Subject: transition story from tomorrow's NYT
From: "Chris Lu" <[email-masked]>
To: "Chris Lu" <[email-masked]>, "Adam Hitchcock" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], "Valerie Jarrett" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], "Pete Rouse" <[email-masked]>, "Melody Barnes" <[email-masked]>, "Bob Bauer (Perkins Coie)" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], "Jayne Thomisee" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], "Katie Johnson" <[email-masked]>, "Elizabeth Utrup" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:33:56 -0500

Nothing damaging, although there are some inaccuracies:  we haven't yet requested security clearances, and the number may not be 100. 

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Behind the Scenes, Teams for Both Candidates Plan for a Presidential Transition

By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON - Though they hate to discuss it, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are quietly planning what to do in the frenetic 77-day period from the presidential election to Inauguration Day, so they will be ready to take up the reins of government.

Democrats said that John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, was leading the transition preparations for Mr. Obama. Mr. Podesta, who founded a lobbying firm with his brother in 1988, is president of the Center for American Progress, a sort of government-in-exile waiting for Democrats to regain power. At the McCain campaign, Republicans said, transition work is being coordinated by William E. Timmons, a longtime Washington lobbyist whose clients have included the American Petroleum Institute and the mortgage company Freddie Mac.

If Mr. McCain wins, Republicans said, his transition team will probably be led by Mr. Timmons and John F. Lehman, a McCain fund-raiser who was secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan.

Both campaigns refused to discuss their transition plans, saying they did not want to jinx their chances or appear too cocky. The Obama campaign was stung in July when Republicans called Mr. Obama presumptuous for lining up transition advisers.

Clay Johnson III, deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said "the White House staff has met with transition representatives" for Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama.

"Both campaigns are doing what they need to do to be prepared to govern on Jan. 20 at noon," said Mr. Johnson, who was executive director of the Bush transition team in 2000-1. "The amount of work being done before the election, formal and informal, is the most ever."

Mr. McCain's transition planners are working at his campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va. The Obama campaign is based in Chicago, but his transition planners are here in Washington.

Presidential scholars, historians and former White House officials of both parties say that transition planning, far from being premature, ought to have begun months ago.

With the nation at war and financial markets in turmoil, "early planning for the transition is more important than ever," said Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor of political science at Towson University in Maryland who is director of the White House Transition Project, a nonpartisan group that provides information and assistance to the transition teams of both candidates.

Experts on national security worry that America's opponents will try to take advantage of the uncertainty surrounding the transition, the first since the terrorist attacks of 2001.

"In every transition, there's a total vacuum for anywhere from three months to a year," Mr. Lehman said. "It's appalling. On 9/11, President Bush had only 30 percent of his national security appointees in place, and that was eight months after the inauguration."

Elaine C. Duke, an under secretary of homeland security, said her department was "poised and ready" to work with the McCain and Obama campaigns on transition planning before the Nov. 4 election. But she said, "We have not been contacted by either campaign."

Planning is essential, Ms. Duke said, because "terrorists perceive government transitions to be periods of increased vulnerability." She cited the bombing of the World Trade Center five weeks after Mr. Clinton took office in 1993; the Madrid train bombings in 2004, three days before national elections in Spain; and the car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow just days after a new British prime minister took office in 2007.

In February, Mr. Bush asked Congress for $35 million for transition activities, including $8.5 million for the General Services Administration, which provides office space, computers, telephones, travel services and other support to the transition team.

Congress has not acted on the budget request, and that has caused some alarm at the White House. A president-elect can use money from private donors, but must disclose the source and amount of contributions.

To a surprising degree, Democrats and Republicans agree on the lessons to be drawn from past transitions. The most urgent task, they said, is for the president-elect to choose his top White House staff, including a personnel director, even before naming his cabinet.

"Selecting senior White House aides is the most important step a president-elect can take to give identity, discipline and momentum to his fledgling administration," said Harrison Wellford, a Carter administration official who has advised Democrats on transition planning since 1976.

Ideally, Mr. Wellford said, the president-elect should announce his chief of staff a day after the election, name his economic and national security teams by Thanksgiving and complete his cabinet selections by mid-December.

There are more than 1,100 presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed positions in the executive branch. Mr. Johnson said that a new president had never had more than 25 of his cabinet and subcabinet nominees confirmed by the Senate before April 1.

In the post-9/11 world, Mr. Johnson said, the goal should be to have at least 100 in place by April, with a total of 400 confirmed by August.

In its final report, the 9/11 commission said the White House and Congress must "speed up the nomination, financial reporting, security clearance and confirmation process for national security officials" in a new administration.

Under a 2004 law, "each major party candidate for president may submit, before the date of the general election, requests for security clearances for prospective transition team members" who need access to classified information while working on the transition.

Ms. Duke said she understood that the McCain and Obama campaigns had requested security clearances for a total of about 100 people "in the last week or so."

Richard E. Neustadt, a Harvard professor and presidential scholar, used to say that new presidents-elect were "vulnerable to arrogance in ignorance," a sort of hubris born of innocence and inexperience in the "golden haze" after a grueling campaign.

By analyzing past transitions, he said, they can avoid repeating mistakes of their predecessors.

Mr. Wellford, a lifelong Democrat, said: "Democrats typically have not excelled at transitions. The standard for transition success, as judged by historians, was set by Ronald Reagan. The standard for transition disappointment was set by Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter."

On Feb. 18, 1981, just a month after taking office, Mr. Reagan and his budget director, David A. Stockman, sent Congress a detailed blueprint for the "Reagan revolution," a package of budget and tax cuts that set the agenda for the next four years. Many of the proposals became law.