World - US;Bush Praised By Both Parties for Transition Planning

Edwin Chen

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush is leaving office with some of the lowest job-approval ratings in history. He's being assailed by both of his would-be successors, one of whom will inherit two wars and the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, Bush is engineering what may be the most carefully considered and potentially successful presidential transition in modern times, both Democrats and Republicans close to the process say.

The president started the preparations last spring, ordering federal agencies to get ready for a new administration, with deadlines for various tasks. By August, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten had persuaded representatives of Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama to join in. The advance work may get the new president off to a fast start, participants say.

``I do feel pretty good about this one,'' says Harrison Wellford, a former White House and congressional aide who has worked on presidential transitions since Jimmy Carter's back in 1976 and is now advising Obama. ``The White House and the agencies are doing a good job, learning from mistakes of the past.''

That planning, Wellford says, will better prepare the president-elect for the ``onrushing freight train of decisions,'' including making some 2,000 appointments.

Seamless Transfer

The imperatives of a seamless transfer of power have seldom if ever been greater.

``This is probably the most important transition we've seen in the modern presidency,'' says John P. Burke, a University of Vermont political scientist who has written books about presidential changeovers. ``We're not dealing with a normal transition, but a very extraordinary set of circumstances.''

Since the crisis erupted, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has conferred numerous times with McCain and Obama. The administration is making sure each side receives ``religiously equal'' amounts of time, even simultaneously including representatives from both campaigns in some briefings, says Clay Johnson III, a White House official supervising the planning.

Top officials at the Treasury Department have signaled to both campaigns that they will work to bring on board -- even before Jan. 20 -- a replacement for Neel Kashkari as chief of the department's financial-rescue plan, according to Treasury spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin.

Early Action?

Last month, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said Bush should even consider nominating his successor's choice for Treasury secretary to reassure investors and consumers.

The General Services Administration, the government's landlord agency, has set aside 120,000 square feet of transition office space downtown, enough for about 500 people. By law, the agency can turn over the ``keys'' to the president- elect and his staff as early as 12:01 a.m. Nov. 5, said Tim Horne, an agency transition manager.

``We're setting up a fully functioning office,'' Horne said in a briefing for reporters today. ``We're ready now.''

Bush plans to convene a Cabinet meeting early this month to receive agency-by-agency updates on their readiness, says Johnson, now deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. He says the 44th president will be ``better prepared than any prior administration.''

Both Sides of Fence

Johnson has experience on the other side of the fence. In the spring of 1999, months before then-Texas Governor Bush declared his presidential candidacy, Johnson began preparing for his possible assumption of power.

Academics credit that advance planning for Bush's well- orchestrated transition in 2000-2001 despite the 37-day struggle over the election outcome that halved the official changeover period.

The Bush administration started off strong largely because of Andrew Card, Burke says. Card was designated Bush's contingency White House chief of staff on election night 2000 and ``put together the White House staff while everybody was focusing on Florida,'' Burke says.

Even in less momentous times, the consequences of a well- executed transition -- or a mistake-ridden one -- can have a lasting impact on a presidency.

Lasting Impact

Wellford says that ``poorly planned transitions,'' especially in crisis periods, ``can hurt the president-elect, reduce his mandate and increase the risks of failure in his first year, or even his first term.''

The detailed planning and cooperation between the administration and the McCain and Obama camps is a far cry from earlier eras.

After the 1932 election, amid the Great Depression, newly elected Franklin D. Roosevelt spurned entreaties from his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, to work together on plans to rescue the economy and the nation's banks.

Twenty years later, Harry Truman set the modern standard by hosting Dwight Eisenhower and providing him with briefing papers, says Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, a nonpartisan group that provides information to transition teams.

Setting aside their personal enmity, Truman also set a precedent by providing intelligence briefings to both presidential candidates during the campaign, Kumar says.

Chilly Relations

Still, institutional cooperation doesn't guarantee warm personal relations. Truman and Eisenhower, for instance, didn't speak as they rode from the White House to the Capitol for Eisenhower's inauguration. Given the criticisms directed at Bush this year by both presidential nominees, the temperature in the presidential limousine on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, is anybody's guess.

To avoid seeming presumptuous, the Obama and McCain campaigns are reluctant to discuss their transition preparations, though Obama said in an Oct. 29 ABC television interview that voters have a right to expect that the president-elect ``will hit the ground running.''

The two leaders of McCain's transition efforts, Washington lobbyist William Timmons and former Navy Secretary John Lehman, declined to comment.

``We'll be well-organized and we'll be ready,'' said Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager.

At the Center for American Progress, a Democratic-leaning Washington research group headed by John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, transition planning for Obama has been under way for months.

Work in Progress

Among the array of questions being discussed is whether to restructure the National Security Council in light of post- Sept. 11 concerns about domestic security, says P.J. Crowley, who worked in Clinton's NSC and is leading those discussions.

``I give the Bush administration credit,'' Crowley says. ``They recognized they'd be turning over two active wars and a Department of Homeland Security that's still a work-in- progress.''

Just staffing a new administration is an enormous task: The transition can expect 40,000 or more job applications, and ``you've got to be extremely well-organized in handing this massive flow,'' says Wellford.

``President Clinton's transition team was unprepared for the tidal wave of applicants and paid a heavy price for mismanaging it,'' he adds.

Insufficient Vetting

Former Bush aide Card says one common mistake is insufficiently vetting high-level nominees. Ensuing controversies can sap a new administration's momentum, he says.

Another misguided impulse among some presidents is to name a Cabinet at the expense of forming a senior White House staff, says James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington.

``What you end up with is a Cabinet in place but nobody in the White House to help orchestrate what's going on,'' Johnson says.

Experts caution that cooperation between the campaigns and the White House hardly ensures a successful transition.

``Something's going to go wrong in this next transition, I guarantee you that,'' says Paul Light, a New York University public-service professor. ``What we don't know is what it'll be or how the new administration's going to handle it.''

Moreover, adds Wellford, ``unfortunately, good transitions do not guarantee good presidents. George W. Bush had a model transition but a failed presidency.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Edwin Chen in Coral Gables, Florida at echen32@bloomberg.net