| |
Mediamatters.Org - On the July 24 edition
of Fox News' Your World with Neil
Cavuto, guest host David Asman falsely claimed of Sen. Barack Obama's reported plans for a
White House transition months before the November election:
"It's never been done before." After Temple University
assistant professor Marc Lamont Hill
said, "I'm not convinced that it's never been done
before," Asman replied: "Well, I can't think of an example, and you
can't think of an example. ... That's two out of two people."
Similarly, during the July 24 edition of MSNBC Live, host David Shuster said that the Obama campaign
"released some confirmation today that they have started to
organize a transition team should Obama win. That does seem a little premature,
right?" U.S. News & World
Report's Kenneth Walsh replied, in part: "[T]his is very
early, and it plays into this notion that the Republicans are talking about,
about Obama being too arrogant, that he has sort of a sense of inevitability
that has set in there." In addition, reports by the San Francisco Chronicle,
the Los Angeles Times, and
The Boston Globe, like
MSNBC Live hosts Alex Witt and Contessa Brewer, uncritically reported attacks by either
the McCain campaign or the Republican National Committee
criticizing Obama for setting up a transition team before the election.
However, as New York
University professor of public
service Paul C. Light noted in a July 25 column on The Huffington
Post, "Obama has plenty of historical precedent to draw upon."
Indeed, as Light noted and a Media Matters
for America review* confirms, Presidents
George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter all
planned for a White House transition months before the election.
In a July 25 column on The
Huffington Post, Light wrote:
The question is not why
Obama made the decision, but why Sen. John McCain has not. Instead [sic]
attacking the Obama campaign for "dancing in the end zone," McCain
should have appointed his own planning team long ago.
Obama has plenty of
historical precedent to draw upon. On the Republican side of the aisle, Ronald
Reagan began his 1980 planning effort in early spring under a senior confidant.
The planning produced the fastest transition to governing in modern history,
which translated directly into Reagan's victories on budget and tax cuts only
six months into the term.
George W. Bush also
began his planning early, which produced a remarkably disciplined transition
that laid [sic] set the stage for another round of tax cuts. It is hard to
imagine how the transition could have succeeded without it. Given the Florida impasse, it is
hard to imagine how the Bush transition could have succeeded without the
pre-election planning.
On the Democratic side,
Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton also began their planning early, but waffled when
it came time to use the plans. Under intense pressure from their campaign
staffs who rightly complained about a lack of consultation, both decided to
start planning again [sic] all over again the morning after the election.
[...]
The
decision not to plan for the transition is not just presumptuous on McCain's
part, it is irresponsible. The next president faces a huge agenda of national
problems that must be addressed as soon as possible. Instead of criticizing
Obama for planning, McCain should congratulate him for taking an essential step
toward governing. If anyone should have moved first, it should have been
McCain. He is the one with the long resume after all.
Similarly, Congressional Quarterly blogger and PoliticalWire.com editor
Taegan Goddard wrote: "It's standard procedure for all presidential campaigns to begin
this process early since there are less than three months between the election
in November and the inauguration in January."
Indeed, Presidents George
W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter all began their
transition plans well before the November election:
President George W. Bush
As Media Matters for America documented, in a chapter from The Nerve Center: Lessons in
Governing from the White House Chiefs of Staff (Texas
A&M University Press, 2004), University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
associate professor Terry Sullivan wrote that in the spring of 1999, then-Gov.
George W. Bush asked Clay Johnson, who later became the executive director of
the Bush-Cheney transition team, to "develop a plan for what we should do
after we win." During the summer of 2000, Bush agreed with Johnson's
assertion that it would be "irresponsible not to be doing this" and
"approved Clay Johnson's program" for a presidential transition.
Sullivan sourced the information to a September 2002 interview with Johnson.
From Sullivan's chapter:
The former Chiefs of
Staff had convened in Washington
to invest their substantial and collective reputations in publicly underscoring
the respectability of and need for early planning. By their collective
appearance, they hoped the country would understand that it no longer could
afford presidential candidates, or media, or voters who thought such planning
presumptuous. Beginning in the spring of 1999, Governor Bush reorganized his
staff, moving his then Chief of Staff Joe Albaugh into the campaign as director
and Clay Johnson, III from Appointments Director to Chief of Staff. Governor
Bush then charged Johnson to "develop a plan for what we should do after
we win." A year later with the primary season behind him and the prospects
of the general campaign settling in, Candidate Bush worried about their
planning effort finding its way into the campaign coverage. Having thought
through this problem for almost a year, Johnson responded by stressing the
necessity of the task. "It has to happen," he recalls telling the
Governor, "We just have to figure out the best way to spin it. It's
irresponsible not to be doing this." Persuaded and committed to his
earlier decision, Candidate Bush took Johnson's advice. Thus, the former Chiefs
of Staff reached a second of their goals when, only a few days after the [June 2000, Washington] Forum [on the Role of the
White House Chief of Staff] and bolstered by Johnson's own argument, the Bush
for President senior campaign staff approved Clay Johnson's program, setting out
eight goals for their presidential transition still five months in the future,
if at all.
In a chapter in The White House World: Transitions, Organization, and
Office (Texas A&M University Press, 2003) -- reprinted elsewhere -- Johnson similarly
wrote:
In the spring of 1999, I
was Gov. George W. Bush's appointments director, in charge of a small group
that helped the governor appoint about four thousand people to different state boards
and commissions and full-time positions. When the governor decided to run for
president, he asked me to succeed his chief of staff, who was leaving to direct
the campaign. He also asked me to develop a plan for setting up his new
administration, or as he put it, "develop a plan for what we should do
after we win."
[...]
In the spring of 2000 I
also began to visit with the likes of Jim Baker, George Shultz, and Ed Meese,
who had been involved in setting up and guiding previous administrations at the
highest levels. I thought the most important conclusions from all this input
were as follows:
*Campaign leaders should
not be in charge of the transition. Campaigns are about winning, whereas
transitions are about preparing to govern. By necessity, campaign leaders are
unlikely to have any time to work on the transition before the election.
[...]
Based on this review of
past efforts, our transition team laid out the following [eight] goals for
ourselves to prepare to assume all executive-branch responsibilities by
inauguration day.
[...]
These goals were agreed
to by Governor Bush and senior campaign officials around June, 2000, and with
running-mate Richard Cheney in August. No one working on the campaign wanted to
or really could focus on transition issues, so those discussions were to be
brief or discussed over lunch.
Echoing
his reported assertion that "[i]t's irresponsible not to be doing
this," Johnson wrote in a paper for the
July/August 2008 edition of Public
Administration Review:
This is to lay out my
personal thoughts and recommendations regarding the upcoming presidential
transition of 2008, based on my experience as the executive director of the
presidential transition of 2000, the research I did to prepare for that
assignment, and the resources I know this next administration will inherit.
General. Six months or so before the election, designate someone to, at a
minimum, plan the transition and, preferably, prepare to be the executive
director or chief operating officer of the transition. Don't worry about
jinxing the campaign or being too presumptuous: It is irresponsible for anybody
who could be president not to prepare to govern effectively from day one.
... Every candidate must prepare to govern, starting months before the
conventions when each officially becomes the candidate.
President Bill Clinton
In Presidential Transitions: From
Politics to Practice (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), University of Vermont professor John P. Burke
wrote of the Clinton transition team:
Although
a host of difficulties would soon crop up, a failure to recognize the need to
move early on transition matters was not one of them. Indeed, following what
now had became a tradition among presidential candidates, Clinton began to think about his presidency
well before election day. Shortly after the July [13-16] 1992 Democratic National Convention, he
tapped his campaign chairman, Mickey Kantor, to head up a small transition
planning operation.
During
an October 30, 2000, panel discussion at the
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), W. Harrison Wellford, who served as White House
transition adviser, said:
The emphasis on planning
early, absolutely critical. No doubt about it. How could you possibly make all
those appointments, get ready for a submission of a budget, prepare your
inaugural address, get your policy agenda clarified and streamlined and
disciplined and not have done anything before the Wednesday after the, the
election victory? You can't do it. I mean, 75 days just isn't enough time.
So sensible early
planning is an absolute must.
[...]
We had
a team that began to meet in Rhode
Island, great secrecy, in June of '92. Bob Rubin, Bob
White, a group of people that became critical to the Administration later on,
met day after day putting together an elaborate critique of the Bush budget and
a proposal for a new budget. A lot of work on key appointments, trying to get
the domestic policy focused clear, and so forth. Never leaked out. There was
never a single word in the press about it, which we were all very, very proud.
Only seven of us were doing it. And we thought that we had a really great
package of advice to give the new President if he -- well, to give Clinton if he became the
new President.
President
Ronald Reagan
Senior Reagan aide Edwin Meese wrote in his book, With Reagan: The Inside Story (Regnery
Gateway, 1992), about
his early discussions relating to Reagan's transition plans:
Late in
1979 an old friend, Pendleton James, had asked me what he could do to help
Reagan in the coming presidential election. I told him that he could best use
his talents by preparing a plan for the presidential personnel operation --
just in case we won. Pen, a leading professional in the executive search
business, had served as a presidential personnel staff member in the Nixon
White House and was well qualified to oversee the personnel-picking process
that would face a new administration.
When I
first mentioned this to Pen, he thought I was joking; the following spring,
when the subject came up again, he asked if I were serious. I assured him that
I was, and he began quietly to plan for a personnel operation from his Los Angeles office. In
September of 1980, he moved to a small office in Alexandria, Virginia
-- away from the campaign headquarters -- where he assembled a small staff who
were not involved in the campaign itself. Most of them had previous experience
in other administrations. In two months this group, many of them working part
time in the evenings, had compiled the necessary data on some three thousand
appointments that would have to be made. They also developed a system for
recruiting qualified candidates and handling the thousands of expected
recommendations and applications.
In a chapter in The In
and Outers: Presidential Appointees and the Problems of Transient Government in
Washington (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), George Mason
University professor James P. Pfiffner wrote:
Ronald
Reagan was the second presidential candidate [after Carter] to begin to plan in
a significant way for a possible takeover of the government before his nomination
by his party. In November 1979, Edwin Meese asked Pendleton James to put
together a plan for a personnel operation to prepare for a possible Reagan
victory. In April 1980, he was asked to implement the plan, and he began
operations near Washington.
The leaks that had plagued the early Carter efforts did not occur, and the
personnel operation was clearly subordinate to Meese, who was in charge of the
transition from beginning to end and who also played a major role in the
campaign.
An April 3 Congressional Research Service report prepared for
Congress stated of the "Carter-Reagan Transition":
As
early as April 1980, Ronald Reagan began planning for a possible presidential
transition when he met with a group of defense and foreign policy advisers
before the Republican convention. The advisers were asked to prepare specific
policy and budget recommendations for use in the first months of a Reagan
Administration to enable him to begin work immediately after the
inauguration. Coordinated by William Graham, an engineer with a California defense consulting firm, the experts included
former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former President Ford, former White
House chief of staff Alexander Haig, Senators
John Tower
and Richard Stone, Governor Bill Clements, former Cabinet member Casper
Weinberger, and former Ambassador Anne Armstrong.
Following
the Republican convention in July 1980, nearly 300 advisers were asked by Mr.
Reagan to serve on 23 task forces to prepare reports due before Inauguration
Day on economic and domestic issues.
During an October 30, 2000, panel discussion at AEI,
former senior Reagan aide Richard
V. Allen said:
So Dave Brady asked us eight basic questions. And while we will
eventually get around to responding in one way or another to all eight of those
questions. The first question, obviously, is the most important, what are the
major obstacles to a successful transition? And I think you can reduce it all
to one principle obstacle, and that is time as has been mentioned here. Jack
has mentioned it and Marty has mentioned it too. And in the grand sphere of the
ideological tradition of the People's Republic of China which has, I think today the
campaign of the three requires, I'm going to speak today about the two musts,
the ten do's and the one don't.
Of course, the first one is again, obvious, prepare early. I can
remember a conversation with pre-candidate Ronald Reagan in 1979 on an airplane
ride from Houston to Los Angeles after a fundraiser discussing --
he was writing his announcement speech and discussing personnel. At that point
he already reminded me in that discussion that we had a team leader and that
was Ed Meese who by November 1979 had long since started the process of the
preparations of transition and deployed our former colleagues in the Nixon
Administration and his friend Pen James to be looking into personnel aspects
while the policy aspects were under development. So I think that from that
standpoint that was probably the earliest practical application of the
principle of being prepared that I know of.
In Presidential Transitions, Burke wrote:
Over
the summer of 1980, the Reagan campaign was successful (unlike Carter four
years earlier) in obtaining a favorable ruling from the Federal Elections
Commission allowing it to raise private funds for the transition, as long as
its operations were kept separate from the campaign. In September, the Presidential
Transition Trust was formed and housed in the former headquarters of the Bush
campaign in Alexandria, Virginia.
President
Jimmy Carter
Jack Watson, former chief of staff to
President Jimmy Carter, participated in a May 31, 2000, Heritage Foundation discussion about
"Achieving a Successful Transition." A Heritage report based on that
event stated that "Carter's transition process effectively began on
May 11 of the election year [1976]":
Jimmy
Carter's transition process effectively began on May 11 of the election
year, when senior campaign aide Jack Watson wrote a memo to Carter recommending
that he establish a small, confidential group:
It was
a memorandum that basically said, "Mr. President, unlike so many of the
Presidents who have come into the White House, certainly in this century, you
have had no federal government experience, save that in the United States Navy.
You don't have a Washington
network. You are the governor" -- or former governor at that time --
"of a southern state. You've not been a national figure before you
entered the presidential primaries in New Hampshire
and Iowa
caucuses. I think it would be a good idea quietly to pull together, separate
from the campaign, a small group of people who would begin in the
lowest-profile way possible, quietest most controlled way possible, to start
gathering certain information and facts, putting that information and those
facts, those recommendations together so that when and if you are elected
President in November, you can commence the transition with something of a head
start."
Watson
followed up with other memos outlining his thoughts. As soon as Carter received
the nomination on June 10 [Carter officially accepted the nomination
on July 15, 1976, at the Democratic National Convention], he instructed Watson
to go ahead with his plan. By the time of the presidential election, Watson had
a group working 14-hour days, seven days a week, essentially developing a
checklist for Carter in the event he should win. Watson's final pre-election
memo, sent to Carter on November 3, contained specific steps for the
transition.
In a September 2000 paper, Brookings
Institution senior fellow emeritus Stephen Hess wrote: "During the summer
[of 1976] Carter created a small transition office in Atlanta, headed by Jack Watson, that compiled
'a working list' of about 75 prospective candidates for high-level
positions."
From the July 24 edition of MSNBC Live:
SHUSTER: Yeah, in fact, regarding this statement the McCain
campaign issued, where it says, "John McCain has dedicated his life to
serving, improving, and protecting America, Barack Obama spent an
afternoon talking about it." It does seem that this gets -- this rubs
right up against the idea that Americans don't necessarily like to look
back at somebody's previous experience. For example with Bob Dole, they
want to look forward. Is that a problem for John McCain? Julie?
JULIE
MASON (Houston
Chronicle White House correspondent): Yeah,
it sure is. I mean, Obama's talking about change, he's talking
about dynamic change, and -- and McCain's sort of resting on the laurels
of the past. That's not really the right message. But I think he had a
good point about the victory lap. I mean, I think that's really going to
resonate with people.
SHUSTER: And if I can, the Obama campaign put out a note, or
at least some confirmation today that in fact they have started to organize a
transition team should Obama win. That does seem a little bit premature, right?
WALSH: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, historians and political
scientists like this sort of thing -- that - they -- they don't
like how sort of slipshod some transition processes are. But this is very
early, and it plays into this notion that the Republicans are talking about,
about Obama being too arrogant, that he -- sort of a sense of inevitability has
set in there. And Americans don't like the idea that, you think, that --
that -- that a candidate thinks that he's got the thing won without
really pushing at it and trying really hard, and so I think that that's a
danger. Putting out this transition statement, I think, was not a smart thing
to do.
SHUSTER: Ken Walsh, chief White House correspondent for U.S. News and World Report; Julie Mason,
White House correspondent for the Houston
Chronicle. Again, thank you both.
From the July 24 edition
of Your World with Neil Cavuto:
ASMAN: The McCain campaign criticizing Barack Obama today for a
report he's already planning his presidential transition, issuing this
statement. Quote, this is McCain speaking now: "Before they've even crossed the 50-yard line, the Obama campaign
is already dancing in the end zone with a new White House transition team. The
American people are more concerned with Barack Obama's poor judgment and
readiness to lead than his inaugural ball."
Now, if Obama is planning his transition right now, could this be
seen as an arrogant move? Obama supporter Marc Lamont Hill is with us now.
Marc, great to see you. Thanks for joining us.
HILL: Always a pleasure.
ASMAN: So let me put up a picture of one of my favorite
newspapers, by the way, The New York Sun.
Yesterday in the cover of The New York Sun, there
was a picture of Barack Obama with a couple of other senators on his Mideast trip.
And you see the other senators holding their -- their coats sort of awkwardly
in their hand, but there is Obama with a coat behind his -- his back, his hand
in his pocket. This is clearly the most comfortable presidential candidate I
have ever seen. This guy is so comfortable in that role, but when does it
become a swagger and something that turns voters off?
HILL: Well, I think there are moments where you can overstep your
bounds, to be sure. I think the moment where they had the presidential seal with
his name on top of it.
ASMAN: That would be one of those moments, yes, absolutely.
HILL: That's over -- that's over -- that's over
the top. But I don't think this is over the top. I think that planning your
transition is a very smart thing to do. And if you listen to the Obama
campaign, what they've said is, not only are we doing this but we
encourage Senator McCain to do the exact same thing.
ASMAN: Yeah, I know, you can say that, but how many other
presidential candidates have actually done that this early in the campaign?
HILL: Well, when you run based on change, you can make the
argument that just because we haven't done it before, doesn't mean we
shouldn't do it now.
ASMAN: OK, but Mark, you -- you answered -- within that answer,
you've answered my question. It's never been done before. Why now?
HILL: No, I'm not -- I'm not. Dave, I'm not
convinced that it's never been done before. I think because there's
such a media -- there's been so much media attention based on --
ASMAN: Well, I can't think of an example and you can't think of an
example.
HILL: Well, well, I mean --
ASMAN: That's two out of two people.
HILL: Well, no, no, but my point is I don't think this information
always leaks. I think part of the point here is because there's an
expectation that he is presumptuous and arrogant, it becomes more of a media
story. Many candidates, in fact, I -- I would -- I would argue, do begin to
think about transitions just like many people before they win a primary begin
thinking about their running mate. It could be seen as presumptuous, but
everybody does it.
ASMAN: People think about it, but again, it's -- it's
attitude. Again, part of the problem with Obama is experience. He doesn't have
the experience a lot of people are worried about that and -- and background,
but the experience issue is not helped if -- if he is seen to be swaggering.
HILL: But it's -- but it's a tightrope. Because, you
know, people say why is he going around the world giving speeches in Germany
rather than being here with the American people.
ASMAN: Well, he wanted to do it at the Brandenburg Gate, which
only presidents do, for goodness's sakes!
HILL: No, no, but -- but the very same people say that he
doesn't have the foreign policy experience and that foreign leaders
won't respect him. So --
ASMAN: Yeah, but speaking at the Brandenburg Gate is not going to
give you foreign policy experience.
HILL: No it's not.
ASMAN: It gives him a fat head.
HILL: I -- I would agree that's more of a photo op than it
is a -- a legitimate campaign move. Again, I was critical of that move just
like I was about the seal. But the decision to make a transition team, I
disagree.
ASMAN: OK.
HILL: I think that is absolutely significant. I think -- I
encourage John McCain
ASMAN: Mark Lamont Hill.
ASMAN: -- to do the same thing and he's not going to win.
ASMAN: Always a pleasure to see you, Marc, thanks very much. America's Election Headquarters,
now.
*
Media Matters did not examine the transition plans of George H.W. Bush,
because, unlike the other presidents examined, he came from the outgoing
administration. Media Matters - Media advance false claim that Obama's reported transition plans are unusual or unprecedented -- but Presidents Bush, Clinton, Reagan, and Carter also planned ahead {...} On Fox News, David Asman falsely claimed of Sen. Barack Obama's reported plans for a White House transition months before the November election: "It's never been done before." Similarly, on MSNBC Live , U.S. News & World Report's Kenneth Walsh asserted that Obama is preparing for taking office "very early, and it plays into this notion that the Republicans are talking about, about Obama being too arrogant, that he has sort of a sense of inevitability that has set in there." However, a Media Matters review confirms that Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter all planned for a White House transition months before the election. {...} Published: July 26, 2008, 1:24 am - Indexed: July 26, 2008, 1:02 pm - Page Size: 49KB |