Preparing for the Obama Era

A uniformed Secret Service officer moves a traffic cone to block off a barricade to the new Obama transition headquarters in Washington. (By Dominic Bracco Ii -- The Washington Post)
Buy Photo

"He understands it's a rough-and-tumble game, and he doesn't let it interfere with his personal relationships or his judgment about what's best for the country," Bolten said.

Brookings Institution scholar Stephen Hess, who has been involved in presidential transitions since the Eisenhower administration, is among those who are impressed by the efforts.

"I'm not sure I've ever seen an outgoing administration work as hard at saying the right thing," Hess said in an interview Friday. "This is really quite memorable."

Hess and other experts agreed that the times demand cooperation. "I think it's the most dire set of circumstances I can recall in looking at presidential transitions," said Charles O. Jones, who studies the transfer of power. He and others compare Obama's challenge to Franklin D. Roosevelt's in 1932, or even Abraham Lincoln's in 1860.

Jones, of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, said Bush's organized approach to the transition is smoothing the way and "may be one of the more positive features to his chief-executive-officer approach to the office."

It might also be a reflection of Bush's hectic arrival in office in early 2001. The disputed 2000 election meant that Democrat Al Gore did not concede the race until mid-December, giving Bush and his staff about five weeks to formally prepare for the takeover.

That delay, combined with a slow pace of appointments and confirmations in Congress, had a tangible impact on how quickly the Bush administration got up to speed, according to former officials and outside experts.

The 9/11 Commission concluded in its 2004 report that widespread vacancies and a slow pace of appointments undercut the government's national security apparatus before the terrorist attacks, and the commission recommended an accelerated clearance process for future administrations, much of which has been implemented into law.

"I think that Bush sees this as an important part of his legacy and really believes that how you go out is a good measure of who you are," said Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who is advising the transition panel.

Most experts, though, say the problem with transitions usually is not the outgoing administration but the incoming team.

"They've just done this amazing thing -- they've gotten elected president! -- and they're sort of full of themselves," said Hess, adding that an incoming administration often has an unfortunate mix of "arrogance and ignorance."

But, again, the experts are impressed so far. Obama "seems to have understood more than most how to prepare for the presidency," Hess said.