A Memo to the President-Elect

Dear President-elect Trump:

Congratulations, sir. There is simply no historical precedent for what you have accomplished in winning the White House this year. You have leveled conventional wisdom, the polling industry, the pundit class and two political parties. The path is yours to walk, and like your unconventional campaign, the Transition and first weeks of your Administration will likely look very different from what has come before, to the consternation of official Washington.

However, no matter what steps you choose, there are certain axioms to the presidency and to your specific campaign promises, that impact success.  I offer three, discreet pieces of advice accordingly:

Time is Short: yes, you have four years, but presidencies are made or broken in the first six months. Effective Transition planning now – strategic planning – is absolutely crucial to the success of the first 162 days of your presidency.

Jimmy Carter’s transition was a mess, and his Administration never actually recovered, with a Democrat president eventually fighting it out with a Democrat Congress.

Bill Clinton’s transition was more of a college symposium than an agenda-setting/decision-making hand-off of power, and it showed.  Instead of brandishing his “New Democrat” bone fides to institute welfare reform and government efficiency first (for example), he prioritized “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” demanded a carbon tax and the nationalization of healthcare. As a result, Clinton’s approval rating was 36 percent by June of ’93 and he lost Congress in the biggest wave election since 1932 in his first midterms. It was only in defeat that Clinton found his bearings.

Even President Obama, who had a first-rate transition staff, and took the responsibility seriously, made strategic errors once in office, deferring to congressional Democrats on ambitious plans for what became Obamacare and climate change legislation, after barely a month on the economy, passing only the Stimulus.

Reagan and Bush 43 are models. Assertive, focused, goal-oriented agendas, staffed with people who could get the job done.  Reagan’s centerpiece tax cuts, which fundamentally transformed the American economy, were signed into law on August 13, 1981. Bush 43, who had the shortest transition in modern history, still staffed out an Administration of serious professionals and passed tax cut and education reform legislation before June 2001. It set the stage for him to fulfill almost all of his campaign promises made in his acceptance speech in 2000 before the RNC.

Right now, everyone wants a piece of you and every issue is framed as most important. But unless you focus on your top 3-5 priorities, you will dilute your power and direction resulting in a morass of unfulfilled expectations, where little gets done. Once momentum is lost, it is rarely recovered.

Take that list of 3-5, make sure to mix the real heavy lifting with low hanging fruit, and put points on the board quickly, with legislative victories. As you know, nothing wins like winning. Early success instills optimism to your team, confidence to American people and fear in your political opponents. It’s a trifecta that sets the table for the rest of your term.

Be Prepared to Compromise:  you are about to undo eight years of Obama governance on taxes, healthcare, immigration and climate change.  You will be able to do so because President Obama brought a “My Way or the Highway” attitude to the presidency. Congress was only useful to him so long as the Democrats controlled it. After that, he began governing by fiat, through Executive Orders. Republicans weren’t so much the legitimate opposition party, representing millions of Americans, as they were thorns and obstacles to the only path that was good and correct for America – his. Obama went so far as to dismiss the results of the 2014 midterms because “his voters” didn’t turn out.  It is a dangerous model of de-legitimacy that undermines elections and the Will of the people. Success is found elsewhere.

Lasting and durable presidential achievements are not built on partisan majorities and Executive Orders. Reagan passed his agenda with a Democrat House. Bush 43 had Democrat support for his tax cuts and overwhelming support for his education agenda.

Mind you, reaching for common ground or “give-and-take” will infuriate your partisans who deride “compromise” as the dirtiest word in the English language; an “establishment” vehicle to dilute your program and appease progressives and special interests. That’s laughable, short-sighted and counter productive. It was Reagan, after all, who said that if he could get 70 percent of what he wanted to get a deal, he’d take it and come back later for the rest. You could do worse than emulating a Reagan philosophy that created real results.

You have temporary custody of the office. On some issues, Democrat opposition will be implacable. You will have to go it alone and take it to the American people for support. But, if you want the majority of your policies to outlive your presidency, create a firm bipartisan foundation. Indeed, given your unique ideological perspective, you have broad running room to create temporary, unique and unconventional coalitions on different issues. You can infuriate the Freedom Caucus and the Progressive caucus and still ally with them on other, different issues. Use this flexibility to the maximum and forget about purity. If voters wanted purity, they would have nominated Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders. They want results. They chose you.

And as a matter of legislative mechanics, there really is no other path for you. You are going to need eight Democrats for anything you try to pass in through the Senate in order to overcome a filibuster. Providence has given you a priceless gift here. 25 Democrats are up for re-election in the Senate in 2018, compared to only eight Republicans. Many of these Democrats are in states that you won.  The list below lays out the dynamics on the most vulnerable to your new political reality, and thus potential allies of convenience. Start courting now:

Prioritize Government Reform:  you must find room for this in your first months as a top priority.

As a builder you know that no structure can last long on flawed foundation. Today’s federal government is deeply flawed; too big to fail and burdened by regulations that inhibit innovation and promote atrophy. A bureaucracy staffed by a protected class of workers that are impossible to fire, resistant to change and equipped with outdated technology. Success is measured in staff and budget increases, not results. Agencies and departments continue in perpetuity, instead of aligning to meet evolving challenges. Waste fraud and abuse are accepted as the price of public service.

How is it possible that career staff at the VA, responsible for the appointments scandal that threatened Veteran livesl, are still on payroll? Why are thousands of deceased Americans still receiving Social Security checks? Why does USAID take pride in being open in developing countries for decades? Is that not a sign of abject failure of our development program? Byzantine federal contracting regulations, designed ostensibly to ensure fair competition and lowest price, delivered us the billion dollar Obamacare website that did not work, after three full years of prep time.  Does anyone not believe that eBay or Amazon or Google could have done better with a 10th of the money?

This reform effort cannot be pro-forma.  If we have learned anything over the last 30 years, it is that spending cuts and new organizational charts only serve to rearrange deck chairs in the federal bureaucracy on a sinking ship. Just look at DHS.. Right now, the federal monolith is a monster than cannot get out of its own way. To overcome this, a genuine reform plan must be radical and far-reaching; it must refocus the bureaucratic culture on value.

This will not be simple or easy. In order to create the kind implement sustainable design changes, the new Administration will  have to ask Congress for special authority to temporarily exempt rules on labor protections and contracting in order to permit the testing of tangible reforms in people, mission and technology  that when validated, can then be applied to the federal government writ large.

Also, now is a perfect time for President Trump to call out for help from our technology leaders. Silicon Valley is the envy of the world, but our government wallows in mediocrity and lowest common denominator technical infrastructure. We need a new public-private partnership that disrupts the Big Contractor culture in DC, which is specially designed to maximize business off of thousands of pages of contracting rules and feeds on cost overruns, to provide federal workers with the superior tools to get the job done.

It is possible. Someone just needs the will to make it so.

An efficient, accountable and transparent federal bureaucracy will go a long way toward restoring citizen trust in public institutions. The “Big Feet” in Washington will tell you that this can wait. They are wrong. By year two, Congress has settled in as have your appointees. The concrete that you poured in January 2017 will have hardened. By then, the initiative will have been lost. Anything you try at this point, will only be on the margins.

Mr. President-elect, you take office at a crossroads in American history. You have shaken the foundations of the old order, where the future is framed by only a hazy uncertainty. If you act with daring and determination, humility and practicality, this moment can become a pivot point for America where fundamental change is real and lasting.

Good luck.