The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - A Kiwi in the White House

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Christopher Liddell has had a front row seat to the circus that is U.S. politics. He was White House deputy chief of staff during Donald Trump's presidency, and was involved in three presidential transition cycles, including Donald Trump to Joe Biden. He joins us to talk about his new book about presidential transitions, called "Year Zero: The Five-Year Presidency."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The late comedian Robin Williams once said, Being a Canadian is like living in an apartment over a meth lab. Yes, there seems to be never a dull moment in politics with our American friends. The current president forced to stand down by his own party from contesting a second term. A black South Asian woman taking his place and having a decent shot to make history. And not one, but two assassination attempts on the life of the former president. Christopher Liddell has had a front row seat

to the circus that is US politics. He was White House Deputy Chief of Staff during Donald Trump's presidency and was involved in three presidential transition cycles, including Trump to Joe Biden. He's got a new book out, it's called Year Zero, the Five Year Presidency. And he joins us now from New York City. Christopher, it's great to see you again.

How are you doing? Great, thanks for having me on. Not at all. Let's just do a bit of background before we get to the premise of your book, which is how does a guy from New Zealand end up a high ranking official in the Trump White House? Well, one of the great things about the American system

is that can happen. I became a citizen of the US from New Zealand about a dozen years ago. Was super interested in politics over here, so volunteered for the Romney campaign, which was obviously unsuccessful, but then became involved in the Trump transition in. And one of the wonderful things about the American system

is that you can volunteer and serve for a short period of time. You don't have to be a career politician. So I came in with a business background and was able to serve in this case for four years. So it's a great story and one of the great delights and achievements in my life that I was able to do it. I suspect I do need to ask you whether working in the Trump White House was as insane and chaotic as has been portrayed.

Not at all. No, no, obviously the media likes to play up the aspects of it. What we found inside the White House, and certainly in my role as deputy chief of staff, I used to just say we were like the submarine. We just cruised along underneath the water and avoided all the storms that were above the water and got things done. And inside the White House, there was much more of a sense of calm and control, and the machine operated extremely well.

Well, we are less than two months away from having a new president in the United States. And then whoever wins will have, I guess, about six weeks to put together the most powerful and complicated government in the world. Generally speaking, how well do these transitions happen, particularly, let's say, if the party in the White House changes? Yeah, it's a very unique system. And that's what my book is about. So in the US system, as you mentioned, there's around 11 weeks between the election inauguration

and in that 11 weeks, the president has to do an enormous amount. So they have to appoint, they appoint 4,000 people, they have to appoint 1,000 to 2,000 of those to have an operational government at 1201 on January 20th. They have to get all their legislation and regulatory side of things ready to go on day one and they have to deal with any crises. So it's just an enormous amount of work to be done in a very short period of time. And again, one of the unique things about the US system, and I lived through this, is at 1159 on January 20th, one team's in charge at 1201, a whole new team is in charge and literally

the whole White House changes from one minute to the next. So preparing for that and doing all the work necessary to have a functioning government and probably the most important single government unit in the world is just a vast amount of work and that's what the book is about. There is though, and it's on both sides of the border, I think it's fair to say, a bit of a superstition that one never wants to count one's chickens before they hatch and

therefore any evidence that you are sort of planning to take over before you've actually won an election just is considered not wise to do. What do you think about that superstition? Yeah, there's this concept called measuring the drapes, which as the name suggests, is you don't want to be seen to be too presumptive and that if anything, it will curse your chances. I actually, I argue against the opposite in the book.

I think in fact, being presumptive is important that it shows that you're ready to govern. There's no other organization in the world or other circumstance in the world you wouldn't prepare. So if you were doing an acquisition or a merger in the financial world, in the private sector, clearly you would prepare before the day that you close. So to my mind, it's not a negative, it's actually a positive. It shows that you have the strength and knowledge and foresight to actually govern properly. So I argue to not only do more, but to also be more visible about it.

Well, in fact, I suspect the answer to this question is in the title of the book, but when would you start planning your transition to take over if in fact you were running for president? Yeah, so I call it the book year zero which gives everyone a clue and the subtitle is the five-year presidency And I'm not suggesting a constitutional change from our four years I'm just saying that if if the president wants to really have an effective four years and governance They need to think of their governing period as a five-year journey. And so to start almost a year ahead, and that sounds like a long way, but the enormous amount that needs to happen in those 11 weeks is so large that you need certainly some months

and upwards of a year of planning. Now you can short circuit some of that by looking to history, looking at books like myself, so a good $30 presidential candidates can spend to get prepared. So you can certainly cut some months off there, but you need certainly six and closer to nine to 12 months to really prepare properly. Do you think that campaigns could secure the services of the people who would have the knowledge and expertise to do this for potentially a full year before the November election? I mean, that's asking a lot of people.

It's only a small team initially. So if I give you the experience of past presidential campaigns, certainly the Romney case and the Biden case incoming that I wasn't associated with, but I observed. It starts with just one or two people, literally myself as executive director and a chairperson. By election time, you have something closer to 500 people ready to go and then over the election to inauguration period, closer to a thousand. So it builds exponentially over that period. You only need a small steering team over the initial period to really run it. And

there's no shortage of people who want to do it. If you think of the hundreds of not thousands of people who work on the campaign, the transition is relatively modest number of people working and some of these people are paid as well. So there's a lot of people who are really enthusiastic to do it, no shortage. Well, let me ask about another potential concern here, which is once the election has been won, and you're in the midst of this transition, there is an enormous war that goes on among all the closest people to the winning candidate to get to see who, quote unquote, speaks for the president, knows the president's mind, carries the day in those meetings with the president.

Doesn't that war run the risk of lasting for a year rather than 11 weeks if you start in year zero? Two thoughts there. The first thought is that the campaign and the transition planning run quite separately. So the campaign really is in charge of winning the election. the transition planning is in charge of just planning to govern. So that helps with some of the what could otherwise be dissension. The second is, in fact, you're building partially the team that is going to be the core of when you govern. So you're ironing out some of those issues about

who's really close to the president, who's important in terms of influencing opinions. So you certainly don't, you don't appoint anyone before the election, but it's a good trial run to actually see who can work well with the president, who can work together in a team environment before you have the whole spotlight of governance. So it's actually a really good period to actually iron out some of those issues as opposed to promote them. Now, before you wrote the book, you did write an article for National Affairs, and I want

to pluck a quote out of that and then put that to you. Here's you in the spring of 2023. The Trump White House suffered from high turnover in its early months, much of which was driven by incompatible personalities that sometimes made life feel more like an episode of The Sopranos than the West Wing. While task conflict, or the contesting of ideas, is vital to a team's success, personality conflict undermines it." OK, I guess the question is, and this will sound a bit chippy, but you know, it's it is it is based in fact

If the president is determined to hire a bunch of extremist. I Was gonna say whack jobs But let's just call them people who are more interested in showing off their access to the president rather than managing a policy agenda Can you be surprised that it looks more like the Sopranos than the West Wing? Yeah, I think one of the things that the Trump administration, certainly in a second term, very much learned from the first was the short runway they had to put together

their transition team in 2016. And some of the issues that I refer to in the book that you quoted really came from a lack of really good vetting and people processes leading up to inauguration. And that led to some mistakes and a lot of people exited in those first six to 12 months. I don't think they will make that mistake again. There is a lot of preparation going on.

The president obviously has the benefit of his first term to look back on and so he has a much better sense of who he wants in his team. And there is an inexhaustible supply of really good people. I know some of the people who are volunteering or putting their names forward in a preliminary fashion for a second Trump term, and there's actually some really good people there. So I think the president actually, in case has the benefit of the knowledge that he has from the first term and a lot better system around him to actually vet the people

for the types, exactly the types of issues that you raised. Having been responsible for the Trump to Biden transition, what in your life was the most difficult part of making that transition work smoothly? Oh, really the beginning and the end. So the beginning because we had a situation in the first two or three weeks, which is called ascertainment. And that's a technical term that I won't go into, but basically meant that we weren't able to give the incoming Biden administration the briefings and some of the resources that

they needed because of this procedural step that didn't happen for two or three weeks. So that put them back a little bit. And then at the end, obviously we had a situation from January 6th to January 20th, where there was a lot of disruption. And so landing the plane on January 20th was challenged because of that. It actually went remarkably smoothly in the middle, given all those issues, and we've managed to form a good relationship

with the Biden administration. But clearly it was one of the more challenging transitions that we've ever had. Well, I was going to say, it surely complicates things when the guy who lost the election refuses to acknowledge that he lost the election. Fair to say? Yeah, this too, again, there's a sort of a parallel process that happens between election

inauguration. One is the election results and the certification and any challenges of that. And the other is the transitional, preparatory transition to the incoming administration. And the way we dealt with that was to really have these parallel tracks and different teams. So one team was focused on the election results. I had no dealings with that. And I was focused entirely on assuming the Biden government was confirmed as a new administration, how do we set them up for January 20th? So we ran those tracks in parallel. And to a large extent, the success of delivering things on January 20th was we kept them separate

from each other. Given how Vice President Harris got the nomination of her party, which is to say incredibly late in the campaign cycle season, is it a given that a lot of what you have been urging candidates for president to do will not have been happening and therefore the transition if she wins will be really problematic. What's your view on that? She is a relatively unique challenge and it's interesting when you look back on the history of presidencies you would assume there were quite a few times when a sitting vice president is elected to become president. In fact there's only been one in the last 180 years that was President H.W. Bush taking

over from President Reagan. The one before that was that famous one that I'm sure all your viewers know, which is Martin Van Buren in 1836. Of course. So it doesn't happen very often. And because it doesn't happen very often, there aren't that many presidents. So your point is a good one. The benefit that she has is twofold.

One, obviously, she's the sitting vice president, so she knows the ropes. And if she wants to, she can continue to take some of the Biden team with her. She doesn't have to have 100% new team. So it's not like she has 100% turnover unless she desires to. And the second thing is she has a very good team around her in this case, so Jeff Zients, who's the current chief of staff, was the, ran the transition for Biden incoming, and then they brought back a chip called Johannes Abraham,

who was his two IC. So they've actually got some pretty experienced hands on from previous transitions to help them run it. And let me ask you the other side of the coin, which is given that Donald Trump has been through presidential transitions before and given as well that he is not necessarily known for his ability to take good advice from advisors, is there any reason to expect that this, if he wins, that the transition to his second term would be any better than the first? I think this will be substantially different, yes.

All the work that I've seen behind the scenes, and I'm not directly involved, but I observe it and know some of the people who are, is actually very, very well done and very systematic. And then he appointed two very good people to be his co-chairs, Linda McMahon and Howard Lutnick, who have what is incredibly important in these transitions in terms of chairpeople is the trust of the candidate. So both of them are long-term confidants of his, and both have actually a very successful business career. So they're both seasoned campaigners, and Linda was a part of the cabinet in the Trump first administration

They both have solid business careers and they're both very close to the president So I'm actually very optimistic that little hurts have one of the more organized and successful transitions Ever but given the premise of your argument, which is the transitions should really start to be planned a year ahead of time Do you think either of the current major party tickets are adequately planning for the transition at this admittedly late stage in the game? On the Trump side, there has been preparatory work going, in fact, for close to a couple of years.

So they are actually well ahead of the game. Not all of that is public, but certainly there's been a lot of work behind the scenes going on for at least a year. So they're in very good shape. On the Harris side, obviously because of the unyxed circumstances, they might be a little bit behind the game, but again, I think that's probably mitigated by their incumbency and the people that have on it. There are very few people we've had on this program that actually know Donald Trump well,

and you would certainly be one of them. So I'm going to encourage you to give whoever is the government of Canada, if Trump wins the next election, some advice. How would you urge them to deal with him if he becomes president again? I think they've actually done a very good job so far. They've already been reaching out to the extent possible and to not only the ex-president, but the people around him. But engage early and often,

and in a very positive fashion. President Trump, at the end of the day, is interested in transactions and how we can work together and do things. So don't go in with a negative attitude, go in with an opportunistic attitude. This is a chance for a new president who's going to do different things. How do we take advantage of USMCA, which needs to be renegotiated? How do we take advantage of being each other's closest neighbors? And what are the ways that we can look for wins for Canada,

wins for America and put those together. And the extent that I've seen a little bit of activity already that's pretty much the attitude that seems to be coming through. Did I just hear you say you think the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement needs to be renegotiated again? It is. There's a five-year term where it needs to be reviewed. Renegotiated is probably, I shouldn't have said that, reviewed. So there is a, when it was originally drafted, there is a timeframe, I believe it's June 2026, where it needs to be reviewed. So I imagine next year, 2025, people will say, how's it working? Can it be improved? Are there areas where with five years of knowledge, it can be made better?

So that's part of what was envisioned when it was originally drafted. I'm glad you clarified reviewed rather than renegotiated because half the cabinet in Canada just had a heart attack at the thought of having to go through all that again. Right. Is it a given, Christopher, that you will vote for Donald Trump in November?

Well, my voting intentions obviously are my own, so you can probably guess them from my past. Okay, and I guess the follow-up is if someone in the Trump administration called you and said, we need you to work in the next administration if we win the election, you'll take the phone call, would you take the job? I'm very keen and happy to help them with the transition work which is clearly the area that I'm really interested in and I've been reading a book and done a lot of study around it so I'd certainly be available if they wanted me to help with that 75-day sprint to set up the government. Thereafter it's I'm not sure. I'll take it one step at a time.

Okay, and final question, and that is, I don't have to tell you that the former president has said a lot of things that are really quite disgraceful and his conduct has been quite unbecoming a lot during his time in public life. You're dealing with, I guess, with an audience here watching that is predominantly Canadian and if you look at the polls in Canada, it would be something like 75-25 or 80-20

favoring the Democratic ticket versus the Republican ticket. Could you say something to our viewers and listeners, which would give them, I guess, pause to reconsider what they probably think of Donald Trump, which isn't good? Well, I can point to the signing of the USMCA in its first term, which was, I think, a very beneficial trade agreement for Canada. So if you're interested in Canada and self-interested in Canada, Donald Trump has already shown an example that he's willing to do something that's was and is still is incredibly beneficial for Canada.

So there's one simple example, which is look at, look at the facts and look at the record. Does his behavior trouble you ever? Oh, look, I had a great relationship with the president and I worked with him very well. So. Interesting. Good to know, because needless to say, we don't hear much about that part of the job. I want to thank you. Yeah, I found him an incredibly good decision maker, which is one of the areas that I really

focused on inside the White House. So, again, I think you have to look at his track record and what he does and in that case I think was very strong. And I am happy to remind those who are working on the respective Republican and presidential campaigns that the name of your book is Year Zero, the five-year presidency, and it has brought Christopher Liddell, the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, to our program. Christopher, thanks so much for the time. Thank you. Great to be on.