Harry Litman [00:00:00] Hi everyone, Harry here with just a quick note on our current offerings at patreon.com/talkingfeds. Four new ones, count them four, just this week, beginning with Chris Sampson on the scorecard lineup of who was at the January 6th riot, Rachel Barkow may be the country's foremost expert on pardons on Trump's overall record, Drew Weissmann on the latest round of pardons and how they might be gotten around, and then finally Katie Benner, New York Times correspondent for DOJ, on her big scoop about the near-coup that a lower level official in the Department of Justice talking personally with Donald Trump almost executed. So you can go there and check them out, see what's there, and then decide whether you would like to subscribe, but there are good things that we post there week in, week out. OK, here's our episode.
President Joe Biden [00:00:59] This is democracy's day, a day of history and hope of renewal and resolve. We've learned again that democracy is precious, democracy is fragile, and at this hour of my friends, democracy has prevailed.
Harry Litman [00:01:27] Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Litman. Suddenly, it's finished. The most corrupt and malevolent president in our history, who carried on a ruthless campaign in the last 90 days to try to steal the election from the rightful winner, is gone. A surprisingly strong emotional release accompanied President Joe Biden's inauguration, strange as it was in a locked down and fortified city, empty of cheering crowds and parade participants. Much beyond the excitement of a new government, it felt something like the relief at the end of a foreign occupation.
We had the sudden sensation of Trump's chokehold on the country being pried off, remembering for the first time in four years what it is like to take a full breath. The Biden administration took the reins of government at noon on Tuesday, a few hours after Trump slinked off to Florida, the first president since fellow disgrace chief executive Andrew Johnson to refuse to attend his successor's inauguration. He left a hunted man, facing an impeachment trial in the Senate and possible criminal prosecutions in two states and the federal system. Biden delivered a solid inauguration speech that managed not to soft pedal the formidable crises facing the country, while communicating an overall sense of optimism and decency, and an aspiration of unity.
It now falls to the new government to begin the tricky work of executing a strikingly ambitious agenda, with a Senate divided on a nice edge and the country still in the throes of partisan rancor. Its first priority is, as Biden put it, 'a full-scale wartime effort to bring the country out of the clutches of a virus that, under the breathtaking mismanagement of the Trump administration, has claimed 400,000 American lives and ravaged the economic fortunes of working Americans.' Biden also has vowed to take on the enormous challenges of climate change and racial justice. Every administration wants to seize the goodwill and momentum of the first 100 days, and nearly every administration, looking at it in retrospect, finds its path littered with unanticipated challenges and setbacks and its own mistakes. What does it feel like within the administration in its first days in office? What signals is the new administration already sending? What decisions that it will make in the next month can make or break its record? To consider these questions, we have brought together three phenomenal guests, each of whom is a greatly distinguished former government official and, notably for current purposes, each of whom played an integral part in the heady first days of a previous administration.
They are: David Frum, a senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of 10 books, most recently "Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy." He served in government as a speechwriter and special assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2002. We've been really lucky to have him already on the podcast many times, David, thank you very much for joining us again.
David Frum [00:05:07] Thank you.
Harry Litman [00:05:08] Dee Dee Myers, senior adviser and director of the Office of Business and Economic Development for the state of California. Dee Dee was White House press secretary to President Clinton, the first woman and second youngest person to hold that position. She later cohosted Equal Time on CNBC, and she headed corporate communications at Warner Brothers from 2014 to 2020. She is the author of the 2008 New York Times best selling book, "Why Women Should Rule the World." She has graced us with a sidebar before, but this is her first appearance as a guest on Talking Feds, welcome Dee Dee.
Dee Dee Myers [00:05:46] Thank you, Harry.
Harry Litman [00:05:48] And Valerie Jarrett, a senior distinguished fellow at the University of Chicago Law School and a senior adviser to the Obama Foundation. She served as senior adviser to President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, during which time she oversaw the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, and chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls. She, too, is The New York Times best-selling author, I think all three of our guests are, of her 2019 memoir, "Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward." This is her first time on Talking Feds, Valerie, thank you so much for being here.
Valerie Jarrett [00:06:33] My pleasure, Harry. Good to be with you all.
Harry Litman [00:06:36] All right. Let's begin with the consequences of the Trump administration's delayed and at best, highly grudging cooperation with the Biden transition over the last 90 days. You've been there, I think actually, David, you've been there in circumstances where, because of the Bush v. Gore litigation, there was a delay. But in practical terms, how much of a hole does it put the current administration in, and are there tangible ways in which it just makes it harder to get off the ground.
David Frum [00:07:09] In 2001, the main impact of the truncated transition that President George W. Bush had was to slow the hiring of people who had to be Senate confirmed. I joined the administration about the 30th of January. I, of course, was not a Senate-confirmed person, I was a staffer. And we had a tremendous sense of the administration being empty, of the White House being empty. And that had some very serious, real world consequences, in particular the start of the administration. From my point of view, we were working on speeches, and we were supposed to circulate them. And later in the administration, those speeches would be seen by many, many eyes. But at the beginning, it was like there was no one guarding the inmates that we would write them and they would be seen by some staffers from the campaign, but relatively few people from the government. Until the middle of the summer, if I remember correctly, there were only two Senate confirmed people in the entire Department of Defense.
And that unbalanced the administration in all kinds of ways, you got off to a wobbly start. And I think it had some very real world consequences for the 9/11 attacks. And especially it's hard for the administration to make a transition from campaign mode to governing mode. And even when you are a pretty experienced figure as George W. Bush was, or a very experienced one like Joe Biden, that you trust the people from the campaign most. You trust the people from the government a little less, but you need to make the transition and realize the people in the campaign can only take a president so far. Eventually, he has to rely, or she has to rely, on the professionals. And we were slow to do that, and that had some real world consequences.
Valerie Jarrett [00:08:38] I was smiling because fortunately I had the exact opposite experience. I was one of the co-chairs of President Obama's transition, and from the day after the election, President Bush challenged his entire team, the entire cabinet, he and First Lady Laura Bush and their children to do everything humanly possible to make the transition smooth for President Obama and Vice President Biden. And from the top to the bottom from every single agency, we had full cooperation. My predecessor had me to the White House a few times, met with my transition team repeatedly, and wanted us to hit the ground running and it enabled us to move forward. We had all of our cabinet vetted and ready to go, so we were able to get them also confirmed quickly. But to your question, we had the full cooperation of the Bush administration, so there were no surprises. And if there were, that was on us because it wasn't through a lack of cooperation from them.
And I worry that right now we're seeing it in real time these last few days, even though at a late point President Trump said, 'OK, begrudgingly, GSA can go forward and sign the memorandum with the transition,' you know that he didn't communicate to his department heads the same way President Bush did to his, you know he didn't tell his White House staff to cooperate. We heard from the Biden transition that even the Defense Department was not cooperating, and then we just saw from the folks who are now heading up the response to the COVID-19 pandemic that there is chaos, and they weren't able to put a plan in place because they didn't actually know how little had been going on, and I believe that's going to cost lives. So it has grave consequences when there isn't a smooth and orderly transition.
Harry Litman [00:10:19] All right. Yeah, I mean, they come in and on COVID, there's sort of nothing there. And Defense Department, I think, was notably uncooperative. And to David's point, they followed the tradition of at least confirming one person, but they're right now everything is in a kind of paralysis as McConnell and Schumer try to work out sort of standing arrangement for the distribution of power in a 50-50 Senate. So any any thoughts here? I mean, David specifically mentioned the lack of confirmed agency heads. How does that affect things in very practical terms? Is there an even greater problem, as I think Valerie was hinting at, just at the absence of information until the day they came in the door.
Dee Dee Myers [00:11:09] The absence of leadership in the various departments and agencies slows down the implementation of an agenda. And we all know that the first months are ripest time, and something we might get to later in this conversation Harry, if you want to go big, you need to go early. Certainly the Obama administration did that with health care and the Clinton administration did that in some way, so definitely slows down the rollout of the agenda. I think the Clinton transition had a slightly different perspective, which was that it was the only Democratic administration, but for four years of the previous almost three decades, and there wasn't a deep bench of people who knew how to do transitions, or had served in senior levels of government, or had been working their way through the bureaucracy in the same way.
What we're seeing in the Bush administration is very seasoned people. Tony Blinken, the new secretary of state, was a speechwriter in the NSC when we all started the Clinton administration, he's been deeply involved in foreign policy ever since. He's a great example of the kind of seasoned professional that is going to help facilitate the transition, and can hit the ground running as soon as he's confirmed. So I do think that this administration, although beset by the problems that Valerie and David both described, will be able to move more quickly. They're going through a very complex environment, it will take a while for everyone to be approved, particularly given the Senate. He has a lot of work to do, and how it will work is unclear at this point, but it will slow down moving policy, moving legislation, one of the reasons the president is doing everything by executive order right now.
Harry Litman [00:12:31] It's interesting, all three of you actually took up the reins from an administration of the other party, but it seems like that was less the factor than just the tone set at the top for whether to cooperate or not. I want to follow up on this point, and we've already mentioned it a couple times, which is the, again, sort of tangible impact from the early days of this 50-50 tie in the Senate. We will talk more, I'm eager to talk more about this notion that if you want to go big, you need to go early, but they start in a very delicate position. And, of course, the 50 Dems really run the spectrum to notably Joe Manchin, someone who wouldn't be so likely to go along with more progressive proposals. How are they going to balance placating the home team with trying to lure a few R over? Is it a matter of sort of trading off or just being ultra-diplomatic? What tangibly is the upshot of starting out of the gate with this 50-50 arrangement in the Senate?
Valerie Jarrett [00:13:41] Well, 50-50 is better than what the alternative would have been if we'd lost Georgia. So I'll take 50-50 with the vice president breaking the tie any day, but it makes it more complicated. Lloyd Austin got confirmed today, I think Janet Yellen will be confirmed, I think that we will see progress while they're haggling over this. But one of President Biden's strengths is he knows that body well. He has long relationships with them, when President Obama was in office, there were many times when then-Vice President Biden went up on the Hill to try to make progress because of those relationships. And also just look at the campaign after the primary was over, he was able to rally from the most progressive Bernie Sanders to Amy Klobuchar along the spectrum within the Democratic Party to not only endorse him, but to work hard for him. So he's really good at building coalitions.
Dee Dee Myers [00:14:31] Yeah. And I would, it's interesting because he really did something people thought he couldn't do coming out of the primaries, right? Which was to unite the Democratic Party, but he did it in some ways by moving to the left on issues like climate. And so there's been a debate sort of in the background for the last six months about whether it was possible to build coalitions in this environment, right? And the campaign was cited as an example, but that was a coalition that moved left and brought people in the center of the Democratic Party. It's going to be a different challenge altogether, and I'd be interested in David's perspective to try to both present an agenda that has some reality of unity, while keeping the Democratic Party together and being able to pick off a couple of Republicans. So it's the challenge that all Democratic presidents face, right? We have a big tent party with a lot of different perspectives, but now the rubber is going to meet the road. Can Joe Biden build the coalitions that he's been famous for? It'll stopping being a debate, it'll will be reality soon, but that's the challenge.
David Frum [00:15:25] Here's what I would worry about. The historic way the Democrats have tended to hold their coalition together is that the center of the party gets to make the big decisions about taxing and spending. And then there are concessions to the left of the party on identity issues and cultural issues. The problem he's got, is he's now facing a Republican Party that really only cares about identity issues and cultural issues. And so the things that in Biden's mind are, he's giving the big checks to the middle, he's giving the small checks to the left, but it's the small checks that are going to get the Republicans really, really excited. So, you know, on his first day, one of the things that President Biden did was to issue an executive order about gender identity in women's sports. I'm sure that Joe Biden would consider this not even a top 50 issue facing the United States. But guess what? Fox News and talk radio consider it like the number two issue facing the United States. And so he's going to be in an environment where just the grammar of the Republican Party is going to make it quite difficult for him to add the two or three more votes he's going to need after building the 50 votes he's supposedly got.
Harry Litman [00:16:28] You know, that's a great point, and I'm reminded of the kind of unanticipated lambasting that Clinton took for the 'don't ask, don't tell,' which I think a lot of people might have thought in retrospect, he'd have been better off trying to do a little down the line. But it does seem to me that to date, he has done an excellent job and somewhat surprising, if you remember some of the knocks on him in the middle of the campaign of being really a unifying force within the party. But it seems to me the early signs from the Republicans are not so good. We have a really orchestrated assault for rejoining the Paris climate agreement, which was something he'd announced he was going to do, but at least some Republicans came out and criticized him in this sort of old terms of un-American and wussy or whatever they want to say. And McConnell is perhaps, as expected, really playing his leverage for not going anywhere until there's a power sharing agreement that doesn't involve the ability to get rid of the filibuster, which is a desired outcome of the progressive wing. So it does feel to me as if he's doing pretty well at keeping his 50, including Manchin, together, but less well in having the Republicans even talk a good game even so early on. Does that seem fair?
Valerie Jarrett [00:18:02] I think it's very interesting. I think the Republicans for about two weeks, we're having a civil war among themselves, a place that they were not used to being. Trump ran a tight ship, and certainly McConnell has always written a very tight ship. And after the siege on the Capitol, we saw fractures within the party. I think they are dying to get back to making President Biden the target of their anger so that they stop squabbling with one another, because they realize how perilous that is. But look, there should be no surprise about the Paris climate accord. It was something that was important to the Obama Biden administration. And he said all along he was going to do it. He said all along he was going to rejoin the World Health Organization. He's made it clear his position on racial justice. So he has been true to his word in terms of what he's done the first two days. But one final point I'd make on this is that we all talk about the first hundred days, but what I learned on the hundred and first day is that the second hundred days are just as hard, just as challenging, all kinds of new unexpected things come your way.
The Gulf turns into spewing oil or you name it. And the part of the challenge, and this is where I think, again, President Biden has a leg up, is having an administration that is tight enough, seasoned enough, substantively organized enough to move forward with your affirmative agenda, move depending upon what your obstacles are, but also handle the unexpected incoming. And I think this team, because they're not just players on the field, many of them have worked together, as Dee Dee said, for years. They know each other, they know the issues, and I think it gives them a real leg up to responding to the unexpected, which doesn't just come on the first hundred. It comes for the entire time.
Dee Dee Myers [00:19:42] That is certainly hugely helpful. I do think Harry, to your point, the same way that Biden will provide a unifying target for the Republicans now, Trump provided that for the Democrats, right? And it was, you're able to bury a multitude of conflict and substantive disagreements under the guise of beating Trump. And certainly that's what happened, and it will be challenging going forward, trying to sort that out. We also, y'know Mitch McConnell was a ruthless legislative battler as majority leader, and he's showing that he's going to be exactly the same...
Harry Litman [00:20:15] If I can interrupt, he was more than that. He was someone who set out from day one to make Obama's presidency unsuccessful. That was his stated goal, so is that going to be his stated goal for Biden?
Dee Dee Myers [00:20:26] Without a doubt. I mean, whether he states that or not, that will be his goal. His goal is to make Biden a one term president, right? To take back the House, the Senate and the White House as quickly as possible at the midterms for the Congress, and win four years for the White House. And I don't think he'll stop at anything to try to accomplish that. Either that or he'll, he'll leave, but I don't think he's shown any any signs of doing that, so.
Valerie Jarrett [00:20:46] That's interesting because my perspective on him is really all he cares about is his own power. I think he wouldn't mind a President Biden if he were in the majority. I think he got a bunch of judges confirmed, that's something that was really important to him, he got a lot of regulations rolled back, that was important. But I think ultimately Mitch McConnell just wants power, and he's really unhappy right now because he's going to have to share. And so I think he wants to win the Senate, and if he, if he can get the Senate and lose the House and the White House, he'd take the Senate.
Dee Dee Myers [00:21:15] Yeah, I actually think that's right, Valerie, but I think he likes the fight. So killing the Democratic majority in the House and turning the White House back over would be satisfying. But you're right, his primary objective is the preservation and enhancement of his own power.
Harry Litman [00:21:28] Just to follow up briefly on Dee Dee's point, which Valerie seconded about the composition of the new administration. So it's really striking that you have a kind of old guard in charge, sort of Obama-style Democrats, and that by and large, they're taken from a sort of left of center but pragmatic wing of the party, rather than the most progressive wing. But it seems that they've been charged, or that they are perhaps leaning a little more left than they did with Obama, at least out of the box. So do you perceive that as well? We have the old guard, but sort of put in the service of a slightly more progressive agenda than President Obama at least was able to carry out, given the mess that he inherited?
Dee Dee Myers [00:22:23] I think that's definitely true. I think the center of gravity in the Democratic Party, the Democratic base, has moved left for a lot of reasons. One is sort of meta-issues that were being debated prior to 2020, late stage capitalism and the effect on workers and globalization, all those kinds of things. And then there's the events of the last year, right? The pandemic, the recession and the Black Lives Matter movements have all stripped that whatever veneer was left on inequality and growing inequality, both economic and racial, climate change, all of the things have been laid so profoundly bare in the last year. And I think you have shifts across the landscape, including in corporate America, right? Moving to toward a more ideal stakeholder capitalism as opposed to just shareholder capitalism. So I just think that there's just been tremendous movement and it's still sorting itself out, but one of the realities is that the democratic, the center of gravity in the party has shifted left. And climate change is a huge part of that, too.
Valerie Jarrett [00:23:20] Well, I think also the circumstances, as you said Dee Dee, they have required different approaches to solve problems which are laid bare now, where there wasn't. I mean, look, there was a time when Colin Kaepernick lost his job for taking a knee, a peaceful demonstration. And now you see all 50 states have people of all backgrounds, all races, all ages saying black lives matter, something that was unacceptable to even utter without coming in jeopardy eight years ago. So I think the country has shifted in that way, and I think Biden is responding accordingly. It's the old guard, but back to something really earlier that you said Dee Dee, in terms of the number of years that there have been without a Democratic administration when you all came in and the bench strength, when I was just watching Jen Psaki and Brian Deese, they were young pikes at the beginning of President Obama's campaign in 2007, and now they're holding their own in the briefing room. And so part of what I think you see, in addition to the people who are more senior, the seasoned people, say Tony Blinken now, who was national security adviser for Vice President Biden and then came over to the president's side, is that you have this next younger generation that is moving up too. And that's just tremendously satisfying to see people who were, you know, third, fourth chair now holding their own at the podium, and I think that's good. And earned it the hard way.
David Frum [00:24:40] At the risk of barging into somebody else's living room to rearrange the furniture and explain.
Valerie Jarrett [00:24:44] Come on in.
David Frum [00:24:46] When I think about the Democrats and their relation to the left, I think the risk of mixing up things that are quite different and some of which give them good advice and some of which give them bad. I mean, I think there are three drivers of what's going on in the Democratic Party and to our right, and one is dangerous. The first one is, as Valerie said, the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement on the Democratic Party. That this is an intersection of the rising power of black America, plus the impact of the technology of the smartphone, which is just it forced people to whom the police were always polite to say, 'this is what it literally looks like for other people. What do you think of this?' One of the things that the Trump administration did in all kinds of ways was take all kinds of petty cruelties or brand cruelties of American life that are sometimes invisible to people, certain people, and put them on a Jumbotron for the whole nation to watch and say, 'what do you think of this, do you like it?'
And a lot of people are gonna say, 'no, now that I have to see it. I don't like it.' So that's something the Democrats are doing for reasons of conscience. It's also smart, because as James Clyburn and others demonstrated, there are some divisions behind those impulses. And those are not just, these are not just moral calls, there actually is real voting power. You get African-Americans revved up, excited, optimistic, convinced of their economic power, and they come to the polls. They actually deliver for you in dramatic ways, and that's why Georgia now has two Democratic senators. Here's the thing that is a mistake the Democrats are at risk of making, which is over-interpreting the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign as a belief that there is this giant, progressive, powerful structure within their own party. And they need to distinguish, it seems to be, between the left when it means the calls by black Americans for equal treatment with this urban progressive left that gravitated to Bernie Sanders. Because you know what, they don't have divisions. Every time you put this to the test, it doesn't deliver results and you know what delivered results? The reason there's a Democratic majority in the House, it's not because of Bernie Sanders, it's because they won George H.W. Bush's former district. They won Newt Gingrich's former district. They won Eric Cantor's former district.
And Nancy Pelosi understands that Abigail Spanberger is a much more important figure in the Democratic Party than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But it's hard because cable TV blinds you to that. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez loses her House seat for any reason, they'll just be another person. If Spanberger loses her seat, that's it. The Democratic majority in the House is gone. Do not over-interpret this urban progressive force. And the last thing, of course, is the impact of climate, which I think we need to think of as an issue outside of ideology, as we've known it till now. It is a grand new existential and moral challenge to Americans, to humanity. And it's not an ideological question. It's just a fact. And it's a dangerous fact, and then we have to have, and where politics comes in, is we now need to argue about how to deal with this fact. Do we use price mechanisms, do we use regulation, but we just need to understand it not as a political issue, but as a threat. And as COVID has taught us, these threats that the scientists warn you about as hypothetical dangers when they arrive, they arrive very fast, and they can hurt very much.
Valerie Jarrett [00:27:43] I think one of the challenges that the Biden administration is going to have, that really we saw over the last four years and it's only going to grow even larger, is what David has eluded to, this difference between fact and fiction. And the fact that there are two different sets of facts depending upon your source of information, and that issues become political, like climate change or like wearing a mask that are actually science based. And the question, and I know the president has said he intends to try to address this when he says I'm president for all of America, part of how he does that is how do you communicate to people who we're operating on a different set of facts. Who, for example, really believe you're not a legitimate president because they've been told over and over again by somebody they trust and respect that you aren't, just like they were told over and over again that President Obama wasn't born in this country. It's ludicrous, it's not accurate, it's a lie, but when you repeat those over and over, they become, in the minds of the people who believe them, truth. And so how do you tackle that in this next era where technology is only becoming more sophisticated? Does it rest on regulating the technology companies or is it something far deeper than that? And I would say far deeper than that.
Harry Litman [00:28:55] He said in his inaugural, 'there is truth and there are lies.' And that was a not too subtle swipe. And I'll just say one more thing to add, there's the possibility that the Democrats and progressive Democrats have both more wind at their sails and kind of unity that might prove temporary just in the reaction to Trump himself that's been such a kind of energizing force. But now he'll fade from the scene, be less a part of the kind of day to day energy of the party overall.
It's now time to take a moment for our Sidebar feature, which explains some of the terms and relationships that are critical to the events in the news. Among the first executive actions Biden undertook was to rejoin the Paris Accord, also known as the Paris Climate Agreement, which Trump had called a hoax and had pulled the country out of in 2017. What exactly is the Paris Climate Agreement? To tell us, we are hugely fortunate to welcome one of the country's greatest living writers, George Saunders. Saunders is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books and novels. He has been a professor in Syracuse University's creative writing program since 1997, and has won many awards for his writing, including four National Magazine Awards for Fiction, The World Fantasy Award, the Inaugural Folio Prize, and both a MacArthur and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among many others. TIME magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2013. As a personal note, I think his volume of short stories, "The 10th of December," is one of the most beautiful, searing and compassionate collections I have ever read, and if you haven't been exposed to his writing before, it's a perfect place to start. So, George Saunders on the Paris Climate Agreement.
George Saunders [00:31:01] What is the Paris accord and how can the U.S. rejoin it? The Paris Climate Accord is an international agreement within the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change. The agreement sets a long term goal to keep the increase in average global temperature below 2°C above pre-industrial. Each of the 196 countries that signed the accord agreed to plan and regularly report on domestic efforts to mitigate global warming. President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Accord on November 4th, 2020, making good on his 2016 campaign pledge and formalizing his disdain for the agreement after publicly pledging in June 2017 to quote, 'cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord.' Now, President elect Biden has indicated he will rejoin the Paris Accord as one of his first acts in office. Can he do so unilaterally? Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution authorizes the president to make treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate, provided that 2/3 of the senators present concur.
That's one way to enter a binding international agreement. But international agreements made this way are historically rare; only around 10 percent of all agreements the U.S. has entered since World War II were ratified by the Senate. The Constitution also allows a president to enter into executive agreements, which include international treaties, and Congress can, by statute, explicitly grant the president authority to enter into international agreements. Several core environmental statutes do just that. For example, the Clean Air Act directs the president to undertake to enter into international agreements to protect the stratosphere. Likewise, the Global Climate Protection Act directs the U.S. to, 'work toward multilateral agreements addressing climate change,' which gives Biden the authority to rejoin the accord. Of course, after signing back onto the Paris Accord, any actions the Biden administration takes in supporting the US's obligations under the agreement must comport with U.S. law. For Talking Feds, I'm George Saunders.
Harry Litman [00:33:04] Thank you, George Saunders. Saunders has just published a book of essays entitled, "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians give a Masterclass on Writing, Reading and Life." Among the many rave reviews the essays have garnered, Vanity Fair said, 'another generous, funny, and stunningly perceptive book from one of the most original and entertaining writers alive.'
OK, so let's return to Dee Dee's point of if you want to go big, you really want to go early. With everything we've talked about, including the divided government and the prospect of an impeachment trial, does that apply here? Oh, and in addition, the delay in getting off the gun because of the lack of cooperation from the Trump administration, do you think it's still - the axiom applies that you take your first best shot now at the most important initiative, or does the administration want to establish some modicum of unity and bipartisanship before going big. As you see it, should they be going kind of big, medium or little in these first hundred days?
Dee Dee Myers [00:35:16] I think the agenda is, really has to be driven by the pandemic, right? I mean, it's got to be big in terms of can you put more stimulus in the economy? Can you ramp up presence on the Defense Production Act yesterday to provide needles that will increase the supply of vaccines by 20%? But all of those things working together put more money in the economy, get the vaccines distributed, try to pass some additional infrastructure, green infrastructure, whatever things that will really help to rebuild the economy in a way that is equitable. I think he's going to try to do that all now, and fast, and bring as many Republicans along as he can. And I don't...we'll see whether even Mitt Romney is saying we've already done nine hundred billion dollars, we don't need any more right now. But we'll see whether he can get that done with the power sharing agreement, with a 50-50 Senate. A lot of challenges, but that's the challenge for his presidency, that will define his presidency.
Harry Litman [00:36:07] So that's what going big is for him as opposed to, say, climate change or some racial unity initiative.
Dee Dee Myers [00:36:15] I think those are all sub-themes of recovery, because you've got to do it in a way in order to build a long term, sustainable, resilient economy, you have to invest in climate resilient, green, clean technology. And certainly the president has proposed that. You have to have equitable recovery, we can't do what we did in 2009, right, which is just kind of paper over the inequities and hope that we don't get caught the next time. Sorry, but that's exactly what happened, right? And so the pandemic stripped the again, the veneer off. We knew there were inequalities, we didn't realize how profound they were, or we did, but we whistled past it a little bit.
Valerie Jarrett [00:36:50] I think he has no choice but to go big. And it's because we are in a crisis. And in a sense, you should let this crisis go without the American people saying you're doing everything possible to improve their lives. And he's really good at framing everything he does through the lens of how this will help your life. Every executive order he signed on day one, going into the office on day one, was intended to demonstrate that sense of urgency, doing everything he could by executive order, and sending legislation up $1.9 trillion package. And immigration reform, something that I think perhaps people weren't expecting him to send up, is all saying to the American people, I hear your pain, and I am here to address it. And to try to put those who don't support it in the awkward box of trying to deny relief to people who are suffering in this pandemic.
I'm in New York now, and so this was ground zero and there were a lot of the country just kind of blew off the consequences of it when it was just New York. But it's ubiquitous now. And at the tune of 40,000 people a day dying, there isn't going to be a family left that is untouched. And as long as the president is out there saying, 'I am doing this to improve your health, I'm trying to get you vaccinated, I'm trying to get you food on your table so that you're not being evicted and not defaulting on your student loans.' Those are the messages that people are talking about sitting around the table, and nobody is better at Joe Biden than knowing about those conversations. Why? Because he had them and his own family.
David Frum [00:38:11] At the risk again of wandering into someone else's living room and rearranging the furniture, it seems to me that Democratic administrations have historically a problem distinguishing between the concept of going big and doing lots of things. Doing 10 things is not going big. If there are ten, each of them is going to be at best medium, probably small. It's hard to say this to your coalition partners, so maybe you don't say it out loud. But effective priority management means in your own mind, knowing which of the top 10 things that your party wants you to do are not included in the top three. That is something that Biden is going to I mean, pandemic is obviously job one. What else? There's maybe what is the next one? I'm not a Democrat, so he's not gonna listen to me. I would tell him climate and I if you're putting immigration on the top three, you're making a big mistake because it's the most divisive issue you can think of. It's the one that really does depend on the legislature to do anything that will get broad support. The legislature won't be there. So don't say this out loud, but have it in your own mind. That's a top ten issue, not a top three issue. My recommendation from the top three is one, pandemic and economic stabilization; second climate; third, alliance, restoration and trade. Because, this is the thing that for those of us who are a little older is going to be hard to wrap our minds around. But when I entered the Bush administration, the American economy was eight times the size of the Chinese economy. When Valerie moved into the White House and took the helm, the American economy was still three times the size of the Chinese economy.
We are now near-peers, and that a fact that no living American has ever experienced dealing with a country that is simultaneously an economic peer and a strategic competitor. We haven't had that since maybe the Kaiser, possibly the British Empire. And it's a new thing, and it means you can't just bark orders at them the way President Trump thought you can. And it means you have to, anything you want to achieve vis a vis China, you have to do with partners. If you have a focus on China, you have to build the partnerships. That's not a decorative element, that is absolutely integral. Those would be my recommendations of what the top three things you should focus on and then the others. I mean, I would have a different immigration view, but never mind that I didn't vote - well I did vote for him. I'm not gonna vote - I'm hoping not to vote for him next time. But he just needs to be aware of what he can achieve, and what is going to grind itself into the dust and waste his impetus because he's got a lot of goodwill with him and an opportunity to be a very popular president. If six months from now, older people aren't feeling scared, kids are in school, young people are going out and dating and falling in love, people the businesses are hiring. He's going to be very popular.
Dee Dee Myers [00:40:43] And I agree just quickly, David, that we have trouble saying no, right? And prioritizing where the everybody gets a trophy party. So it would behoove the president to really be clear about what those top priorities are and try to really drive them in these early days. And I think you're pretty spot on about what they are. Certainly the top two, and even the third is, you know, one of the things the president has done is added two seats to the National Security Council, right? One on climate and one on China. So or Asia, I guess, but still the focus being China.
Harry Litman [00:41:09] Well, but David suggested one slightly different thing from you Dee Dee, which is you're not necessarily transparent and clear about it. I think if you think seriously about this 3 versus 10 issue, you're looking hard at maybe the brutal fact that progressives won't get any big thing that they're hoping for, like D.C. statehood or climate change, maybe. But so, is it inevitable that you're going to have serious disenchantment on the left within the party if he's going to be able to focus on the things that everyone here seems to think matter the most?
Dee Dee Myers [00:41:47] Well, I think you can do a lot for the progressive wing addressing the pandemic and the economic crisis, right? And trying to invest in recovery in a way that's equitable. I think there's a lot you can do that both drives those priorities, but does it in a way that meets the objectives of some of the progressive wing's agenda. And the same is definitely true of climate. So it's always a balancing act. Not everybody's going to be happy, that is baked into the cake. Somebody is going to be unhappy. And I think the president did it in building his agenda during the campaign is talking about things like climate that were I mean, I think the left progressives were surprised by the president's agenda, and how inclusive it was of some of their ideas and priorities. But it's hard.
Valerie Jarrett [00:42:24] I was also going to say we have to separate, in terms of going big, your legislative agenda from what you can do administratively. And he can multitask administratively, sign a slew of executive orders which are making the progressive part of our party very happy, rolling back regulations, a lot of what he signed in the last few days, the work has already done, and it's going to have a big impact. I think the question in terms of priorities, because I haven't found Congress able to do multitasking, is what do you really put your muscle behind to get through Congress? We put ours through the Affordable Care Act because we actually thought that would help the economy, but only after we did the Recovery Act, and if we had not done the Recovery Act, I don't think our economy would have recovered the way it did.
And so you do have to stack them up to actually push them through Congress, but that doesn't mean you can't do an awful lot through the executive branch, which sends a strong and powerful message. And I, y'know we talked about isolating China, if we move forward with the TPP trade agreement, we would've had 11 countries against one and isolated China. And I think one of the challenges in the Democratic Party is trying to help people understand that there is bad trade and there is good trade, and that we tried to create a deal that improved the environmental standards, and improved the human rights, and improve the opportunity for US companies to do business in the biggest growth market in Asia. And that's an education we have to still do within our own party.
Harry Litman [00:43:47] All right, let's talk a minute about the impeachment trial. There's a dynamic going on, Pelosi has now said she's going to send over the article on Monday and that will trigger, under Senate rules, that they have to immediately constitute as an impeachment court, but they can still constitute and do some other things. Generally, it seems as if the administration and the Democrats want to go quick, and McConnell wants and the Republicans want to stall a bit. If Biden and the administration could sort of lift a finger and make the whole thing go away, would they? I mean, you can't, it's super serious and there's no way of ignoring it, but how big a kind of practical impediment does it look to be posing and in particular, if it's not dispatched within a week or two?
Valerie Jarrett [00:44:44] Well, look, what Biden has said is he's going to focus on building the economy, containing the COVID-19, focusing on the issues that people are talking about around their kitchen tables, and that that's, that's his job. It's the Senate's job once the House sends over the impeachment articles to manage the trial. I think he very much wants to get his cabinet confirmed, and so there was talk a few days ago about trying to divide it up if you had the impeachment hearing of that trial right away so that he could get those through. But I think, and this is not what way imputing to this to be what the president thinks. But part of if you were a nation of laws, then nobody can be above the law. And so I think it is way too late to turn back now. They have no choice but to go forward.
David Frum [00:45:27] As with the first impeachment, Nancy Pelosi made it very clear from the moment she took over in 2019 that she really did not want to do an impeachment of President Trump. And all he had to do was refrain from committing obvious crimes like subtle crimes, subtle crimes. He'd have been fine, but just don't make it blatant. Don't shoot the person on Fifth Avenue, please, for all our sakes.
Valerie Jarrett [00:45:49] Even if you think you can.
David Frum [00:45:51] But but he couldn't refrain. The crimes are blatant, so they're stuck. I think there's a lot of focus on the costs of this process for the Democrats, and those are real, including I think above all, a president starts with a bucket of minutes like the old telephone plans, and he's going have to spend a lot of his minutes that he would rather spend on something else on this. The Senate can only meet so many minutes. But this has problems for Republicans, too, that I think don't get talked about it much. Donald Trump is not only one of the most divisive figures in the history of American politics, but someone who divides consistently leaving the other side with the bigger piece of the biscuit. He was the most unpopular first term president in the history of polling. Of the 12 major party candidates to seek the presidency since the year 2000, Donald Trump finished 10th and 11th. The only person who did worse was the party, the president running on a record of economic disaster and defeat in war, and that was John McCain in 2008. The imperative for the Republican Party is they have to find some way to make Donald Trump go away. Thank you, Twitter. Twitter helped to make them go away. And now he's going to be there.
And it it remains this division. And one of the things I always keep in mind about the Republican Party is the division that matters most is not the division that we see between the pro-Trump Republicans and the less pro-Trump Republicans currently in Congress. The most important division is between the pro-ish Trump Republicans who are there, and the Republicans who lost in 2018 because their suburban districts educated with the women there especially, they just repudiated this guy, and they are not going to like them any better when they see again on on the screens of Congress the images of these insurrectionists with their insane plot to save Donald Trump by lynching his vice president.
Harry Litman [00:47:34] OK, I want to take a few minutes to ask each of you if something comes to mind from your vantage point of having lived through it, what do you most fear for the new administration or what admonition would you most want to give them having been through it? What word of advice, but really word of caution would you most want them to take aboard?
David Frum [00:48:01] For me, I would say I have two. One is beware immigration and second, conserve the president's time. Many people here who are serving him will have served previously in an administration that are very young, very vigorous, very fit. President Obama is no distress. I mean, Joe Biden is in amazing shape, but biology is biology. Take that seriously.
Valerie Jarrett [00:48:22] Yeah, I would say along the same lines, pace yourself. I lasted eight years, there's never been a senior adviser in the history of our country that had lasted eight years. And I give it, the reason I say it happened is number one I had no choice. But number two, I was old enough to pace myself. And I think a lot of young people end up working so hard that they just burn out. And they have to learn how to get some rest, eat properly. I sound like a mom, but I saw a lot of people not do that and they didn't make it. And to their detriment, because they would have enjoyed to have been there for the entire time. And I think that applies not just to the president, but to all of them, even the young ones, particularly the young ones, because they don't have enough sense to know they do need to get some sleep.
Dee Dee Myers [00:49:04] Yeah, and I would just kind of reiterate that, right? They were very disciplined and strategic in the campaign, right? And they obviously the pandemic created very unusual conditions, but they were very careful with the candidate's time. They understood they could do a lot with less. And so they should keep doing that. And then I think President Biden should continue to do what he does best and talk to the American people, but always put this through the lens of how people are feeling, continue that inclusive, unifying dialog. Even if things are raging in Washington, people are hurting. They're scared, their lives have been upended. They want to move forward and they want to believe that the government cares about them. And no one can do that better than Joe Biden, and so as much as the cacophony around him will distract, he needs to just keep his eye on that.
Harry Litman [00:49:49] Yeah, my sense is that the Reagan administration did this pretty well. They did their policy stuff, but wheeled out the president to make inspiring speeches when the time came. We'll see as the time ticks off, I have the feeling that admonitions of this sort are made, but overlooked by many a new administration. We'll see if the same thing befalls the new Biden team. All right. We've just a couple minutes for our final feature of Five Words or Fewer, where we take a question from a listener, and each of us has to answer in five words or fewer. This week, we're trying something a little different, we had a listener actually send us a voice message with his question. It comes from Will G.
Will G. [00:50:36] Hi, this is Will G., and while I aspire one day to be qualified to read the Sidebar, I'll settle for Five Words or Fewer. My question is, will any person with the last name Trump go to jail while Joe Biden is president? Thanks, and I love the show!
Harry Litman [00:50:53] Sorry, guys. That's that's the question, and no ducking. Five words or fewer?
Dee Dee Myers [00:50:59] Sadly, no Trumps in jail.
Harry Litman [00:51:02] Five exactly. Man, she's good.
David Frum [00:51:04] Civil liability his greater danger.
Harry Litman [00:51:07] Another great one.
Valerie Jarrett [00:51:09] Yes.
Harry Litman [00:51:10] Don't know who, but yes.
Thank you very much to Dee Dee, David and Valerie, and thank you very much listeners, for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts, and please take a moment to rate and review this podcast. You can follow us on Twitter @TalkingFedsPod to find out about future episodes and other Feds-related content. You can check us out on the web, talkingfeds.com , where we have full episode transcripts. And you can look to see our latest offerings on Patreon, where we post discussions about special topics exclusively for supporters. And these aren't outtakes or ad-free episodes, though we do have those there, but original one-on-one discussions with national experts about the most important topics of the day. Just in the last few days, we've posted discussions about the insurrectionists, and about the final swath of pardons with Andrew Weissman, Rachel Barkow and Chris Sampson. So there's really a wealth of great stuff there. You can go look at it to see what's there, and then decide if you'd like to subscribe. Submit your questions to questions@talkingfeds.com , whether it's for Five Words or Fewer, or general questions about the inner-workings of the legal system for our Sidebar segments. Thanks for tuning in, and don't worry: as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking.
Talking Feds is produced by Jennifer Bassett and Rebecca Lowe Patton. Our editor is Justin Wright. David Lieberman and Rosie Dawn Griffin are our contributing writers. Production assistance by Matt McArdle. Our consulting producer is Andrea Carla Michaels. Thanks very much to the great George Saunders for explaining the Paris Climate Agreement. Our gratitude, as always, goes to the amazing Philip Glass, who graciously lets us use his music. Talking Feds is a production of Dalito, LLC. I'm Harry Litman, see you next time.
