Bush, aides turn to transition process

By CHRISTOPHER LEE of The Washington Post

The morning after his 1972 re-election, President Richard Nixon summoned his Cabinet and top aides and told them they had to resign.

Nixon, who kept only five Cabinet members, later said his goal was not a personnel purge; he merely wanted to start his second term with a symbolic clean slate. Morale plummeted among his most loyal subordinates, however, and Nixon in his memoirs called the move “a mistake.”

President Bush—indeed, any president—is unlikely to repeat that error as he and his staff carry out the seasonal review of Cabinet members and other key personnel that accompanies the transition to a second presidential term, said G. Calvin Mackenzie, professor of government at Colby College in Maine and an expert on presidential transitions.

“The reaction was enormously negative,” Mackenzie said of Nixon's maneuver. “Virtually every Cabinet officer who wrote a memoir underscored that as the worst moment in their public service.”

With a contentious election behind them, Bush and his aides are now turning their attention to a transition process that probably began weeks ago and undoubtedly will involve departures, additions and other changes among political appointees for months.

The White House did not respond to inquiries Wednesday about this year's process, but analysts and participants in past presidential transitions say moving from a first term to a second isn't as difficult as building a new administration from scratch. Still, there probably will be substantial turnover as some Cabinet members are replaced or reshuffled, and various deputies and assistants weigh whether to stay put, jockey for a better job or head to the private sector.

“There's more of a transition there than meets the eye” in a second term, said Paul Light, a government scholar at New York University who has studied the political appointee process. “There's going to be a fair amount of turnover. I'd estimate that roughly half of the Bush Cabinet and sub-Cabinet will be departing over the next six months, another 30 percent will change jobs and another 20 percent will stay put. That's just a rough guess based on past patterns.”

Some long-serving political appointees may return to the private sector to sit out a one-year federal lobbying ban so they can cash in on their contacts while Bush is still in office, he said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta are widely thought to be contemplating moving on. Light said he expects lower-level departures at the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, where the demands of the war on terrorism and, in DHS's case, cobbling together a new agency, have made difficult jobs even more exhausting.

Leon Panetta, White House chief of staff during Clinton's 1996 transition, said Bush officials likely have already approached Cabinet members and other key officials about who plans to leave, and developed lists of potential successors for the president to consider.

“By this point they should have a pretty good idea as to which Cabinet members are going to resign and which ones will stay on. And then, of course, there are always those they may not want to stay on—and they'll have to deal with that,'' Panetta said, chuckling. “You really ought to ... try to complete the process by the end of the year so you've got a team in place to begin to continue the administration in the new year.''

Panetta said personnel decisions turn on many considerations: avoiding burnout among appointees, ensuring that federal agencies stay on course, rewarding loyalists and bringing in fresh talent.

“I don't think these jobs ought to be career positions,” Panetta said. “Sometimes you really help the president by virtue of moving on and letting some new blood into the operation.”

Mackenzie said presidents face less pressure to repay political debts in choosing appointees during a second term. Bush “has more latitude than he had four years ago to choose people who exactly fit his needs as he unfolds a new policy agenda,” Mackenzie said.

The positioning for administration jobs will soon kick into high gear. The “Plum Book,” the guide to the executive branch's political jobs published after every election, is expected to be released by the House Government Reform Committee by mid-December, a committee spokesman said.

Light said the jobs won't be as attractive this year as they were during Bush's first term. Lame-duck presidents tend to accomplish less in their final years than in their first term, he said.

“Historical patterns on a second term suggest that it's just not as exciting a place to be,” Light said. “The reality is the second-term presidency has a very short time to make a difference, and then the conversation shifts to the battle for the heart and soul of the party in 2008.”