And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today, once again for a second time by Elliot Abrams.

has had a distinguished career in government at both the

State Department and the White House and has written important books when you weren't

in government but I thought we could talk today about the next administration the

challenges they face in foreign policy

which are uniquely qualified to discuss and maybe first about how they're

going to put themselves together to conduct a foreign policy you've been

through this I think you you came into the Reagan

administration in 1981 right at the beginning. Yes. And then the Bush administration very close to

the beginning in 2001. So you've really seen this transition and this year whether Hillary Clinton wins or Donald Trump wins

We'll have a pretty thoroughgoing transition right? You know this ought to be a better transition in one way

After 2000 we changed the law so that the transition is supposed

to begin when you're nominated not when you're elected so you get that extra month anyway

of September October two, two months.

Right.

10 weeks, close to.

So you have more time.

I'm not involved in the transitions this year, so I'm not sure what's going on.

The critical thing is probably personnel.

It's the drawing up of lists of candidates for,

it's thousands of positions and particularly if you're in the

Trump transition I would think this is a difficult task actually you're new

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