Hello Everyone,
When a newly elected President takes office Is there a team in place that teaches him the day in and day out of being a President? The position must be overwhelming and I have a hard time believing that a new President and their team are just left to figure it out.
I’m not referring to policy, but just the general overview on running the Presidential office. (And no, this isn’t about Trump. Anyone coming fresh into the office must be a bit overwhelmed.)
Yes, they’re called the Transition Team. There’s a new team for every transition, with staff from both the outgoing President and the incoming one.
Here’s a write-up on Trump’s Transition Team. It is a very amusing(?) read.
Chris Christie essentially gave himself the job of heading the transition team, explaining to Trump that it was a legal requirement, and that there would be no government funding before November. Trump went ahead, over the objections of Holy Son-in-Law, but later changed his mind:
It was all a sham anyway; Trump never expected to win the November election. When he did, Bannon was sent to fire Christie without explanation.
In the previous post I mentioned the transition at Dept Agriculture. The transition at Dept Energy was even more … (amusing?).
And I predict that if Trump loses he will not prepare anything for the incoming administration.
Moderator Note
Let’s keep political potshots out of GQ. No warning issued, but such remarks contribute nothing to answering the OP.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Moderator Note
I also don’t think this thread needs to simply consist of Trump-bashing. Let’s focus on the general question of how this is carried out.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Leaders elected in any jurisdiction - national, state, county, city - might have had experience in lesser positions but many don’t work their way up a ladder. Executive offices have permanent staff to keep the system operating, no matter who holds office; call them Civil Service or Deep State. A prudent new executive leans on institutional memory and learns from those knowing how the machine works, how to finesse it to gain desired results and avoid dumb errors. A less prudent newcomer sweeps those away and installs their in-crowd. A couple of former Southern governors had difficulties there.
Some inherit a bit of training when politics is the family business. The current House speaker and the previous California governor are examples, though the latter started by countering his father, also a governor. Some US presidents were trained (or not) while in the often awful job of Veep. But the US Constitution does not require competence and teachability. Nobody is assigned to train a new president. No simple user manual exists. Nothing directs a newcomer but their own will and ambition. We get the luck of the draw.
Hiring an experienced political insider as Chief of Staff is also one way to counteract the inexperience of a new President and/or White House staff.
Some of the White House staff are career civil servants, and I expect them to stay on through administrations. They will be helpful to the new president, his family and the staff.
And remember that a new president has to fill about 4,000 appointed positions, along with everything else required.
Piggybacking on this, and one RioRico, many administrations have very experienced folks from prior White Houses. Consider, for example, George W. Bush’s administration, which included Dick Cheney and Colin Powell among many other experienced individuals. Bush himself was a former governor so he had some idea of what he was doing.
Obama hired more than a few Clinton aides which is to be expected. A lot of people don’t stay for a 2nd term so the president has to hire new people after his re-election. Janet Reno was rare , she stayed all 8 years with Clinton and so did Donna Shalala who is now in Congress. The day Bush was sworn in Janet Reno went on SNL during a skit where they used to poke fun at her. Obviously she did not mind the skits.
Damn, I so do miss the Janet Reno Dance Party.
Is this really accurate? I imagine most of the White House staff that stay on from one administration to another are the household staff. They might be useful to tell you things like where the rooms are and how to order a meal. But they’re not the people who are going to give any advice on running a government.
Political staff - the people that will tell you which department handles a specific issue or how to communicate with congressional staff or how to find a specific set of public records or to write up a position paper - are going to be almost completely new. Which makes sense. Donald Trump wouldn’t have wanted to work with a bunch of people from the Obama administration. And if Joe Biden gets elected, he’s not going to want to have the White House run by Trump staffers. You bring in your own people to get your agenda going and they bring in their own assistants and secretaries and other support staff.
I agree with Little Nemo. Kitchen workers, florists, White House tour guides? Sure, they’re carried over from one Administration to the next, but So What?
Secret Service agents assigned to the White House but who don’t report to the President are carried over, but they aren’t policy makers. The Executive Office of the President has 4000 staffers (e.g. several hundred at OMB) who will be carried over, but very few of them even work at the White House.
Almost every executive who works at the White House is a political appointee who will be replaced by an incoming President.
But the OP wasn’t about policy -
“I’m not referring to policy, but just the general overview on running the Presidential office.” And I suspect that the answer is the President doesn’t have much to do with the day-to day running of the office - the Chief of Staff and the secretary/executive assistant to the President probably do a lot of that. I doubt that anyone tells a president how to communicate with congressional staff or which department handles a particular issue - I suspect it goes the other way around, and the president tells the chief of staff that he wants someone to meet with someone about an issue and the political staff determines who is the appropriate person to meet with. ( and from what I can tell, the chief of staff/political staff may be new to the White House, but usually not to their functions)
By the way, I’ve heard a lot of praise for how George W Bush handled the transition to the Obama administration. So as I remember from articles about this, he invited representatives of the Obama and McCain campaigns to meet with White House staff even before the general election to start preparing.
Yes, and I’ve read that Obama specifically told his staff - many of them incredulous at and/or angered by Trump’s win - to follow the Dubya model and do all they could to assist the incoming White House staff.
But policy bubbles up from below. Presidents don’t have the time to learn everything they need to know. They have to make hundreds of decisions every week. They need to have a staff of people who can go out and spend a hundred hours learning all of the information, figure out what’s important and what isn’t, and then present the important information to the President in a ten minute briefing so he can make the final decision.
If you’re a President, you want people you can trust doing this. You want people who will pick out the information that you would think was important if you had the time to do all of the research yourself. These people have to agree with your political views in order to make the same decisions you would make on political issues.
It sounds like you think I disagree with you - but I think the only thing I might disagree with you on is what constitutes “running the office”. Let me see if I can explain better - I don’t disagree that the president doesn’t do the research himself , or that he wants people who agree with his political views working in the White House doing that research and briefing him. He may decide the general topics that will be covered in a speech - but I don’t think the president personally decides which who will write that speech or who will do the research. I think those day-to-day decisions are made further down. He may appoint the Director of Speechwriting - but he probably doesn’t get involved in choosing every employee in the speechwriting office. He chooses the White House Counsel - but it’s unlikely he chooses every lawyer who works in that office. I’m certain that that a generic president rarely if ever decides which lawyer will work on a specific issue. And like I said , the high-ranking political staff may be new to the White House, but not usually to their function - the White House Counsel is generally not a lawyer who spent her career in a solo practice.