As a native of New Zealand, Christopher Liddell might seem an unlikely expert on the American presidency. But his private-sector leadership experience, combined with a decades-long desire to use his skills to serve the public good, converged with an opportunity to work inside the White House during the Donald Trump administration. 

Liddell was named assistant to the president and director of strategic initiatives in 2017, and he continued as deputy chief of staff for policy coordination through the end of Trump’s term. He ultimately became one of the longest-lasting senior staffers in an administration marked by constant turnover.

His new book is Year Zero: The Five-Year Presidency, published in the Miller Center Studies on the Presidency series with UVA Press. Liddell draws on his White House experience and previous work with Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign to offer a systematic and nonpartisan overview of how to manage the complex transition process, even during moments of national crisis.

Far from the pejorative “measuring the drapes” cliché that caricatures overeager aspirants to the White House, Liddell argues for an expanded “five-year” presidency—not a longer presidential term but a longer timeline that includes more intensive preelection and pretransition planning.

Liddell argues for an expanded “five-year” presidency—not a longer presidential term but a longer timeline that includes more intensive preelection and pretransition planning

Liddell notes early in the book his work on three transitions: planning for a potential Mitt Romney presidency in 2012, taking over (midcourse) the 2017 transition for President Trump, and assisting and completing the historically turbulent transition from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Managing presidential transitions is always complicated, but Liddell faced the additional challenge of a president who did not want to relinquish the office or accept the results of the November 2020 election. Liddell considered resigning after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Instead, he opted to keep the transfer of power to the incoming Biden team moving forward.

Liddell faced the additional challenge of a president who did not want to relinquish the office or accept the results of the November 2020 election

“History will judge the roles of those close to Trump, and when it does, Chris should be applauded for staying,” David Marchick, the former director of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition, wrote in Washington Monthly. “He tried to create order amid chaos and pushed for the faithful implementation of the Presidential Transition Act. He was the direct liaison with the Biden team once the formal transition began. 

As chaotic and dangerous as the roughly 75 days between the election and the inauguration were, I shudder to think what would have happened had Chris not been there.”

In a recent interview, Liddell spoke about his time in the Trump White House and his idea for a presidential “year zero” of vigorous advance planning before a president-elect takes office.

FOR SEVERAL DECADES, YOU WERE AT THE HELM IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR, LEADING SEVERAL LARGE, HIGH-PROFILE AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES. WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO HOLD A STAFF POSITION IN THE WHITE HOUSE?

I have a belief that everyone should do public service at some stage of their life. Doing it either at the start or near the end of your career are both good approaches. If you do it later on, as I did, you can bring to the table skills that you’ve learned over the course of your life. Public service had been in my mind for decades, and I finally had an opportunity to work with the Romney campaign as executive director of their transition planning in 2012. I thought it was just a one-time thing, and when Romney lost, I thought, well, yeah, there’s my chance to serve come and gone. But then the Trump opportunity came up, and fortunately I was able to work directly in the White House. I became a U.S. citizen in 2010, so the ability to contribute to my new country at a senior level was unique and meaningful to me.

DO YOU THINK BEING A NATIVE OF NEW ZEALAND AFFECTS HOW YOU SEE AMERICAN POLITICS?

Sometimes coming from outside a country you are able to bring a new perspective. When you’re part of a team, as you are in the White House, it’s useful to have people with different backgrounds and different perspectives. Probably more useful, though, was the fact that I’d had a series of interesting private-sector jobs that gave me experience with how to run large organizations. That experience, combined with what I learned during my time at the White House, is embedded in the book as philosophy of how you can run the White House significantly more effectively.

I wanted to mention something really positive about the U.S. system of government—the ability for people like myself to come in and serve as a political appointee. In most political systems, including in my home country, New Zealand, you’re either an elected offi cial or you’re a career civil servant. There isn’t, in many countries, that middle layer of people who are political appointees. We’re not elected, and we’re not doing it for a career. But we want to make a contribution. We come in for two, three, four years, whatever, and then go back to whatever we did before. That’s a unique and I believe, overall, a positive aspect of the American system.

We’re not elected, and we’re not doing it for a career. But we want to make a contribution

IN YOUR LEADERSHIP ROLES AT MICROSOFT, GENERAL MOTORS, AND INTERNATIONAL PAPER, YOU PARTICIPATED IN MULTINATIONAL CORPORATE TRANSITIONS. AND YEAR ZERO ISN’T YOUR FIRST BOOK ABOUT AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITIONS—YOU DOCUMENTED YOUR INSIGHTS FROM LEADING MITT ROMNEY’S TRANSITION PLANNING TEAM IN AN EARLIER BOOK [ROMNEY READINESS CAMPAIGN 2012: RETROSPECTIVE AND LESSONS LEARNED]. SO THE TRUMP–BIDEN TRANSITION WASN’T YOUR FIRST RODEO, SO TO SPEAK. ARE THOSE PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES LEADING TRANSITIONS AT THE CORE OF THIS BOOK?

American presidential transitions have a reasonably rich history of passing on knowledge from one to the next, starting all the way back with Laurin Henry and what he wrote [Laurin Henry’s 1960 book, Presidential Transitions, was the first comprehensive treatment of 20th century transitions]. What you observe is that everyone builds on the knowledge of previous transitions and tries to make them better in a bipartisan effort.

In the Romney case, we built on all of the good work of people like Martha Kumar [director, White House Transition Project], from the past. When we lost, the Romney team had the benefit of time on our hands. Clearly we weren’t governing! So Governor Leavitt [Michael Leavitt, the former governor of Utah and chair of Romney’s transition planning committee] and candidate Romney agreed that we should document everything we did for the benefit of future transitions. At least we’d make a contribution from all the work we’d done.

But that book was more retrospective. In Year Zero I want to address some of the big issues we’re having with the presidency, look forward, and come up with practical solutions for how to make the White House more effective. There’s no point just talking about the issues and never doing anything about them. We have to come up with ideas and solutions for how to make things better. By “year zero,” I mean the year before a presidential inauguration, when these ideas can be implemented—developed, tested with the presidential candidate, and integrated into a clear governing framework.

There’s no point just talking about the issues and never doing anything about them. We have to come up with ideas and solutions for how to make things better

An excerpt from Year Zero: The Five-Year Presidency: Christopher Liddell on the need for presidential candidates to start transition planning early

My most important takeaway from my experiences and research is that a standard bit of DC’s conventional wisdom is wrong: I believe that it is never too soon to “measure the drapes.” This metaphor is widely used to describe an attitude of entitlement on the part of would-be officeholders: they “measure the drapes” of the physical space they seek to inhabit but have not yet earned. The critics’ implication is that, rather than tending to the fundamentals of an election, candidates distract themselves with dreams of authority before the voters have awarded them public office. The idea of “measuring the drapes” has become something of a clichéd synonym for brazen overconfidence. In a feat of presumption, the candidates are thinking too much about what should happen after their election.

I believe that it is never too soon to “measure the drapes”

However, underpreparing for leadership in the Oval Office is, in my view, a larger blunder for an aspiring president than anticipating what he or she will do once there. I prefer the phrase “measuring the drapes” to mean undertaking the necessary and comprehensive work of preparing to command the most powerful office on earth.

At its heart, this book is a call to assist future presidents by transforming the connotations surrounding the “measuring the drapes” metaphor from pejorative ones to positive ones. Instead of regarding early activity as a sign of arrogance, political insiders and the larger American voting public should see it as a sign of competence. It shows voters a candidate preparing to effectively govern. And that, in governing well, a would-be president can help restore faith in the American system.

READ MORE EXCERPTS FROM 'YEAR ZERO'