WASHINGTON – You may think being president is like any job, just a lot bigger, says Terry Sullivan, executive director of the White House Transition Project. “It’s not even in the same universe.”
And that new universe starts before a new president even gets to the Oval Office: Creating a smooth transition from one presidency to the next is a complex yet crucial first step, Sullivan said.
He offers a comparison: You’re in charge of replacing all the management in the largest American corporations: “Going 30, 40 deep in Ford, GM, AT&T, Verizon, Wal-Mart, Sears, all the major medical companies, all the major financial companies, and all the major industrial companies,” he says. “That’s what the president’s job is – it’s filling that many positions in that many organizations with that many budgets and employing that many people.”
Another comparison: As governor of Texas, the second largest state in the U.S., George W. Bush’s office processed about 15,000 job applications in four years. When the Bush administration finished its transition to the presidency, Sullivan says, they’d received 190,000 applications: more than 12 times the amount in one-10th the time.
And the Obama administration? It received 350,000 applications between election and inauguration days, Sullivan says.
So starting to prepare for all that six weeks before the election just won’t cut it, he says.
“This is a general problem with people not really understanding the depth and breadth of presidential transitions,” he says.
Instead of six weeks, Sullivan recommends that candidates start planning for their transitions at least six months before even announcing their campaign. At that point, he says, candidates should set up a staff group not to get them elected – but to start planning for the transition.
“Early is important because there’s so much at stake,” he says.
What about the old adage of measuring the drapes before the house is built?
John P. Burke, presidential transition expert and author of numerous books and articles on the subject, says it’s important for this type of work to operate a bit below the radar so that it doesn’t draw too much media attention or distract the campaign group.
“A lot of [the campaign group] are going into the new administration,” he says, “and you want them to focus on the campaign rather than be thinking about jobs.”
That’s something he thinks might be problematic in a bill that’s been proposed to create processes and teams for pre-election and pre-inauguration transition planning by candidates and the existing bureaucracy.
“If pre-election transition planning becomes too visible,” he says, “then that could sort of distract from winning the campaign. It’s going to be interesting to see how they work around that.”
Burke and Sullivan say that security clearances are a key part of the pre-election transition process. After 9/11, Sullivan says, statutes were put into place that authorized official campaigns to send candidates’ names to the FBI to begin background checks prior to Election Day.
“That’s an important thing to get done because it will speed up the appointment process,” Sullivan says.
The most important focus in a transition is getting those political appointments nominated and confirmed, says Sullivan.
“We elect a president to elect change in the course of government,” he says. “He can’t do that without have all hands on deck.”