Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, November 10th, 2008, President George W Bush meets with President-elect Barack Obama behind

closed doors for nearly two hours.

It was Barack Obama's first time inside the Oval Office

and this meeting sort of signaled the start of the transition between the Bush

terms and the Obama terms. Now this wasn't any old transition though the country was in the middle of an

economic spiral was coming off of a historic election. There was a real sense of

stakes and questions about balance when it came to well who was really leading the country through that crisis.

So does any of this sound familiar folks here to discuss the Bush Obama transition and presidential

transitions in general is as always Nicole Hammer of Columbia. Hello Nicky.

Hello Jody and we can talk a little bit about 20-20 but I want to go back not even

just the 2008 but way back and start maybe with a bigger some bigger context which is

elections are in November as you know inaugurations are in January as you know why

so much time in between why do transitions take so damn long? Well first like

historically they're shorter than they used to be if that's any comfort that

used to be that presidents used to be sworn in on March 4th and in in part because, A, like, news took longer to travel, as did people,

so it just took a long time to get everyone the information they needed to transition to a new government. but also it takes a long time to stand up a government.

And in 1932, the 20th Amendment is passed through Congress saying that actually we need this to go a little quicker people

and it was finally ratified in 1933 and you could imagine people really wanted that in effect in

1932 because Franklin Roosevelt wins the election in November

and the country has to wait four long months before they finally get a new president who can

...