David Marchick — The Peaceful Transfer of Power- with Nancy Cook

Ronald Reagan called the peaceful transfer of power from one U.S. president to the next a miracle, and it is. It is also the most delicate and hazardous period in the entire political cycle. Americans learned the stakes in 2020, when President Donald Trump’s refusal to trigger the formal start of the transition process to President-Elect Joe Biden created perhaps the worst crisis for American democracy since the Civil War. Even at the best of times, an incoming administration faces a gargantuan task, as every new president must make more than four thousand political appointments in a short period of time.Yet the day-to-day process of presidential transitions remains poorly understood, even by government specialists. This is why the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition created Transition Lab, a one-year podcast series that ran through January 2021. The Peaceful Transfer of Power now puts those distinct interviews with scholars, journalists, public servants, and—most important—participants in every transition from Ford–Carter to Trump–Biden into a narrative format that illuminates the long history, complexity, and current best practices associated with this most vital of democratic institutions.

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David Marchick serves as Dean of the Kogod School of Business at American University. Marchick served as Chief Operating Officer of the United States Development Finance Corporation during the first year of the Biden Administration. Prior to joining the Biden Administration, he served for 16 months in a volunteer capacity as Director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the non-profit Partnership for Public Service. He held several positions within the Clinton Administration over a seven-year period, including Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Transportation Affairs, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Trade Policy at the State Department, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Trade Development. He also served in the White House, where he worked on NAFTA and the WTO Agreements, and at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Marchick is in conversation with Nancy Cook. Cook is a White House correspondent for Bloomberg News. This is her sixth year reporting on the White House, having covered all four years of the Trump administration before moving over to write about President Biden and Democrats. She's previously worked for POLITICO, National Journal and Newsweek and is a graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and Carleton College.

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