United States presidential transition
In the United States, a presidential transition is the process during which the powers of the president of the United States are transferred from an incumbent president to the president-elect. The transition formally takes place between election day, which is on the first Tuesday after November 1 every four years, and inauguration day, when the incoming president takes the oath of office, though the planning for transition can start at any time before the election. The 20th Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1933, shortened the transition period by moving the beginning and ending of the terms of the president and vice president from March 4 to January 20. The outgoing president is commonly referred to as a lame duck president. A transition can also arise intra-term if a president dies, resigns or is removed from office.
The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 established the modern day mechanisms that facilitate a transition. Under existing federal law and custom, major-party presidential candidates become eligible to receive classified national security briefings once their nomination is formalized at their party's national convention. They are also afforded presidential transition services and facilities by the General Services Administration, including office space, equipment and payment of certain related expenses.
There are no set rules governing the transition, but it normally involves some pre-election planning, and involves consideration of key personnel from the outgoing and incoming presidents’ staffs, requires resources, and includes a host of activities, such as vetting candidates for positions in the new administration, helping to familiarize the incoming administration with the operations of the executive branch, and developing a comprehensive policy platform.
With only 72 to 78 days between election day and inauguration, good governance experts and recent federal officials have been pushing for candidates to start planning a potential administration earlier and earlier in the election calendar.
Process
For much of US history, presidential transitions were carried out without very much advance planning or even cooperation from the sitting chief executive. Legally, a president-elect is not required to come to the capital until the inauguration and need not have substantial policy or procedural discussions with the outgoing administration.President Harry Truman adopted a positive course by extending his hand to President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower after the 1952 election, inviting Eisenhower to the White House and ordering federal agencies to assist with the transition.
John F. Kennedy funded his own transition, like his predecessors, and engaged in extensive transition planning on domestic and foreign policy issues, but did not meet with Eisenhower until January 6, 1961, two months after the election.
The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 has been amended by the Presidential Transitions Effectiveness Act of 1998, the Presidential Transition Act of 2000, the Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010 and the Presidential Transitions Improvements Act of 2015. These laws established formal mechanisms to facilitate presidential transitions. Specifically, the act directs the Administrator of General Services to provide facilities, funding of approximately $5 million, access to government services, support for a transition team, and to provide training and orientation of new government personnel and other procedures to ensure an orderly transition.
The transition process begins as leading presidential contenders forming a transition team to start making preliminary plans for building an administration and assuming the presidency should they be elected. This can take place at any time of the candidate’s choosing. Candidate Mitt Romney established a transition team in June 2012, which was before he became the Republican Party nominee. Barack Obama followed a similar timeline for establishing his transition team in 2008. During the 2016 presidential election cycle, in 2016, Donald Trump began assembling his transition team in May, after he became the presumptive Republican nominee. His fall campaign opponent, Hillary Clinton, lagged behind in this regard, not forming a team until August, which was after she became the Democratic Party nominee. Key activities in this pre-election phase include: setting goals for the transition; assembling and organizing the key transition team staff; allocating responsibilities among the team and allocating resources and personnel for each core work stream; developing an overall management work plan to guide the team through the entire transition process; and establishing relationships with Congress, the outgoing administration, General Services Administration, the Office of Government Ethics, the FBI and the Office of Personnel Management to encourage information sharing and to begin the security clearance process for select personnel.
The actual transition phase begins immediately following the presidential election when a sitting president is not re-elected or is concluding a second term. On the day after the election, November 9, 2016, outgoing president Barack Obama made a statement from the Rose Garden of the White House in which he announced that he had spoken the previous evening with Donald Trump and formally invited him to the White House for discussions to ensure "that there is a successful transition between our presidencies". Obama said he had instructed his staff to "follow the example" of the George W. Bush administration in 2008, who he said could "not have been more professional or more gracious in making sure we had a smooth transition". This phase of the process lasts between 72 and 78 days, ending on the inauguration day. During this time, the transition team must handle the influx of campaign staff and additional personnel into daily operations and prepare to take over the functions of government. Key activities in this phase include staffing the office of the president-elect; deploying agency review teams; building out the president-elect’s management and policy agendas and schedule; and identifying the key talent necessary to execute the new president’s priorities.
Noteworthy transitions
Presidential transitions have existed in one form or another since 1797, when George Washington handed over the presidency to John Adams. Some have gone smoothly, many have been bumpy and a few verged on catastrophic.Buchanan–Lincoln
During the 1860–61 transition from James Buchanan to Abraham Lincoln, seven states seceded in February. Buchanan held the opinion that states did not have the right to secede, but that it was also illegal for the federal government to go to war to stop them. The American Civil War began on April 12.Grant–Hayes
In the 1876 election, there were disputes regarding 20 electoral votes in four states, along with multiple allegations of vote fraud. This made it unclear who would take the office of president on inauguration day. This constitutional crisis was resolved only two days before the scheduled inauguration through the Compromise of 1877 under which federal troops were withdrawn from the South, and the Reconstruction Era was brought to an end.Hoover–Roosevelt
The 1932-33 transition from Herbert Hoover to Franklin D. Roosevelt was during the Great Depression. After the election, Roosevelt refused Hoover's requests for a meeting to come up with a joint program to stop the crisis and calm investors, claiming it would limit his options, and as this "guaranteed that Roosevelt took the oath of office amid such an atmosphere of crisis that Hoover had become the most hated man in America". During this period, the U.S. economy suffered after thousands of banks failed. The relationship between Hoover and Roosevelt was one of the most strained between Presidents. While Hoover had little good to say about his successor, there was little he could do. FDR, however, supposedly could and did engage in various spiteful official acts aimed at his predecessor, ranging from dropping him from the White House birthday greetings message list to having Hoover's name struck from the Hoover Dam along the Colorado River border, which would officially be known only as Boulder Dam until 1947.Clinton–Bush
The 2000-01 transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush was shortened by several weeks due to the Florida recount crisis that ended after the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Bush v. Gore, which made Bush the president-elect.On a more malicious level, it was marred by accusations of "damage, theft, vandalism and pranks". The General Accounting Office estimated the cost of those pranks at $13,000 to $14,000. They included graffiti in the men's bathroom at the White House, glue smeared on desk drawers, and missing doorknobs, medallions, and office signs. However, they note that similar pranks were reported in prior transitions, including the one from Bush's father to Clinton in 1993. Press secretary Ari Fleischer followed up the GAO report with a White House-produced list of alleged vandalism including removal of the 'W' key from keyboards. The Clintons were also accused of keeping for themselves gifts meant for the White House. The Clintons denied the accusations, but agreed to pay more than $85,000 for gifts given to the first family "to eliminate even the slightest question" of impropriety.
Bush–Obama
The 2008-09 transition from Bush to Barack Obama was considered seamless, with Bush granting Obama's request to ask Congress to release $350 billion of bank bailout funds. At the start of his inaugural speech, Obama praised Bush "for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and co-operation he has shown throughout this transition". The White House website was redesigned and “cut over” at exactly 12:01pm, January 20, 2009. This was described by some as a "new inaugural tradition spawned by the Internet-age". Additionally, the information system was provided to the Obama administration without a single electronic record from the previous administration. Not only were emails and photos removed from the environment at the 12:01pm threshold, data elements like phone numbers of individual offices and upcoming meetings for the senior staff were also removed. Nonetheless, by April 2012, the Bush administration had transferred electronic records for the presidential components within the Executive Office of the President to the NARA. Included in these records was more than 80 terabytes of data, more than 200 million emails and 4 million photos.Obama–Trump
On November 9, 2016, the day after the presidential election, the Trump transition team announced that a transition website—greatagain.gov—had been launched. The website provided information on transition procedures and information for the media. The website was later criticized for reposting content originally created by the Partnership for Public Service. However, Partnership CEO Max Stier declined to criticize the use and noted that the organization had been working with the major campaigns on transition planning, explaining that he hoped the group's materials would be "a resource that is used for the betterment of transitions". Content on the transition website was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.The team was led by Vice President-elect Mike Pence. It had six vice-chairs, including former transition head Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Newt Gingrich, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani and Jeff Sessions.