I had a professor in college that IIRC said that transition teams used this book as part of their education for the incoming POTUS.
Hopefully when she gets to grips with the job, she’ll ask for the US’ nuclear deterrent to be aimed away from its allies 
This does seem to be argumentative. My impression of what you’re saying is that it wasn’t Carter’s fault his first term was not good enough (I don’t remember the campaign, but I’d bet that argument was made), and the voters should have taken that into account, and they were wrong to not give him another chance. Of course, Carter made mistakes of his own.
If I’ve misunderstood you, my apologies.
Something isn’t quite adding up in my brain. Supposing an amendment passes allowing naturalized citizens to become president and I get elected 
. There’s no way in hell I’m just showing up in the White House and throwing myself into the arms of the secret service and the staff. Do presidents actually just do that? I’d definitely want to have some of the people who I trusted throughout my life – assistants, campaign people, friends and family within easy reach if not right there with me. As a president my job should never include blindly following advice from some people I barely know (or even just met) – and even if I end up following their advice 99% of the time because they know what they’re doing, the actual decisions would only be made if I know what I’m doing. Or is this just an infeasible expectation? Would I have to pick my battles as to what to get into personally due to the sheer amount of responsibilities?
Now, the White House better have a really good internal reference library. I’d also make absolutely sure that my essential reference books came with me the first day and were within reach the first minute. I figure that since the Watergate, record keeping for internal deliberations and decision making process of the Oval Office have been pretty skimpy, but wouldn’t there still be plenty of notes and opinions from my predecessor (assuming my predecessor was literate)? Would it be weird (or improper) to give my predecessor and a call and chat?
- Groman
Library of Congress - one of the world’s largest libraries - I’m sure the Librarian of Congress (who the President appoints) would personally help with reference material.
Right, but I would assume there are books in the White House. At least some standard law books and an encyclopedia, no?
First, we know who the candidates for president will be a full year before taking office. That’s because the major primaries are scheduled for February. The winner will be assured of a place on the ticket. Nobody just shows up in the office unannounced and unprepared. For a full year they do little but set themselves up for office.
And of course they do take people they’ve trusted all their lives with them. Where have you been the last six years? There have been endless and nonstop accusations that Bush has relied too heavily on the advice of no one but his Texas cronies. All presidents do this to a greater or lesser degree, of course.
And as I wrote earlier, the sitting president always briefs the incoming president on important issues regardless of party.
Your scenario is basically impossible. It assumes a level of ignorance about the process that no presidential candidate can ever have in real life. Even though nobody can anticipate what it’s truly like to be president, the new president-elects have literally thousands of people ready to smooth the process in every conceivable way.
You’ve misunderstood. My point was that he took over a bad situation and got very little support, even from his own party. Because of the jump between governor of Georgia and the US presidency, the learning curve was unusually long. He wasn’t as incompetent as people would like to portray him. It’s that circumstances worked against him and by the time he learned the job it was too late. It’s not a matter of whether the voters should have taken it into account, the fact remains that they didn’t. This is GQ, I’m trying to be non-political.
First, you have to be realistic. People don’t just get elected without major help and support of a lot of people that make politics and government their job. The time between the election and the inauguration is used for preparations, briefings and planning. When an administration changes Washington DC doesn’t just shut down and turn their jobs over to a new bunch of incompetents. Most of the old incompetents stay in place and run the day to day functions of the government. The new president is mostly responsible for policies and priorities.
If Pizza Hut appoints a new CEO from outside the business all of the stores don’t shut down and reopen under new management. A change of direction is a drawn out process.
Yes, outgoing Presidents fully brief incoming Presidents. They do keep in touch and ex-presidents continue to get intelligence briefings. A great anticdote is that Nixon met with Johnson after Johnson left the White House. Johnson was writing his memoirs and told Nixon to make a record of everything because he was having trouble remembering some of the things that went on in the Oval Office. It was this meeting that was a lot of the impetus for Nixon installing the taping system that eventually led to his downfall.
The Librarian of Congress, James Billington, doesn’t have any training as a librarian. But he is an expert on international relations! His job is more administrative and political than research-oriented.
The Library of Congress also doesn’t do much work for the President. As its name implies, its primary focus is to serve Congress. There is a library in the White House, but when the President needs research on a topic done, there are a whole bunch of executive departments that have their own libraries full of researchers who pretty much exist to do this kind of work.
Bill Hicks had a great rant on this subject back in '93…
The great thing about the United States federal government is it is significantly automatic when it comes to the day-to-day services that are most important to the population.
When a President comes in, they pretty much shave off the very tip-top of the bureaucracy, the sliver of the bureaucracy that is politically appointed.
These are positions that most career bureaucrats never reach, they are also positions that aren’t necessarily involved in the day to day running of whatever bureaucracy they are associated with.
For example, I know nothing whatsoever about agriculture aside from the sort of stuff anyone who is alive, not mentally impaired, and above the age of 18 knows about the basics of how plants grow.
If I was appointed Secretary of Agriculture, you might suspect that the Dept. of Agriculture would be in disarray. No, not really. Because the people that really run the Department are career members who do know a lot about their jobs, people who do not get appointed or removed on the whim of a politician. Truthfully, while the Department might stagnate somewhat, I could play golf every day for my entire term as Secretary, never do any work whatsoever, and the Department would honestly probably not come out terribly bad.
The bureaucracy is often called the fourth branch of government. This isn’t far from the truth. Career bureaucrats wield an enormous amount of power, a high-ranking career bureaucrat is unknown, never going to be elected President, but he’ll have a career spanning decades. And within the bureaucratic organ that a given bureaucrat is part of, the higher ranking bureaucrats do wield considerable power. At the lower rungs of government bureaucrats wield way more power than the President, for example. While technically the Dept. of Agriculture or Commerce are part of the executive branch, the various layers of those departments are quite possibly entrenched with statute and thus the President can’t really alter them significantly. The bureaucracy even has its own institutional guidelines and rules and regulations which it can even apply to normal citizens.
That’s part of why being President works. You can’t possibly be qualified to run all the federal agencies and departments. No one can. But if you’re reasonably smart you can find the right people who are qualified to fill those positions and fill them. Those people serve as intermediaries between the vast bureaucracy and you, and through them you implement decisions that have varying levels of trickle down-effect and eventually start to actually reflect your policy wishes.
Like any high executive office, being President involves an obscene amount of delegation. Delegating too much responsibility can be a bad thing, but not delegating enough can be just as bad, and there are prominent examples of both throughout U.S. Presidential history.
If you watch “Yes Minister” the BBC TV series, right through to when it becomes “Yes, Prime Minister”, I think you’d get a pretty good idea. I know it’s English, but I suspect it all works the same way, broadly. Also, many politicians I have heard talking about the series suggest it is remarkably accurate.
The broad summary? When he first becomes a Minister, the main character gets pushed around and told what to do by his advisors and top civil servants. Because they do know what to do procedurally etc, he is at their mercy to some degree (not entirely, but enough to be slightly scary). Gradually, he learns his craft from them.
I read Neustadt in college. Very good stuff. I remember reading that, when JFK was still campaigning in 1960, Neustadt was advising him on the potential transition. Neustadt had given a campaign staffer a preliminary memo and was on JFK’s campaign plane when the candidate himself, hoarse from repeated speechmaking, summoned Neustadt. JFK was clutching the memo and rasped “This is great stuff!” Neustadt was horrified that JFK would risk damaging his voice further just to talk about what he had written about the transition process.
FDR’s transition to Truman went poorly - FDR died after a few months without having told Truman much of anything, including about the Manhattan Project. Truman’s transition to Eisenhower also went badly, in part because of partisanship and in part because of the two men’s distaste for each other. Ike swore he’d do better for his successor, and did; JFK was fully briefed by the CIA and by Ike himself. JFK later consulted him at Camp David after the Bay of Pigs invasion went sour. Later transitions have tended to be on the Eisenhower model (although there were those stories, probably false, about petty anti-Bush practical-joke sabotage in the White House in 2001).
Here is the room in the Library which Presidents have utilized. Remember that Thomas Jefferson donated his private library collection. There is more of a connection with the Library of Congress and Presidents than you might think.
Between the Johnson Administration and the current Bush Administration - 45 years - we’ve had the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the Iraq War. Then there’s been Ford, Carter, and Clinton - three unassuming Presidents - who could actually balance domestic policy and foreign policy. Give me the 70s or 90s any day!
Martin writes that the bureaucracy is a good thing. One word: FEMA. Read this article, the first page, and tell me where the reporter is wrong. Why is the headline wrong?
I don’t mean to just bump my own thread but it is more relevant than I ever imagined until today. People might find it informative but I have additional questions.
How is Donald Trump supposed to fill every vital position in a fairly short period of time with fairly few insider political connections especially because his team is so small and he probably didn’t really believe he would win?
Does the Republican Party just have to go into overdrive to start recruiting everyone from the Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of Transportation as quickly as possible? Those are the just some of the major positions. There are countless numbers of more obscure ones as well.
Actually with the amount of living past presidents, it would not be all that hard to set up.
Declan
Radio this morning said something like 4000 appointed positions in 73 days? I’m sure most get filled over the first few months, not all by the end of January, just the biggies.
Kind of a minor thing but one of William Safire’s books on his days in the Nixon White House has a brief bit on “how exactly does a President veto a bill”?. Does he sign anything, cross it out, tear it up?
When Kennedy won in 1960, he thoroughly ignored Eisenhower during a transition briefly. Several months later after he screwed up the Bay of Pigs, he called in Eisenhower again and this time Ike told him to pay attention to him. When someone proposes something ask plenty of questions about it, why it will succeed and what could go wrong.
I’m speculating but most Presidents create a transition team. One of their jobs is to come up with lists of people to fill jobs in the executive department. I would expect Pence will be called on for this.