Critical decisions: Insights from the George W. Bush Presidential Oral History Project

Bellinger held several senior presidential appointments in the U.S. government, including as the legal advisor to the Department of State from 2005 to 2009 under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and senior associate counsel to the president and legal advisor to the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House from 2001 to 2005. He now heads the Global Law and Public Policy practice at Arnold & Porter, representing individuals, corporations, and sovereign governments in litigation in U.S. courts and before international institutions. He has extensive experience in U.S. foreign relations litigation involving the Alien Tort Statute, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, and the immunities of foreign governments and government officials.

Bolten is President & CEO of the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of leading US companies. From 2011 to 2016, Bolten was Managing Director of Rock Creek Global Advisors, an international business advisory firm. From 2009 to 2011, he was a Visiting Professor at Princeton University.

Bolten served in the White House under President George W. Bush as Chief of Staff (2006–09), Director of the Office of Management and Budget (2003–06), and Deputy Chief of Staff (2001–03). His nearly 20 years in government service also includes positions with the US Trade Representative, the US Senate Finance Committee, and the US State Department. In the private sector, he worked at Goldman Sachs in London, and O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, DC.

Bolten received his undergraduate degree from Princeton and his law degree from Stanford. He has been a member of the ONE Campaign board since 2009, and was Interim CEO for the first half of 2011. He serves also on the boards of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Emerson Electric Co.

Bridgeland previously served as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council in the first term of President George W. Bush and then as assistant to the president of the United States and first director of the USA Freedom Corps, where he coordinated policy on international, national, community, and faith-based service in the aftermath of 9/11. He was also appointed by President Obama to serve on the White House Council for Community Solutions. He is now founder & CEO of Civic, vice chairman of Service Year Alliance, co-convener of the GradNation campaign, and vice chairman of Malaria No More. Bridgeland is a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on Political Reform. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Virginia School of Law and has given commencement addresses at the College of William & Mary, Johns Hopkins University, Saint Anselm College, Hamline University, and Ripon College. In addition, he was named a Non-Profit Executive of the Year in 2009 for his work in developing the Serve America Act that was signed into law.

Edelman, the Miller Center's Anne C. Strickler Practitioner Senior Fellow, retired as a career minister from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2009, after having served in senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense as well as the White House. As the undersecretary of defense for policy (2005 to 2009), he oversaw strategy development as the Defense Department’s senior policy official with global responsibility for bilateral defense relations, war plans, special operations forces, homeland defense, missile defense, nuclear weapons and arms control policies, counter-proliferation, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, arms sales, and defense trade controls. Edelman served as U.S. ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey in the Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations and was principal deputy assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney for national security affairs. 

Nelson is the Fulmer Professor of Political Science at Rhodes College and a nonresident senior fellow at the Miller Center. He has published multiple books, the most recent of which is Resilient America: Electing Nixon, Channeling Dissent, and Dividing Government (2014). Other recent books are The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2014, with Sidney Milkis (2015); The Presidency and the Political System, 10th ed. (2014); and The Elections of 2012 (2013). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Politics and Political Science Quarterly and in periodicals such as Virginia Quarterly Review, the Claremont Review of Books, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. 

Perry is the Gerald L. Baliles Professor and Director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, where she co-directs the Presidential Oral History Program. She has authored or edited 12 books on presidents, First Ladies, the Kennedy family, the Supreme Court, and civil rights and civil liberties. Professor Perry has conducted more than 100 interviews for the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush Oral History Projects; researched the Bill Clinton Oral History Project interviews, and directed the Edward Kennedy Oral History Project. She served as a U.S. Supreme Court fellow and has worked for both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate.

Riley, co-chair of the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program, is the White Burkett Miller Center Professor of Ethics and Institutions. He is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on elite oral history interviewing and the contemporary presidency. He has logged more than 1,500 hours of confidential interviews with senior members of the White House staff, cabinet officers, and foreign leaders back to the days of the Carter and Reagan Administrations. Since 2003, he has led both the William J. Clinton Presidential History Project and the George W. Bush Oral History Project. He has lectured extensively on American politics and oral history methods across the United States, as well as in China, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and by videoconference (for the US Department of State) at Al Quds and Najah Universities in the West Bank.

Townsend is a national security leader who has worked across party lines to address some of the world’s most complex and volatile security issues. With more than two decades of public service, including being the original first Assistant Commandant for Intelligence of the Coast Guard, Townsend has worked in law enforcement, intelligence, national security, and homeland security; in both civilian and military organizations; in policy and operational jobs; and on domestic and international issues. As Chair of the Homeland Security Council and one of President George W. Bush’s top advisors, Townsend offers an informed viewpoint on the global issues facing the country. As national security analyst at CBS News, Townsend contributes to coverage of homeland security, foreign policy counter terrorism, and intelligence, and she also appears on the network’s digital streaming service, CBSN.

Warner served as a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs from 2018–19. She recently stepped down from her post as chief global affairs correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, public television’s flagship nightly news and analysis program. In 2006, after a dozen years as a substitute anchor, moderator, and field reporter on domestic and international issues, she founded the NewsHour’s Overseas Reporting Unit. For a decade, she produced in-depth reports from regions in crisis, including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza (2006); Pakistan (2007); China (2008); Afghanistan (2009); Russia (2009, 2012); Yemen (2010); Iraq (2010); Korea (2011); Egypt (2011); Syria (2012); Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan (2012-2013); Crimea and Ukraine (2014), and Iraqi Kurdistan (2014). While in Washington, she covered the making of U.S. foreign policy.