Second, it would discourage the creation of an instant army of transition staff with its tendency to interfere and disrupt the ongoing processes of government. At the same time, a shorter period should encourage the President-elect to rely more on senior career officers from the outset to provide continuity to Government. Third, if accompanied by relieving the outgoing President of the responsibility to prepare a swansong budget, State of the Union Message, and economic message, a shorter transition period should free up staff in the Executive Office of the President, especially OMB staff, to go to work immediately for the new President in helping him prepare his budget and policy messages. As you know, now OMB staff is tied up by the outgoing President from election day until usually well after Christmas, and the lack of availability of that expert staff is a source of frustration for the incoming President, who has his own budget to prepare but can't get access to the expertise sometimes that he needs to prepare it. With only 6 weeks or so between the election and the inauguration, assuming that one went to a December 20 date, the outgoing President will be more likely to turn his full attention to leavetaking and less likely to make grants, sign contracts, initial Executive orders, or take other steps intended to fence in the new President with lameduck commitments. The final reason, a shorter period would require the initiation of pre-election planning on a more serious and comprehensive basis than ever before. The outgoing President and the candidates alike would be expected to give serious attention to this responsibility; this attention would in turn legitimize transition planning activities by the career bureaucracy. Now, having said all of those good things on behalf of shortening the period, there are a number of caveats I would remind the committee about when they think through the pros and cons of accelerating the date of inauguration. First, the history of preelection planning by past presidencies has been pretty dismal. Second, if you push the date up too soon after the election, you run into the fatigue factor which affects Presidents and staffs alike. You don't provide very much time for the passions of the campaign to cool, and sometimes it is important for the Presidentelect to put aside the slogans and doctrines of the campaign before he starts thinking about governance. And the last point I would make is that sometimes you need to save the President from his friends. Campaign staffs are not necessarily good White House staff or good Cabinet members. If you push the inauguration date up too soon after the election, there will be a lot of pressure on the President-elect to bring the campaign into the White House. We have seen a number of examples in recent presidencies where that didn't necessarily serve the President in the long run. So with those caveats, I endorse the concept at least of trying to shorten the period between election day and inauguration, and look forward to discussing this further with the committee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The following was received for the record:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. HARRISON WELLFORD WHEN A DEMOCRACY CHANGES HANDS: Mr. Chairman, my name is Harrison Wellford. I am a partner in the law firm of Wellford, Wegman, Krulwich, Gold and Hoff of 1775 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC. In 1976 and in 1980, I served as a transition coordinator during the Ford-Carter and Carter-Reagan Presidential transitions, respectively. In 1976, I was director of the Regulatory Reform and Government Organization Task Force in the Carter campaign's pre-election planning group and subsequently helped to oversee the transition in the White House and the Executive Office of the President after the election. In 1980, as Executive Associate Director of OMB, I coordinated transition activities for the Executive Branch for President Carter and was a liaison with the Reagan transition team. My resume is attached. The Presidential transition period is a unique phenomenon of American government unique in its duration, scope, and general absence of partisanship. At their best, these transitions are a period when citizens of goodwill put aside partisan passions and work constructively to manage the transfer of power. But because they involve a possible "ambiguity of power," transitions are also periods of potential peril, during which allies and enemies alike can be uncertain as to who is speaking for the United States. In the absence of a crisis, the Government enters a state of suspended animation where most important decisions are simply deferred. In a crisis, uncertainty and inexperience can increase the probability of a significant blunder such as the Bay of Pigs. As Frederick Mosher has written, "The period of transition is one of particular vulnerability for this country because other nations, both foes and friends, may take advantage of our difficulty in making and implementing decisions when neither the incumbent President nor the President-elect is in firm control." Yet through a combination of dumb luck and goodwill, the United States has managed transitions fairly well up to now. Since the administration of George Washington gave way to John Adams in 1797, there have been 37 changes of leadership under the Constitution. With the exception of the disputed election of 1876, the U.S. government has changed hands for almost 200 years without any serious challenge to the power and legitimacy of the new President. The succession crisis, a period of instability and violence in most parts of the world, does not exist in the United States. But our pride in the harmony with which power has been transferred in the U.S. should not blind us to the fact that transition is inherently a period of potential peril for our government and the world. The six-month duration of the transition three months for the old team to withdraw, three months for the new team to get confirmed and fully assume power is an astonishingly long period for the leadership of the world's greatest democratic power to be in flux. - - is Unlike European parliamentary democracies where only a handful of senior policy positions change hands, the entire policy superstructure of the Federal government in the U.S. thousands of professionals in hundreds of agencies replaced in a few months. Before January 20, the challenge is to prevent an ambiguity of power from enveloping the outgoing President. After January 20, the danger takes a different form when for three months or more an unseasoned President with inexperienced aides tries to direct an unsettled government. In these circumstances, a prevention of a power vacuum, the confusion of the appearance of a dual Presidency, or a breakdown of discipline in the bureacracy requires considerable goodwill and teamwork from people who only weeks before may have been adversaries in a bitter electoral struggle. - Transitions have happened with increasing frequency in the post-war Presidency. In the last 20 years, Presidential transitions have occurred about every three years. Yet despite its importance, the transfer of power in the Federal government has been little studied. The published studies which do exist mainly sponsored by Brookings - dealt with a transition experience very different from those which have become familiar in the 70's. In the early 1960's, Laurin Henry and Richard Neustadt described the Eisenhower and Kennedy years when transitions were managed almost casually by a handful of confidants to the President-elect operating in great secrecy. Since that period, transitions have in one sense come of age, moving from a loosely organized set of personal advisors in daily contact with the President-elect to a highly structured complex hierarchy from which the President-elect may be somewhat aloof. Transitions in the 70's and 80's have grown into large bureaucratic machines with budgets in the millions of dollars and separate teams for each Federal agency, any one of which exceeded in size the entire transition staff assembled by Clark Clifford for John Kennedy. Carter in 1976 and Reagan in 1980 appointed transition teams of approximately 300 and 1500 people respectively, a change which is positive in some respects but which also increased the potential for confusion and uncertainty in the exercise of power during this critical period. With the increase in size of the transition staff has come a change in its purpose. The transition teams of the 50's and 60's worked directly with the President-elect and served his immediate needs: selection of a White House staff, selection of the Cabinet, briefings on world and domestic affairs, preparation of the budget, thank yous and other wrap-up duties of the campaign, policy planning of the first 100 days, and inaugural planning. In the 70's and 80's, the transition staff became more remote from the President-elect and served many purposes not directly related to his own pre-inaugural planning: it serves as a temporary spoils systems to reward campaign contributors and build political bridges to interest groups; it tides campaign workers over until January 20 when they can go on the Federal payroll; it provides a kind of spring training for the President-elect's personnel office to try out new people; and it serves as forward scouts for the new administration in the agencies, showing the flag in the conquered territory and restraining by their presence efforts of the outgoing administration to infiltrate the career service and entrench old policies with midnight regulations. The change in the scale and purpose of transition since the Eisenhower-Kennedy period is in part attributable to Congress's decision to pay the transition staffs with public money. Federal funds for transition were available for the first time in 1968 when President-elect Nixon and President Johnson received $450,000 each. Nixon was also the first President-elect to raise private funds ($1,000,000) to supplement Federal transition monies. By 1980-1981, the Federal fund had grown to $2 million for the President-elect and $1 million for the outgoing President. President-elect Reagan also received over $2 million in private contributions. Why the Presidential Transition Period Should be Shortened Transition staffs in the last ten years have become bureaucratic beheamoths which no longer put the President-elect's needs first and which, by their confusion and cloudy mandates, create new dangers for an already unstable period. One reason the transition process has gotten out of control is that it lasts too long. While pushing inauguration day up two months to November 20 seems impractical for reasons discussed below, there is no doubt in my mind that the period should be shortened, perhaps to a mid-December date. An earlier inaugural would have the following advantages: O it would narrow the window of vulnerability, especially in foreign affairs, when uncertainty as to whom is in charge may encourage adventures by our enemies while at the same time undermining the President's will to act in a crisis; it would discourage the creation of an instant army if accompanied by relieving the out-going President of the responsibility to prepare a swansong budget, State of the Union message, and economic message, a O shorter transition period should free up staff in the Executive Office of the President, especially OMB staff, to go to work immediately for the new President in helping him prepare his budget and policy messages; with only six weeks or so between the election and the inauguration, the out-going President will be more likely to turn his full attention to leavetaking and less likely to make grants, sign contracts, initial executive orders, or take other steps intended to fence in the new President with lame-duck commitments; a shorter period would require the initiation of Caveats While I endorse a shorter transition period, I feel strongly that moving the date of the inaugural all the way up to November 20 is impractical. The following caveats discussed below reveal some of the problems which must be considered by proposals to accelerate the date of the inauguration. Pre-election Planning by the Outgoing Administration Systematic pre-election transition planning within the incumbent Administration occurs only when the incumbent President is not a candidate for re-election. In 1952, 1960, and 1968, Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson, who were not seeking re-election, organized a transition staff in June or July. Planning was nearly completed by election day. In all three cases the Bureau of the Budget career staff was used to coordinate transition preparations in the agencies. Because of the early start, these activities did not conflict with the budget cycle. When an incumbent President is seeking another term, transition planning waits until after the election, regardless of what the polls say. Anyone imprudent enough to raise the issue internally would be suspected of defeatism if not disloyalty. Some informal clandestine planning is conducted by career staff at OMB and in the agencies, but this work is not acknowledged by the President's political officers, even when they know it is going on. As a result, when an incumbent President is defeated, planning that should ideally take about three months is compressed into several weeks. Even after the returns are in, members of a defeated Administration will be reluctant to move energetically into transition planning. |