Experts in the News | Miller Center

After A Tumultuous Election, Biden Prepares For The Transition Of Power

NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks Chris Lu, who lead the 2008 Obama-Biden presidential transition team, about what a transition from a Trump to a Biden administration might look like.

Chris Lu

David Bossie returns

Earlier this week, we learned through press reports that the Trump campaign was seeking what they called a “James Baker-type” to help them manage the post-election controversies that materialized after Tuesday. On Friday, they named David Bossie to fill that job.

Russell Riley

'A real good man'

As the major news organizations declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, and celebrations spread among his supporters around the nation (and world), my thoughts turned to the speech that South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn gave after Biden’s crucial victory in the South Carolina primary. “We have as our candidate a real good man,” Clyburn quietly told the assembled crowd at the Biden victory party that night.

Guian McKee

U.S. Allies Express Relief After Biden Tops Trump for Presidency

"From Day One, from the moment he takes the oath and gives his inaugural address, there will be a different sense of how the country is viewed in the world. I think a lot will change there just in how we present ourselves. I think we will abandon this isolationism of Trump," says Barbara Perry, director of the University of Virginia's Miller Center on Presidential Studies. "Trump took our next step toward our waning power. But I think that symbolically will change. And it's not as though we are completely weakened, but that will be a point of big change."

Barbara Perry

Harris smashing glass ceiling is victory for women of color

Harris’s tenure as vice president could put her in the driver's seat to become the next Democratic presidential nominee as early as 2024 if Biden serves a single term. The California senator is now “better positioned than anybody else has ever been” to become the first female U.S. president, commonwealth professor of politics at the University of Virginia Jennifer Lawless said.

Jennifer Lawless

How Life-Sized Joe Biden Could Be a Larger-Than-Life President

Sidney Milkis, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said the greatest presidents are “at the center of developing a new political order,” one built around “a new philosophy, a new set of institutional arrangements, a new set of policies.” Biden has a chance to do this, Milkis says, by inventing a new model of the presidency for the context he inherits: “Trump has shown us how dangerous this cult of personality is, and Biden can be looked at as an antidote to that. Enough of the country is looking for leadership that would be normal, would be focused on building a coalition.”

Sidney Milkis