" ... the change that we will get is going from doing
it wrong to doing it correct. "
" Daunting task lies ahead for Obama "
" This presidential transition will be the most difficult since Abraham Lincoln entered office. Although President-elect Barack Obama does not face a civil war, he will inherit an agenda of staggering uncertainty as the nation teeters on the edge of economic collapse.
The next six weeks will make Franklin Delano Roosevelt's transition seem less daunting by comparison.
Roosevelt faced a great economic calamity, too. But the nation was not at war, the federal government was tiny, and the transition was six weeks longer. Also, Herbert Hoover had done so little to address the economic crisis during his last year in office that Roosevelt had a clean slate on which to write the New Deal.
Obama's success depends in large measure on the transition infrastructure designed eight years ago by John Podesta, the former White House chief of staff who is the current transition director.
Podesta could not have known that Obama would be the first president-elect to use the tools he championed, but they were designed so that even a former Illinois state senator with four years in national office would benefit.
Obama must use that infrastructure to pass three tests.
Obama must start pushing about 3,000 political appointees through the sluggish vetting process.
Designed during the McCarthy era, when everyone in government was suspected of being a communist, the process is best viewed as a concrete pipe that can handle only a few names at a time, usually on a first-come, first-served basis. Congress has given the FBI authority to begin vetting transition aides from both campaigns months before Election Day. Because many of those aides will end up in line for positions, the Obama administration will almost certainly set a record in the number of early nominations.
Nothing guarantees quick Senate approval, however. The big problem in the Senate is not the filibuster, which is rarely used against nominees, but personal holds designed to extract executive concessions.
Second, the next president must decide how to decide.
If the campaign is a prologue, Obama is likely to use President John F. Kennedy's collegial approach, which emphasizes open, sometimes interminable discussion among senior advisers en route to consensus. However, he will soon discover that he needs a more disciplined process built around a strong chief of staff.
Democratic presidents are particularly vulnerable to this awakening. They often enter office promising maximum access only to find that they are soon drowning in advice. Absent some formalization, they drift through the transition squandering resources as they ponder possibilities, not realities.
Third, Obama must narrow his priorities to a precious few.
There will be no New Deal or Great Society next year. By intent or accident, the Bush administration has constrained the next president's agenda through his tax cuts and other decisions. Obama can use the current economic crisis to create a sense of urgency for tax cuts, economic stimulus and a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq.
But he must also recognize the brevity of his influence. Even with a landslide victory in 1964 behind Lyndon B. Johnson and a massive Senate and House majority on his side, he worried about the erosion of support.
"You've got to give it all you can that first year," President Johnson later said. "Doesn't matter what kind of majority you come in with. You've got just one year when they treat you right and before they start worrying about themselves."
No matter how well he does on the first three tests, Obama's greatest challenge will be deciding when to say no. Potential appointees are already lined up like airplanes over Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, and urgent appeals for action are flowing into the transition team from every conceivable approach.
Obama would do well to install a wall of industrial-strength paper shredders as a first line of defense against the onslaught. Forced to defend many of Johnson's Great Society programs against a cacophony of claims, Obama may soon find that he will be doing more talking about grand ideas than signing laws. "
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