasion to bargain with political competitors and a going public strategy, often through his short statements delivered on his Twitter account. In a “bargaining model” of politics such as advocated by Richard Neustadt, presidents should keep their public positons vague and hold out information until it can be used most advantageously: “He makes his personal impact by the things he says and does. Accordingly, his choices of what he should say and do, and how and when, are his means to conserve and tap the sources of his power.”49 Trump embraces this element of the bargaining model. But for Neustadt, the primary rules of being successful in bargaining are the “public prestige” and “professional reputation” of the president. Prestige has to with how the public perceives the president, and with Trump’s low public approval and favorability ratings and roughshod style, he risks being unable to bridge the polarization within the American electorate. Professional reputation has to do with how key officials view the president, such as members of Congress, governors, military leaders, leading politicians, and leaders of foreign nations. Here again, Trump has done little to reach across the aisle to gain support from Democrats or to reach out to the international community to develop a cooperative foreign policy.

In contrast, a “going public strategy” is one where the president seeks to invoke his influence on citizens who in turn will influence their elected representatives, most notably in

Congress, to support the president on his policy initiatives.50 Going public is first dependent on

49 Neustadt, Presidential Power, p. 150. 50 Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership, 4th edition (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2007).

27 the president being able to deliver negative consequences on those who do not support him. But in the polarized environment of American politics, where few members of Congress live in competitive districts and are almost universally more popular in their districts than Donald

Trump, who won the Electoral College vote but lost the popular vote, the president might not be able to mount a credible threat to his political adversaries. Second, going public violates a vital principle of bargaining: taking a public position on an issue precludes negotiating away from that position. The most notable example of the liability of going public is perhaps the promise that

George H.W. Bush made at the 1988 Republican Convention not to increase taxes, when he famously promised “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Later, in dealing with a Democratic

Congress, he negotiated a deal that included new taxes, thus jeopardizing his credibility with the

American public and opening the door for Bill Clinton’s election in 1992. While Bush might have been successful in negotiating a deal using Neustadt’s bargaining model, because he had gone public on the issue of taxes, the deal lessened his prestige.

Trump’s leadership style wishes to use the Neustadt bargaining model, but does so through “going public.” In his case, he sends out “first positions” on issues by making sweeping promises of changes: building a wall between the United States and Mexico and making Mexico pay for it, banning all Muslims from entering the United States for a period of time, repealing the

Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in its entirety, and backing away from the one China policy stand are but a few examples. Later, Trump might take more nuanced approaches to these issues.51 Such morphing of positions risks losing credibility by stepping back from positions that his most loyal supporters saw as key to his candidacy. Trump clearly thinks that his unique

51 Jose’ A. DelReal, “Trump and advisers hedge on major pledges, including Obamacare and the wall,” Washington Post, November 11, 2016.

28 talents as a leader will allow him to take multiple public positions as a basic tactic of negotiation without suffering the consequences of losing his prestige and professional reputation.

A major question is how well this will play in the long run. In a world that values transparency and consistency, and in a nation that values democratic values, can “governing by chaos” and misinformation play well as negotiations necessarily involve backing away from positions he has made publicly? For Trump, misdirection might be a basic element of his public positions, but might the public tire of a president who makes contradictory statements over time on many of the most critical issues confronting the nation?

Can his approach, that of a real estate developer who has always been about making profits (as is the case with nearly all business transactions) translate well into pursuing the public interest, where many other issues—fairness, healthy environment, equality, as so forth—are also important issues? Clearly, for example, negotiation of trade agreements is a complex process.

While Trump widely panned the deals that the United States has entered into during the last two decades, most explicitly the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the North American Free Trade

Agreement (NAFTA), his criticism was directed primarily at the impact those pacts have had and might have on the American economy. Leaving aside the question of whether those agreements are good for American business, political elements inevitably enter into trade agreements. For example, there are environmental concerns, issues regarding labor laws, and concern for international military security problems. All of these also are included in trade deals. One major issue, for example, that might be an immediate consequence of abandoning the TPP is “one of

China rushing forward to lead the world’s next trade agreement, with U.S. allies such as

Australia and Japan in tow.”52 Trade deals represent but one major difference between business leadership and political leadership—many elements beyond business and profit come into play.

At a minimum, the Trump administration must adapt to the public sector environment.

Will his approach play well in working with Congress that, while controlled by

Republicans who want to work with the new president, also will jealously protect the prerogatives of the legislative branch? The lessons of recent history suggest that there will be a bumpy road for Trump in his relationships with Congress. Though there are signs that Trump has begun to develop better relationships with leaders in Congress, especially Speaker of the

House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, their reluctance to support him during the campaign cannot be put aside completely (though Trump’s naming of McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao to the Transportation post might help a bit). Jimmy Carter was another outsider president who came to Washington with high hopes of changing the environment in the nation’s capital. Although he did not propose to “drain the swamp” as Trump did, Carter presented himself as an honest leader in a nation still reeling from the dishonesty of Watergate.

“I’ll never lie to you” he said repeatedly in criticism of the corruption and the “normal politics” of Washington, D.C. And he soon found that among his harshest critics were Congressional leaders of his own party pushing back in part against what they saw as his naive piety. While he had some legislative success in his first year, not surprisingly given Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, congressional scholar Charles O. Jones concluded that “No modern president had experienced as difficult a first year with Congress as did Jimmy Carter.”53 Clearly,

52 William Mauldin and David Luhnow, Donald Trump Poised to Pressure Mexico on Trade, Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2016; and Ann Swanson, “Trump just announced he would abandon the TPP on day one. This is what happens next,” Washington Post, November 22, 2016. 53 Charles O. Jones, The Trusteeship Presidency: Jimmy Carter and the United States Congress (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), p. 153.

Carter is a different personality than Trump, but their similar goals of coming in as outsiders to change the atmosphere in Washington pose difficulties in dealing with the ultimate Washington insiders, the leaders of Congress. A classic illustration of the complexities that Trump faces in

Congress is the issue of the filibuster in the Senate. It is, arguably, the single biggest barricade in

Washington to Trump accomplishing his policy agenda and the Republican majority could abandon it in favor of simple majority governance. Yet, among the strongest supporters of the technique are senior Republicans in the Senate, including Orrin Hatch and Lindsey Graham.

Says Hatch: “I’m one of the biggest advocates for the filibuster. It’s the only way to protect the minority, and we’ve been in the minority a lot more than we’ve been in the majority. It’s just a great, great protection for the minority.” And Graham chimes in that any attempt to end the filibuster is “a horrible, terrible idea.”54 In other words, having been in Congress for many years,

Republican leaders take a long view of politics while Trump, like other presidents before him, want to do as Lyndon Johnson recommended: “strike while the iron is hot.” The key point is that

Trump will find the institutional prerogatives of Congress frustrating and little sympathy from

Senate Republicans for altering rules simply to benefit his administration.

And can it work in an environment controlled not by business ethics, but rather by fairly well defined constitutional constraints? Trump has never had to answer even to a board of trustees in his time in business—his business has been a one-man show. But the constitutional constraints of Washington limit presidential action. Harry Truman commented as Dwight

Eisenhower prepared to assume office that the new president would find politics in Washington difficult: “He’ll sit here, and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike—

54 Ed Kilgore, “Two Senior Republican Senators Say the Filibuster Must Stay,” New York, November 18, 2016.

31 it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.”55 In the constitutional context,

Trump might find that his instincts often run directly into limits beyond his control. For example, soon after the election, Trump expressed his opposition to the ability of citizens to burn the American flag as an act of political protest, clearly not appreciating that there was a bright- line Supreme Court decision to the contrary. And he said, speaking to a police association in

2015, that “One of the first things I’d do in terms of executive order, if I win, will be to sign a strong, strong statement that would go out to the country . . . anybody killing a police officer, the death penalty is going to happen.” Such a statement might play well to an audience, but ignores the federal nature of criminal law and the procedures of due process.56 In similarly strident language, Trump has threatened to use presidential power to jeopardize the independence of the judiciary and the press in violations of central tenets such as separation of powers and the First

Amendment. One scholar has noted the following: “The very notion that there are government agencies that operate independently of presidential whim seems alien to Trump.”57

One clear theme is this paper is that “personnel is policy.” For a president-elect who is elusive in his policy preferences, the personnel he chooses to appoint might be the best hints at his policy priorities in certain arenas of policy as they are the “symbolic show window” of which

Richard Fenno wrote.58 In Trump’s notion of the presidency as “deal-maker,” his nominees

55 Neustadt, Presidential Power, p. 9. 56 Adam Liptak, “Trump v. the Constitution,” New York Times, November 29, 2016. 57 Peter Binart, “Trump’s Indifference to the Constitution, The Atlantic, October 19, 2016. Another issue related to Trump’s leadership has to do with the “emoluments clause” of Article I of the Constitution. That clause bans conflicts of interests between public officials and foreign nations. Trump’s business interests provide the biggest challenge to the emoluments clause in U.S. history but are not directly related to his policy agenda. See Norman Eisen, Richard Painter, and Lawrence H. Tribe, The Emoluments Clause: It’s Text, Meaning, and Application to Donald Trump, Washington, D.C.: Brookings, December 16, 2016; https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-emoluments-clause-its-text-meaning-and-application-to-donald-j-trump/ 58 Fenno, The President’s Cabinet, p. 82.

32 might be seen as representatives of first positions rather than finished policy proposals. Clearly,

Trump’s naming of corporate CEOs for major positions (Tillerson at State, Mnuchin at Treasury,

Ross at Commerce, Puzder at Labor, and DeVos at Education) indicate that he finds comfort in policy-making using a corporate style as opposed to a traditional coalition-building political style, and his comfort with generals (Mattis at Defense, Kelly at Homeland Security, and Flynn at the National Security Council) indicate a comfort with a military style command structure.

Those appointments might foreshadow a decision-making style but they offer little in the way of understanding policy preferences.

However, Trump has made a number of appointments that are far more direct in suggesting his policy preferences in several policy areas. These appointees too are part of the

Trump strategy to disrupt things in Washington, and they are intended, according to Andrew

Card, who held White House and cabinet positions in the last two Republican administrations,

“to make the governing people uncomfortable. . . He clearly picked people to lead some of these departments who will be challenging to the insiders.”59 They might represent his approach to governing well, but they also might represent “first positions” in his notion of negotiating public policy:

• Tom Price, Trump’s Health and Human Services Department nominee, is a medical

doctor who is one of Congress’s most outspoken critics of the Affordable Care Act

(Obamacare). He also wishes to pursue responding to the conservative religious

community’s objections to the requirement that employers provide contraception

coverage to their employees. In 2010, Price questioned the need for health insurers to

59 Michael D. Shear, “Outsiders Selected by Trump Aim to Unnerve Washington,” New York Times, December 17, 2016.

offer birth control at no cost, saying he didn’t believe there were women who

couldn’t afford coverage. He could perhaps end enforcement of that provision

through immediate executive action without Congressional approval and without

repeal of Obamacare as a whole.60 He has unfailingly supported the interests of the

medical profession, and especially its financial interests, since coming to Congress.

One of his critics has suggested that “Instead of having a secretary for the people, you

have a secretary for the medical profession.”61

• Andrew Puzder, nominated to head the Labor Department, is an outspoken critic of a

federal minimum wage and federal regulations extending worker overtime pay

benefits. In a department that has traditionally been seen as one to advocate for labor

interests within the federal bureaucracy, Puzder, a CEO of a fast food chain that often

pays low wages, offers a hint that the corporate management perspective, rather than

a labor perspective, will dominate that department. “Perhaps the biggest question

surrounding Mr. Puzder is how he would be perceived as a wealthy chief executive

charged with looking out for worker’s interests.” While supporters argue that Puzder

“is more nuanced than people want to give him credit for,” under traditional views of

business/management relationships, having a CEO in charge of the interests of labor

is a chilling prospect.62

60 Lesley Clark, “Trump Choice for HHS Secretary Could Repeal Free Birth Control without Act of Congress,” Fort Worth Star Telegram, November 30, 2016. 61 Christina Jewett and Marisa Taylor, “Price poised to protect doctors’ interests at HHS, USA Today, December 8, 2016. 62 Noam Schieber, “Trump’s Labor Pick, Andrew Puzder, Is a Critic of Minimum Wage Increases, New York Times, December 8, 2016; Melanie Trottman, Julie Jargo, and Michael C. Bender, “Trump Picks Fast-Food Executive Andy Puzder as Nominee for Labor Secretary,” Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2016.

• Three senior-level Trump selections—Interior Secretary-designate Ryan Zinke,

Energy Secretary-designate Rick Perry, and Environment Protection Agency

administrator Scott Pruitt—have records that suggest policies friendly to traditional

energy sectors such as coal and petroleum production. Zinke’s voting record during

his time in Congress has been described as favoring increased resource extraction on

public lands and decreased regulation on industry.63 As a presidential candidate Perry

once proposed abolishing the Department of Energy and as governor of Texas he

advocated decreased regulation.64 As attorney general of Oklahoma, Pruitt repeatedly

has sued the Obama administration on climate-related issues.65 Perry and Pruitt are

on record as questioning the science on man-made climate change. Together these

appointments herald significant changes in energy and environmental policies in

Trump’s administration.

• Representative Mick Mulvaney, designated to be director of the Office of

Management and Budget, is considered a fiscal hawk who will press for reductions in

federal government spending. Associated with the conservative House Freedom

Caucus, Mulvaney was among the representatives opposing deals between

Republican leaders and President Obama to raise the government’s debt ceiling,

advocates a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, and challenged former-

63 Jonathan Lemire, “Trump Picks His Interior Chief, a Supporter of More Drilling,” Washington Post, December 15, 2016. 64 The authors have noted that Perry was something of an “omnivore” in terms of energy policy in Texas when he served as governor. Under his leadership, Texas became a leading state in the development of wind energy. Perry’s primary focus was on economic development, and that emphasis persuaded him to endorse renewable energy. Alex Daugherty, “Rick Perry turned Texas into a wind powerhouse by getting out of the way,” Fort Worth Star Telegram, December 16, 2016.

65 Chris Mooney, Brady Dennis and Steven Mufson, “Trump Names Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma Attorney General Suing EPA on Climate Change, to Head the EPA,” Washington Post, December 8, 2016.

Speaker John Boehner.66 Nonpartisan analysts are skeptical that Trump’s budget

proposals will reduce the budget as he claims; Mulvaney will be on the vanguard of

the administration’s efforts to enact those proposals.

• Betsy DeVos, nominated to head the Department of Education, is an ultra-

conservative advocate of school choice. She neither attended public schools nor has

experience teaching or administering schools. Instead, she has been a tireless

advocate for developing charter schools, often run by for-profit companies, and

offering government vouchers to families who send their children to private schools.

One critic has said that what drives her educational perspective “has been her

conviction that any nontraditional public school is better than a traditional one,

simply because it is not operated by government.” In other words, she has little

connection to traditional notions of public education, clearly preferring creating

incentives that prefer private initiatives.67

• Retired General Michael T. Flynn, who Trump has named national security advisor

(among the few major offices in the cabinet or Executive Office of the President not

requiring Senate confirmation), is known as an extreme hardliner on foreign policy

issues. He has convinced the president-elect that the United States war on with

Islamist militants requires working “with any willing allies in the fight, including

66 Abby Phillip, “Trump Names Rep. Mick Mulvaney, a Fiscal Hawk, to Head Budget Office,” Washington Post, December 17, 2016; Nick Timiraos and Peter Nicholas, “Donald Trump to Nominate Rep. Mick Mulvaney as Budget Director,” Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2016. 67 Mark Landler and Maggie Haberman, “Trump Diversifies Cabinet; Picks Nikki Haley and Betsy DeVos,” New York Times, November 23, 2016; Rebecca Mead, “Betsy DeVos and the Plan to Break Public Schools,” The New Yorker, December 14, 2016.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.”68 He is a leader in nurturing Trump’s desire

to resist advice from the foreign policy establishment and has gained prominence “by

fueling conspiracy theories and Islamophobic rhetoric that critics warn could create

serious distractions—or alienate allies and embolden enemies—if it continues.”69

• David M. Friedman, nominated as Ambassador to Israel, brings a hard line stance to

Middle East policy. While that position is not of cabinet rank, it is an important

signal regarding American policy in that important region. Friedman is an advocate

for settlements on the West Bank and for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

Both positions fuel conflict in the area and abandon long-standing U.S. policy,

notions that do not bother Friedman who has asserted that Jews who support a two-

state solution are “worse than kapos,” a reference to Jews who were assigned by

Nazis to supervise forced labor in concentration camps.70

These appointees signal clear advocacies in specific policy arenas. They suggest a president with a strong conservative agenda in those areas with a disregard for long-standing policies, in some cases bipartisan policies, and a desire to “shake up” politics in Washington.

More than other recent presidencies, these appointments signal a president who wants his transition into office to be a disruption of politics as usual. Donald Trump’s approach to policy promises might be characterized as serpentine—intended to bring surprise twists to the political

68 Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman, “Michael Flynn, Anti-Islamist Ex-General, Offered Security Post, Trump Aide Says,” New York Times, November 17, 2016. 69Steve Peoples, “Critics worry after Trump security chief fuels conspiracies, Fort Worth Star Telegram, December 7, 2016. 70 Karen DeYoung, “Trump Picks a Supporter of West Bank Settlements for Ambassador to Israel,” Washington Post, December 15, 2016.

37 process. But substantively, Trump has allied himself with conservative elements in the

Republican Party.

Conclusion

Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House was remarkable for its flaunting of many of the customs of modern presidential elections. Similarly, Trump’s transition into office breaks from practices of recent presidents-elect. The challenges of an interparty transition for Donald

Trump are in many ways be similar to those of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton,

Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter. But as an outsider president like none before him, Trump has chosen not to build an administration of veterans of the Bush administration, perhaps in part because many Bush veterans resent Trump’s rhetorical treatment of his Republican predecessor.

The usual pool of candidates for high-level positions in many instances has been passed over in favor of men and women who have no experience in government or who are hostile to the missions of the departments and agencies they have been chosen to lead. The most definitive signals on a Trump administration’s policy preferences are found among his appointees who favor conservative policies. And yet Trump’s habit of stating strong, even outlandish, policy positions and then retreating to more convention conservative positions leave observers pondering what the president-elect’s true policy agenda might be.

Having a Republican Congress predisposed to accepting Trump’s agenda is an asset that cannot be overstated. But Trump’s rocky relationship with congressional leaders poses the possibility of tensions between the White House and Capitol Hill not unlike those of the Carter presidency, when an outsider president failed to work effectively with a Congress controlled by his party.

The lessons of past presidents aid a new president preparing to govern. Yet Trump has been consistently dismissive of any notion that useful lessons can be learned from previous occupants of the White House. His open desire to disrupt politics in America will without question lead to some innovation in the conduct of the presidential office. Clearly, as is the case with all incoming presidents, Donald Trump faces significant challenges as he enters office but also has the gift of a new beginning. As observers have long argued, a fresh start by a new president opens opportunities for success, and Mr. Trump has demonstrated that underestimating his abilities is a mistake. However, success is made possible both by innovation and by avoiding the mistakes of predecessors. Whether the Trump experiment is one of sophisticated method or one tht may reveal a madness is an open question. The type of student Trump might be remains a mystery to be revealed in the coming months.

Appendix Major Executive Branch Appointees of the Trump Administration (December 17, 2016)

Cabinet Department Nominee Experience State Rex Tillerson Businessman (ExxonMobil) Treasury Steven Mnuchin Businessman (Goldman Sachs), campaign advisor Defense James Mattis Military (retired U.S. Marine Corps general) Justice Jeff Sessions U.S. Senator (AL), Alabama attorney general Interior Ryan Zinke U.S. Representative (MT), state legislator, career U.S. Navy officer Agriculture to be determined Commerce Wilbur Ross Businessman (investor) Labor Andrew Puzde Businessman (CKE Restaurants) Health and Human Services Tom Price U.S. Representative (GA), state legislator Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson Physician, presidential candidate Transportation Elaine Chao Secretary of Labor, Deputy Secretary of Transportation, businesswoman Energy Rick Perry Governor (TX), presidential candidate, businessman Education Betsy DeVos Businesswoman, Republican Party activist Veterans Affairs to be determined Homeland Security John Kelly Military (retired U.S. Marine Corps general)

Executive Office of the President and White House staff Position Appointee Experience Chief of staff Reince Priebus Republican National Committee chairman Senior advisor Stephen Bannon Campaign advisor Assistant, National Security Affairs Michael Flynn Military (retired U.S. Army lieutenant general) US Trade Representative Dan DiMicco Businessman United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley Governor (SC) Director, National Intelligence to be determined Director, CIA Mike Pompeo U.S. Representative (KS) Assistant, Economic Affairs Gary Cohn Businessman (Goldman Sachs) Director, OMB Mick Mulvaney U.S. Representative (SC), state legislator Chair, Council of Economic Advisors to be determined Assistant, Domestic Policy to be determined Legal Counsel Don McGahn EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt State attorney general (OK), state legislator