The 2016-2017 Transition into the Donald J. Trump Administration by James D. King James W. Riddlesperger, Jr. Department of Political Science Department of Political Science University of Wyoming Texas Christian University Laramie, WY 82071 USA Fort Worth, TX 76129 USA [email protected] [email protected] Prepared for presentation at the Conference on the U.S. Presidential Election of 2016: Domestic and International Aspects, hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel, January 8-9, 2017. © 2017 by James D. King and James W. Riddlesperger, Jr. “Though this be madness, yet there is mthod in ‘t” --William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene II Throughout the long, contentious presidential campaign of 2016 there was one undeniable fact: with President Obama term-limited from seeking another term, a new president would enter office on January 20, 2017. The campaign became a drama in many ways unprecedented in the nation’s history, with rhetoric taking on historically polarizing characteristics. And the election of Donald Trump gave the nation a president-elect with no public sector experience for the first time in history. Trump’s campaign theme was one of “disruption” politics, promising to give the government an entirely new direction—moving away from the “extreme incompetence” Trump saw in the conduct of government and “draining the swamp” of Washington, D.C. by bringing new faces and a fresh decision-making style to the nation’s capital. His message was aimed primarily at his opponent Hillary Clinton, who he promised to prosecute for criminal violations of the law in her email scandal, but also involved excoriating the decisions made by previous Republican presidents, including explicitly his two Republican predecessors—the George Bushes, Sr. and Jr. In so doing, he alienated himself not only from Democrats, but also from the Republican establishment, with four of the five the most recent nominees of the GOP explicitly avoiding endorsing his candidacy. Only Robert Dole, the 1996 nominee, stood by the Trump candidacy. A singular election might give way to an unusual transition. Yet, the core positions of government still had to be staffed, and the routine functions of government still had to be managed. In other words, while President-elect Trump is a larger-than-life personality who wants to impose his will on government, he still faces issues common to all incoming presidents. As president-elect, Donald Trump has seventy-three days to prepare for his administration with a 1 host of tasks to accomplish during that narrow window of time. In this paper we explore the challenges facing Trump as he prepares for the assumption of office. How did his disruption candidacy yield a transition different from previous presidents, and in what ways did the common problems faced by all presidents elect constrain him to similar approaches to previous presidents?1 Previous Interparty Transitions The Obama-to-Trump transition reflects the most common type of transition in the modern era, a transition that occurs when a new president representing the opposing political party is elected. These interparty transitions represent clean breaks with the incoming president having the freedom to build a team from the ground up. In the post-World War II era, the Truman-to-Eisenhower, Eisenhower-to-Kennedy, Johnson-to-Nixon, Ford-to-Carter, Carter-to- Reagan, G.H.W. Bush-to-Clinton, Clinton-to-G.W. Bush, and G.W. Bush-to-Obama transitions were of this nature. Successful interparty transitions occur when presidents-elect carefully assess their strengths and weaknesses, cooperate with the outgoing president, learn from their predecessors, move quickly in selecting personnel and developing budget proposals, avoid raising expectations regarding the role of the cabinet in the new administration, and establish a working relationship with Congress from the outset of the administration. After a successful election campaign, presidents-elect are not immediately inclined to take advice from their predecessors. Implicitly or explicitly, the outgoing president has been the target of the incoming president’s campaign. Historian Carl Brauer notes: 1 Had she prevailed in the election, Hillary Clinton would have faced a somewhat different set of challenges as a president-elect in an intraparty transition, that is, following a president of the same political party. The principal challenge in these situations is establishing an identity distinguishable from the current administration in terms of policies and personnel, without severing linkages to the incumbent president. See: James D. King and James W. Riddlesperger, Jr., “Getting Started in the White House: Transitions in the Modern Presidency,” White House Studies 3 (#2, 2003):115-131. 2 The weeks and months after a Presidential election are not times when humility reigns in the victor’s camp. Rather, it is one when confidence, hope, hubris and infallibility run high, characteristics that contribute to, if they do not directly cause, some of the mistakes that are made.2 Examples of this attitude are common. Bill Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos (1999, 121) wrote later that “we saw ourselves as smart and tough and good; we had won, deposed an incumbent president.” Perhaps even more striking was the transition of Jimmy Carter in 1976 when, being determined to chart a course different from the Nixon and Ford administrations, the president-elect openly rejected recommendations from the Ford team about the necessity in the modern White House of having a strong chief of staff. Instead, Carter returned to the less- structured “spokes-of-the-wheel” model that had been used by previous Democratic presidents. Speechwriter James Fallows acknowledged that the failure to listen to Ford administration people meant that “a year was wasted as we blindly groped for answers.”3 During the third year of his presidency, struggling to advance a policy agenda, Carter abruptly changed to a chief of staff model. His new chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan (1979), sent a note to Dick Cheney, Ford’s chief of staff, acknowledging that the hubris of the Carter people at the beginning of the term had not served them well: “Dick—If I’d only listened to you—A Former Spoke.”4 The perspectives of Fallows and Jordan on the Carter transition reflect an early decision a president-elect must make: how should the White House staff be organized? The growth of the institutional presidency that began with Franklin Roosevelt’s administration has continued with expansion of the Executive Office of the President and White House staff. Dwight Eisenhower, 2 Carl M. Brauer, Presidential Transitions: Eisenhower through Reagan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 258. 3 James Fallows, “The Passionless Presidency,” Atlantic, May 1979, p. 39. 4 Hamilton Jordan, Note to Richard Cheney, July 21, 1979. White House Staff folder, Chief of Staff Files, Carter Presidential Library. 3 drawing upon his experience in the military command structure, created the position of chief of staff to manage the expanded organization. For a time this arrangement was considered the Republican approach to White House organization, as Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford adopted similar arrangements for the White House while John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson utilized less structured staff arrangements. Carter’s failed experiment of returning to the Kennedy and Johnson approach marked the end of administrations with loose White House structures. Each president since Ronald Reagan has started his administration with a chief of staff commanding the White House operation.5 Success of the White House operation and hence of the administration stems from the president’s choice for chief of staff. More than any other factor, having a chief of staff experienced in the Washington policy-making environment is key to an effective White House operation.6 Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama had success during their first years in office, in part, due to the White House leadership demonstrated by James A. Baker III, Andrew Card, and Rahm Emanuel as their respective chiefs of staff. Bill Clinton chose Mack McLarty, a lifelong friend from Arkansas, as his first chief of staff and preferred separate meetings with various staff members. This arrangement hindered systematic, coordinated policy development in the Clinton White House and led to McLarty being replaced midway through Clinton’s second year by Leon Panetta, the administration’s budget director and a former member of Congress and executive branch officer. The later arrangements of the Clinton administration, with a chief of staff with substantial experience in the nation’s capital paired with 5 Stephen Hess and James P. Pfiffner, Organizing the Presidency 3d ed. (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2002), and Shirley Anne Warshaw, The Domestic Presidency: Policy Making in the White House (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997). 6 On the characteristics of successful chiefs of staff in the modern presidency, see James P. Pfiffner, “The President’s Chief of Staff: Lessons Learned,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 23 (Winter 1983): 77-102. 4 senior advisors with strong personal ties to the president mirrored the very successful first term of the Reagan presidency, when Baker teamed with long-time Reagan associates Edwin Meese, who led domestic policy development, and Michael Deaver, who coordinated the president’s public activities. Obama utilized a similar model by bringing together in the White House Emanuel, Peter Rouse (Senate staff), Valarie Jarrett (friend and advisor from Chicago), and David Axelrod (2008 campaign manager). Most visible for a president-elect are the choices for other key positions in the administration, notably the men and women selected to lead the various cabinet departments. Choices that are made regarding who will serve in the president’s cabinet, in the Executive Office of the Presidency, and in the White House Staff are key, for as Senator Elizabeth Warren reminds us: “Personnel is policy.”7 These are the people who will advise the president on policy, will promote the administration’s policy initiatives, and ultimately will implement policy.