- Pritzker Fellows
- Current Fellows
- Mick Mulvaney
Mick Mulvaney
Former U.S. Representative from South Carolina and Acting White House Chief of Staff under President Trump
Winter-Spring 2024 Pritzker Fellow
Seminar Series: “An Insider’s Look At Washington & the GOP in the 21st Century”
Few people are as familiar with Washington, DC, from the inside, as Mr. Mulvaney. In the last decade he served in more and varied positions than likely any other person. He managed the White House as Chief-of-Staff to the President during both an impeachment and the first days of the Coronavirus pandemic. As the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and a Cabinet Member he oversaw the broadest deregulatory initiative in 40 years and managed the longest government shutdown in history. He also served as Acting Director of one of the most controversial federal regulators, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and was Ambassador and Special Envoy to Northern Ireland during the height of Brexit. Prior to his executive branch service he was elected four times to the United States House of Representatives, where, amongst other things, he co-founded the Freedom Caucus and the Blockchain Caucus. He also served in the SC House and Senate. He is a frequent media commentator both in the US and overseas. He is a political and economic contributor to NewsNation and SkyNews Australia, and writes a regular column for The Hill newspaper. He appears regularly on CNBC, Bloomberg and the BBC, as well as CNN, CBS, and FoxBusiness. His work has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USAToday. Prior to public service, he worked in various roles: lawyer, real estate developer, restaurant owner/operator and franchisor, and homebuilder. He is currently the co-Chairman of Actum Strategic Advisers, and serves as an adviser to the Digital Chamber of Commerce and the Swiss technology firm, Astra Protocol, Inc. He is married to Pam. They have 23-year-old triplets, and live in South Carolina.
Seminars
“An Insider’s Look At Washington & the GOP in the 21st Century”
Mick Mulvaney has served in probably more and varied positions in the federal government than any other person in the last 20 years. He was a member of the House of Representatives, a cabinet member, the Director of the Office of Management & Budget, the Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and spent 15 months as Donald Trump’s third Chief of Staff. He also served as a diplomat in the role of Special Envoy to Northern Ireland. Director Mulvaney will give an insider’s tour of Washington and the functions - and dysfunction - of the federal government since the TEA Party wave of 2010 in which he was first elected to Congress. He will touch on everything from government shutdowns and debt ceiling crisis to mutinies against the Speaker of the House and the creation of the Freedom Caucus, which he co-founded. He will walk through battles with Democrats at every level, sparring with the DC press corps, dinner with Kim Jung Un and meetings with Chairman Xi and his front seat during the early days of Covid and the House impeachment of President Trump.
Seminars are off-the-record & open to current UChicago students only.
Director Mulvaney will expand on how he came to be involved with so many different pivotal moments in government in the last decade and a half and lay out the general direction of the seminars, along with what he’d like to achieve, with your feedback, over the ensuing sessions. We will also take a quick look at the political landscape in the United States in the run-up to the 2010 Election.
Washington has always been a place of bitter division - and whether it was worse “then” or “now” really doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it isn’t very good right now. We will look at the TEA Party wave election of 2010 as one possible touchstone for the current conditions in our nation’s capital. What was it about? Who were the key players? And what did the wave election mean to how Washington operated?
The TEA party gets down to business and turns Washington upside down in the process. We will talk about the key events of the Congressional session, including the first (almost) government shutdown, the debt ceiling “crisis” and the Budget Control Act, Cut-Cap-and Balance, the “fiscal cliff” and the beginning of the Speaker’s downfall. Politics continues to sour, with accusations of the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS and calls to impeach President Obama.
Barack Obama is re-elected and Republicans fail, for a time, to take the Senate, as the TEA party strengthens in some places, but also saw it cost Republicans critical seats in others - establishing a pattern that continues to this day. The battles continue as the Senate filibuster takes a regular central role. The government shuts down over the Affordable Care Act fight as jockeying begins for the 2016 Presidential race. The GOP finally retakes the Senate. Inside the House, GOP leadership has tired of the TEA Party folks and moves to quash it, leading to the formation of the House Freedom Caucus, Eric Cantor’s stunning loss and ultimately Speaker John Boehner’s unplanned retirement. Paul Ryan takes over as Speaker as the 2016 campaign begins in earnest.
Trump surprises everyone, including himself. But did he create the national division that got him elected, or did that division create him? How did he win, how did he then begin to set up an administration and what does that portend for 2024? We will look at the challenges to setting up “a government” when you don’t have any governmental experience at all. The 2018 midterms bring us the left’s answer to the Freedom Caucus - The Squad.
Suggested Reading:
"Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010" by Charles Murray
Chief of Staff is probably one of the most high-profile positions in any Administration, but it is also the most misunderstood. We will talk about how and why I got the job, how I set out to actually do the work and what that work is - and is not.
Suggested Reading:
“A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness" by Nassir Ghaemi
The second half of 2019 is dominated by the first Trump impeachment. We will go in-depth into the run-up to the impeachment, the famous call with Ukrainian President Zelenskiy, the management of the impeachment and how it tore the White House apart, helping to contribute to the weaknesses in the early response to COVID.
I left the White House in March of 2020, replaced by my then-good friend Mark Meadows. We will talk about that transition and why and how it took place. We will also talk about Mark’s approach to the job, how it is different from my own and the disastrous results. We will explore the Congressional January 6 hearings in critical detail, examining both its strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we will try to make some sense as to how all of that has led us to where we are going into the 2024 election.