Difficult Transitions: Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Presidential Power

1. Difficult Transitions: Presidential Transitions and Foreign Policy Perils

difficult transitions Presidential Transitions and Foreign Policy Perils 1 1 Perhaps the most harrowing—yet simultaneously hopeful —feature of the American system of government is the transfer of power from one president to the next, a period stretching from the quadrennial national election through the inaugural and into the first months of governance. For Washington insiders, this time is known simply as “the transition,” and it is one of the most studied yet least fully understood aspects of our democracy. On a formal level, the transition has been a part of our national experience since the election of George Washington, yet the reality has changed dramatically over the past two hundred and twenty years. The first inaugural was held on April 30, 1789, and the transition “team” consisted of President George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph—men who would go on to serve as the first treasury secretary, secretary of war, and attorney general, respectively . They all got together one afternoon for tea near the Federal Hall in New York City to coordinate their plans for the new administration. For the next one hundred and fifty years most presidents simply asked a few trusted advisers to spend several weeks assisting with the logistics and personnel matters associated with the move to the White House. In 1938 the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution changed the inauguration date to January 20. Particularly in the post–World War II era, the transition process preceding and following the inaugural became more elaborate with each passing president. While the Constitution stipulates a seamless flow of executive power from one president to the next, the process has become more turbulent than envisioned by the founding fathers. Indeed, the rituals and risks associated with modern transitions have grown exponentially over the past several decades. The very idea of the transition is one of the features that distinguishes the United States from most other democracies and parliamentary systems around the world. During the recent handoff of the political baton from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown in the United Kingdom, for instance, the whole process was completed in a few days with the assistance of a couple of moving vans and a few personnel changes in some key jobs around the prime minister and in cabinet offices. Scarcely a beat was missed while Gordon Brown dealt calmly and effectively with a domestic terrorist attack against the Glasgow airport and a foiled plot in central London in the days immediately following the handover. Presidential transitions in the United States, by contrast, are increasingly prolonged and complicated affairs with thousands of people moving into new positions of responsibility over several months across dozens of agencies. The possibility that a comparable domestic terror threat might emerge in the first days of a new U.S. administration causes many government specialists, foreign policy practitioners, seasoned observers, and the candidates themselves to shudder. While transitions present challenges for domestic policy, they can be deadly in the arena of foreign policy. There is an acute sense of vulnerability when power changes hands, accompanied by an extended period of uncertainty about how well the new team will handle the challenges of office. There may be a so-called honeymoon period on the domestic front as the new president sorts out the policies and candidates for senior government jobs, but there is rarely time for a honeymoon or learning curve in the international security realm. From the early era of the cold war, when new presidents and their advisers worried about being “tested” by their Soviet counterparts, to more recent concerns about whether a new crew fully grasps the myriad complexities of homeland security and intelligence provisions, and whether terrorists might seek to 2 difficult transitions disrupt the period of power transfer, presidential transitions have been fraught with anxiety and uncertainty. This is a book about how presidential transitions and foreign policy intersect every four years and why the process can pose such profound problems to an incoming team of officials seeking to serve and protect the nation. The very word “transition” typically evokes the period between the quadrennial first Tuesday in November, when the American people vote to elect a new president, and inauguration day the following January 20, when the new president formally takes office. But it has long been recognized by practitioners and scholars alike that the transition really begins during the campaign itself, when...