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Taking the 'Ow' Out of Presidential Transitions When it was rumored that some Clinton White House staff members had removed the "w" from computer keyboards, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer confirmed the reports and even offered a humorous description of his reaction.
"It would have been 'wow,' but the 'w' was removed. So now it's just 'o,'" he said. Later that week, Fleischer took a more serious tone, saying that if the letters are not found and the computers don't work, "that's gover nment property that is now going to have to be replaced or fixed." This backpedaling by the press secretary raises some concerns, says UNC political science professor Terry Sullivan, who serves as associate director of the White House 2001 Project, a privately funded, multi-institutional and nonpartisan effort to smooth the presidential transition. "When the press secretary speaks, the presumption is that these are the words of the president, and when he starts fanning the flames...and then he backtracks, people start wondering," said Sullivan. "This has been the biggest problem they've had so far, and it's really not been that big a problem." In fact, other than this one consternation concerning possible vandalism, Sullivan calls President Bush's transition one of the smoothest ever. For this feat, he gives much credit to the White House 2001 Project, which he and Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University and project director, have developed over the past three years. They did so through their membership in the American Political Science Association's Presidency Research Group, a group of presidential scholars of which they are both former presidents. The project, which also is associated with the American Enterprise Institute's initiative titled "Transition to Governing," has the financial backing of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the support of several other organizations, including UNC and the James Baker III Institute at Rice University, Sullivan's home base since August 1999. On May 14, from 2 to 3:30 p.m., Sullivan will return to Chapel Hill to discuss the White House 2001 Project at a GAA program titled "Preparing the White House to Govern." In addition to talking about the overall success of the Bush transition and evaluating where the new administration stands after its first 100 days, Sullivan will address the presidential transition process, focusing on five basic lessons: scale, focus, early appointments, vertical personnel and avoiding commitments. "The main problem with transitions is understanding the scale necessary to run the White House," he said. "People don't appreciate what it's like. Whatever they think, it's 15 times worse. People forget it's the largest organization in the world." The second problem is focus, Sullivan said. "Candidates get elected based on the promises they make, but they tend to promise more than they can ever offer." He said the solution was for presidents to focus on two or three priorities, as Bush has with education and tax cuts—which can be difficult in Washington, D.C., where many different are pushing different agendas. Sullivan said a third lesson of presidential transitions was to appoint the White House staff first, so they can get to work as soon as possible. Bush heeded this advice, naming Andrew Card his chief of staff the day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor. In addition to Card, a D.C. veteran, Bush appointed two people who knew him well and had worked on his campaign, Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, as senior adviser to the president and counselor to the president. A fourth important factor involved making some 6,000 presidential appointments. Sullivan said this process should be done vertically rather than horizontally. In other words, rather than appointing the same number of sub-cabinet members in all departments, choose one department in which to make all the appointments. In Bush's case, he chose to focus on education and by early February had made two-thirds of the appointments in that department, allowing his agenda on education to get moving. Finally, Sullivan said president-elects should avoid making commitments too early in the transition period, which begins immediately after the election is decided. "You are not the president, so you can't be engaged in policy," he said. "The worse thing you can do is lose focus. If you are reacting [to questions], then you're not setting the agenda." Sullivan compared Bill Clinton to Bush in this category, describing how Clinton held an economic summit in Arkansas and discussed policy issues in the open. Bush, on the other hand, did the opposite, choosing not to discuss policy and concentrating on getting his staff together while spending time at his Texas ranch. These five lessons were addressed in the White House 2001 Project, which consists of the White House Interview Program and the Presidential Nomination Forms Online Project. The interview program involved building an institution memory, which never before existed, for selected White House offices through interviews with staff from previous administrations. The second aspect of White House 2001 is a computer program available on CD-ROM or online that is planned to reduce the difficult and repetitive application process for presidential appointees, making it easier for them to send forms to the multitude of government agencies. "It really is a tragedy in American politics that we don't have a transfer of power any better than we do," Sullivan said. "So you see this, and you feel an obligation to do something." —Worth Civils
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