We are in the last days before the November presidential election for both campaigns. It seems that every minute, every dollar and every resource are dedicated to winning the election.
But while of course, the focus is on winning, both campaigns are rightly spending some of their time planning for the transition to Office.
The American transition of presidential power is long and complex compared with most other countries, and numerous presidential candidates who have won impressive electoral victories have stumbled in the early days in office because of a less than perfect presidential transition.
What is so hard and complex about the American presidential transition? Let’s consider transitions of power in the United Kingdom.
The UK held an election on July 4. On July 5, Rishi Sunak of the Conservative Party was no longer Prime Minister, and Keir Starmer of the Labor Party assumed the office. Similarly, in all of the Cabinet departments, or ministries, as they are called in the UK, the Conservative Party heads of the departments were replaced by Labor ministers in the same short time frame. One day after the election, Labor’s government was in place and ready to go
in the US. We hold presidential elections in early November, and the winner of that election takes office roughly 11 weeks later on january 20.
With all of that time, you would think that smooth transitions are the norm, but the complexity of the process has led to rushed or even incomplete transitions. By January 20
in the UK, there was a very small number of political positions that changes hands, the heads of ministries and a small number of their staff.
Each of these ministers is drawn from Parliament, and when in the minority, there are shadow ministers in each department who sometimes just transition into government as the ministers of a department that they are already familiar with.
Most of the government is staffed by permanent civil service employees who stay in place and serve the new government as they had served the prior government.
The biggest difference for American transitions is the number of political positions, often outsiders to government, who must be identified, vetted, and many of them confirmed by the Senate before they take office.
There are over 1200 positions in the regular government that require Senate confirmation.
That number grows to roughly 4000 if other political staff not confirmed by the Senate are included.
And as these people are not primarily drawn from sitting members of Congress. They are outsiders. As outsiders, we subject them to significant FBI background checks, ethics disclosures, and in the case of Senate confirmed appointees, to thorough disclosure of background information to Senate Committees,
even in the most organized transitions, cabinet secretaries are ready to be confirmed on january 20.
Deputy Secretaries and other key positions might be able to make it through the process in the two months following. But many important positions are not filled even a year into an administration,
a presidential campaign that does not plan for personnel well in advance will be behind the ball without the best people and with significant delays in confirmation,
President Elect must also plan for their early agenda in office. Presidential candidates often make many promises on the campaign trail on what they will do on their first day in office. Some of those promises are possible in the case of executive orders and policy changes that a president can make by himself or herself, without congressional approval or without working through the regulatory process.
But even these require significant planning and expertise, and a president elect will often have to do this with limited staff and resources.
More difficult is planning a legislative agenda and negotiating the shoals of the budget and appropriations process.
Past presidential candidates have often over promised only to find that the political landscape of Congress.
Was difficult,
or even presidents with full party control of Congress have not always worked well with their own party leadership
or recognized the difficulty and length of time it takes to get major legislation through Congress. The
and even a President very much in sync with Congress will find that Congress’s capacity to manage several bills through the process at the same time is limited.
All of this means that there is no luxury of waiting to plan for the transition until after the election, recent laws have given President select more resources and access to government information and functions during the transition process. And in this election, we have one candidate who is a former president and the other candidate who is the sitting Vice President of the current administration.
All of this should give our next president an advantage on the presidential transition.
It was once thought to be taboo for presidential campaigns to be engaged in presidential transition planning.
It was presumptuous for a candidate to assume he or she would be in the White House, but the landscape of past difficult transitions explains why both campaigns, while Outwardly they are intensely focusing on winning the election, are also responsibly planning to make the difficult transition into office. I.
