Excerpts from an editorial in The Washington Post yesterday:
We write today in praise of drape-measuring. Early preparation for a presidential transition is essential to a successful launch of any presidency, and this transition will be more challenging — more perilous — than any in decades.
It will be the first transfer of government since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, presenting America’s enemies with a tempting moment of potential vulnerability. It arrives in the midst of a financial crisis and two wars. Any new president must scramble to produce a budget shortly after taking office; this president also will have to assume management of the $700 billion (and counting) financial bailout. The candidates are understandably reluctant to discuss the transition for fear of appearing presumptuous. Indeed, Sen. John McCain has been deriding Sen. Barack Obama for “measuring the drapes” in the Oval Office. The fact of the matter, however, is that both candidates have engaged in transition planning, Obama in what appears to be a more systematic and detailed way than McCain. This is grounds for praise, not carping. As Clay Johnson, who launched George W. Bush’s transition planning in spring 2000, wrote in a recent article for Public Administration Review, “It is irresponsible for anybody who could be president not to prepare to govern effectively from day one.”
Exhibit A in how not to handle the transition is Bill Clinton, whose dawdling on filling his Cabinet and naming his White House staff contributed to the early stumbles of his presidency. Johnson and other transition experts believe the new president should announce his chief of staff within a few days of the election and, by Thanksgiving, name his key White House, economic, national security and foreign policy officials. That will be a daunting task; no recent president-elect has followed so ambitious a timetable. There are grounds for hope that the process will be speedier this time.
