We need a transparent transition after this disastrous campaign

Whatever the outcome of this year’s election, there will be a lot of shouting on Wednesday.

More so than in the past, the volatility of the passions within this year’s electorate, ranging from healthy skepticism to snarky cynicism to risky conspiracy theorizing, could make for a rocky first day of the presidential transition period.

For this reason, how the next president approaches that critical 11-week period after the election but before the inauguration — the presidential transition — matters a lot.

If done well, it could encourage some amount of political healing for the nation; otherwise, it risks exacerbating political animosities for the next four years and a rough road ahead.

Campaign of discontent

There are a variety of indicators that the American voter is troubled by Washington politics and what has transpired in the seemingly endless 2016 campaign.

From the left and right, there have been deep suspicions of establishment candidates, a view of electoral system as being rigged, and the unchallenged role of money in determining political outcomes.

Gallup recently found that just a quarter (27 percent) of the country believes that the electoral system is working.

Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: Milley apologizes for church photo-op Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness MORE (I-Vt.) channeled these discontents during his campaign for the Democratic nomination, as has GOP nominee Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE, although he has stoked other racially and ethnically charged fires.

Regardless of the merits of some of these criticisms, many voters are dissatisfied with business as usual and want to see change.

On Election Day, while we will finally have one long-anticipated response to this campaign of discontent, things do not end there. Once we have determined the next president, the real work of the transition to governance begins.

Early transition planning

So large a task is the transition that it has already commenced. No elected president can make thousands of decisions about who will staff the new administration, develop a policy agenda for the first 100 days in office and organize the White House in less than three months.

Trump signaled the start of his transition planning in May when he announced that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) would be overseeing transition planning. Democratic nominee Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonWhite House accuses Biden of pushing ‘conspiracy theories’ with Trump election claim Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton qualifies to run for county commissioner in Florida MORE followed suit later in the summer when she announced a team of advisers, led by former Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), would be planning her transition.

Though far apart on major policy issues, since the party conventions, both transition teams have been housed in the same office building in downtown Washington, and designated officials have been getting classified briefings from the Obama administration.

While much of what these transition teams do is highly bureaucratic and strictly nonpartisan, there were almost immediate questions about who was chosen.

Progressives and environmentalists cried foul that Salazar, who had backed fracking and the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the past, was put in charge. And Politicoreported that Christie was holding a $5,000-a-seat briefing on the transition planning, seemingly in conflict with Trump’s claims about how he would not be beholden to big money contributors.

As worrisome as these publicized aspects of pre-election transition planning is that the public knows almost nothing else about the process.

So shrouded in secrecy, transitions have nearly always happened with almost nonexistent media coverage or limited access to the public.

If you’ve wanted to know whom Clinton has been considering for an important position regulating the financial services industry, you’d be hardpressed to find out. If you’ve wanted to know whether Trump intends to structure his White House differently than others have in the past, you wouldn’t be able to find someone on the transition team to ask — that is, unless you could afford Christie’s high-priced transition briefing.

This has long been the tradition, and in this tradition-breaking 2016 election campaign, the tradition has been upheld by both candidates.

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Promoting a transparent transition in 2016

In spite of what is accepted practice, limited transparency and openness could spell disaster this year.

Voters, especially those most disenchanted with this election, will be looking to how the president-elect runs the transition as an early indicator of how they will govern.

In the past, the transition period was ripe for the influence of campaign contributors and lobbyists.

As I’ve written about previously, lobbyists helped craft the George W. Bush administration’s energy policy during the 2000-2001 transition period, and many went on to work in the Bush administration.

Contributors to the Obama campaign in 2008 gained numerous seats on his transition team and got early opportunities to shape his policy agenda.

Much of this occurs with limited openness and little transparency, meaning Americans who have just participated in our most democratic institution are quickly shut out of the process.

The above notwithstanding, in 2008, President Obama did attempt to change this tradition. At the start of his transition, he instituted precedent-setting rules on lobbyists, restricted who could contribute to transition planning and adopted aggressive ethics guidelines.

Never before had such an aggressive stance been taken during the transition period, and many of these procedures were later adopted by the Obama administration after the inauguration.

Members of the next presidential transition team can build upon the legacy of the 2008 Obama transition team in several ways.

For one, they can establish which ethical principles are going to guide the transition team: Who will and who will not be permitted to serve? Campaign contributors? Lobbyists? Those with business interests tied to upcoming federal government action?

Installing an ethics czar during the transition period, like Obama did once he took office, has never been done in the past but could ensure that these principles were adhered to.

Given the chaos of the transition period, there has also been recent a push for consistency.

In order to avert the possibility of disaster, the Partnership for Public Service has been advocating for robust transition planning to assure a seamless and peaceful transition between administrations.

New federal laws passed since the last transition have provided formal support from the outgoing administration to do just this.

And in The Atlantic, Bruce Bartlett argued that, should she win, Clinton should keep many of Obama’s appointees, rather than pursuing a wholesale change of high-ranking officials.

These are all sensible directions for the next president, but they risk reinforcing the perception that Washington never changes.

Stability, continuity and security all matter a lot to voters, but so too do the promises made by both candidates that they will challenge the status quo.

In order to challenge these negative perceptions, the transition team could broaden what Obama began in 2008.

Under the mantle of the “Your Seat at the Table” policy, any group that wanted to hold a meeting to advise the transition team was required to upload its written statement in memo-form to a public website.

Eight years later, you can still view those letters here.

This transparency measure helped to assure those interested that what an interest group was telling the transition team in private was also shared in public.

But this measure did not guarantee all who wanted a meeting were given the chance.

In 2016, a transition team could go even further in order to make certain all groups have their opportunity to weigh in. It will necessitate ample staffing, quick planning after the election and a genuine willingness to hear all sides of the debate.

Based on my own research, that was not the case in 2008, as those groups in the Democratic coalition were much more active than those in the Republican coalition or even those unaffiliated with either party.

Viewing the transition as an extension of the “party decides politics of the primaries will not convince all groups of voters that the next president has heard their dissenting voices.

Instead, the winning candidate might borrow from the success of participatory public budgeting in cities across the country or to the 2013 mayoral transition of Bill de Blasio (D) in New York City.

In conjunction with the mayor-elect’s transition team, a wide variety of groups descended on lower Manhattan to speak at listening sessions in so-called “transition tents.” Members of the transition team took notes, asked questions and listened to the recommendations of a variety of groups in the city, almost none of them a major campaign contributor.

Taking these types of local experiments with broad-based participation to the national scale might be logistically difficult, but digital technology and social media certainly could be used to make virtual transition tents possible this year.

Moreover, for the cost of just one inauguration party, publicly oriented transition tents could be set up on the National Mall and in state capitals after the election.

How to prepare for this year’s transition

Even the most open political process will fail to be truly democratic if there is little participation.

Assuming there are opportunities given after this election, interested groups and activists can prepare in several ways. If you are a “Bernie bro,” affiliated with Black Lives Matter, a member of the Tea Party or an evangelical, what can you do once the election is over?

First, you can begin now by identifying whom you’d like appointed to open positions in government —both high-profile positions, such as attorney general, but also lesser known sub-Cabinet positions that may have a greater day-to-day impact on your issue.

This is essentially what the Heritage Foundation has done during every presidential transition since 1980 and the Roosevelt Institute has been up for the last several months, according to The New York Times.

Next, you can also prepare what you’d like to share with the transition team, such as how you’d prioritize policy issues and the facts that back up such a ranking. It is a good idea to keep these memos short and action-oriented.

And, finally, you might also prepare to mobilize those around you, just as you may have been planning to for Election Day. Activists may be ready for a vacation on Nov. 9, but you risk having your voice muted during the transition period if you do so.

Limits of transparency

A transparent and open transition won’t itself reduce the hot rhetoric of this campaign or address every slight uttered over the last two years.

Transparency won’t reduce congressional polarization or make the diverse factions of the country come together on a common policy agenda for addressing stagnant wages or countering the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Nevertheless, a president-elect who promotes transparency will send a message to the country that, more than just listening to their discontents on the campaign trail, action is coming. A process that invites diverse interests, and does so out in the open, may be an initial step to reconciliation.

Of course, continued commitments to openness must persist after the inauguration, but the transition period is the first chance for the winning candidate to get started.

Brown, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Public Policy at the City University of New York and the author of “Lobbying the New President” (Routledge, 2012) and “Immigrants and Electoral Politics” (Cornell University Press, 2016).

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.