On January 20, 1993, David Marchick walked into an empty White House on the first day of the Bill Clinton administration. Marchick, now the dean of the Kogod School of Business, had worked on the Clinton campaign and would go on to serve in his administration for seven years.  

“The desks were empty, there were no computers, there were no files,” Marchick recalled during the November 19 panel discussion, What Happens Next? The Presidential Transition of Power, hosted by the Sine Institute of Policy and Politics as part of American University’s the Civic Life initiative. 

Marchick said no one from the outgoing George H.W. Bush administration had left behind a how-to manual. “Literally the leadership of our country leaves, and a new leadership comes in,” he said. The transfer of power was “inspiring and scary,” he said.  

The online talk was moderated by journalist Terence Samuel, board chair of the National Press Foundation, a 2022 Sine fellow and former editor in chief of USA Today. Richard Bagger, who served as executive director of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential transition and is a partner and executive director at Christie 55 Solutions, a New Jersey-based consulting firm headed by former Garden State governor Chris Christie, rounded out the discussion.

Marchick has spent plenty of time thinking about, researching, and writing about presidential transitions. He’s one of three coauthors of The Peaceful Transfer of Power: An Oral History of America’s Presidential Transitions, published in 2022. Marchick also served for 16 months as director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. 

Marchick wasn’t shy about critiquing the presidential transition process. If a Kogod student wrote a paper suggesting that the best way to manage a presidential transition is to have 4,000 political appointees leave their jobs on January 20 and a new president takes over to appoint an equal number of employees to run the government, “you’d probably get a failing grade, because it’s a dumb idea. It’s very hard to manage,” he said. 

During a presidential transition, many people focus on the work of the incoming administration, Bagger said, but there’s a “parallel and intersecting set of workstreams” for the outgoing administration.

Officials in the exiting administration prepare briefings to greet members of the incoming president’s team to help ensure a smooth transition, Bagger said. He described it as a “fulsome and complex workstream that takes place within the [current] administration, that then joins up at various points with the work of the president-elect’s transition team.”

Trump’s ongoing presidential transition—during which he’s announced a dizzying number of cabinet nominees, some highly controversial, in quick succession—is unconventional, Marchick said. Typically, an incoming president announces a series of cabinet appointments that reflect his priorities, Marchick said. For instance, Clinton, who was elected during a recession, announced his economic team first. 

“Traditionally, there’s an event, and the nominee gets to speak and there’s pageantry,” Marchick said. “Instead, Trump is just doing this by tweet, rapid fire, or maybe Truth Social, and there doesn’t seem to be rhyme or reason. He just makes a decision and announces it. I would say this is a nontraditional transition, and my gut is it will be a nontraditional presidency.”

Marchick and Bagger agreed that a smooth transition can help a president be effective in his first year, and vice-versa. 

“Being ready on the first day is important,” Bagger said. A new president typically signs several high-profile executive orders on his first day. Being well-prepared can prevent “misfires” and a loss of momentum.

Samuel asked Marchick whether he took any comfort in the fact Trump intends to “move fast and break things” and is surrounding himself with people who will help him do that.

“I don’t take comfort in that, no,” Marchick said. “I’m a Democrat, but I’ve worked very effectively with people from both sides. I think there’s a deliberate attempt by the president-elect to disrupt things in Washington, and he’s appointing people that are unconventional and disruptive and that are going to challenge institutions.”