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

5. The Right Staff

5 62 In modern times, the preparatory period between the election and the inauguration has been dominated by three main challenges: people, process, and policy. During this time, the new president must begin choosing key personnel to staff the Cabinet agencies and the White House, decide how to organize the basic decisionmaking machinery of government, and choose which policies to pursue during the first months in office and how to prioritize them. Each of these challenges is formidable, and each has contributed to the difficulties that new presidents have encountered in their early days in office. This chapter examines how administrations from Truman to George W. Bush have staffed their top national security posts and seeks to distill lessons learned that could inform future transitions. The following two chapters examine process and policy, respectively. One distinctive feature of the American presidential transition is the drama surrounding the selection of the president’s Cabinet and key advisers. Unlike in many parliamentary systems, where the identity of the Cabinet is decided before the election by the identification of “shadow ministers,” in the United States presidential candidates rarely tip their hand in advance. Thus almost from the moment a winner is declared, there is a frenzy of speculation about who the key officials will the right staff be. And in the hierarchy of personnel choices, identifying key national security officials has traditionally been one of the priority tasks of a president-elect. As the United States has taken on growing global responsibilities since World War II, the incoming president has typically felt considerable pressure to announce the administration’s national security team early in the transition. This is seen as a way of demonstrating to allies that American leadership is reliable while cautioning foes that the nation is prepared to handle any challenge. There is a domestic political imperative to act quickly, as well as a desire to reassure the American public that they have elected someone decisive and up to the task of governing.1 Nonetheless, the process often takes time. Among post–World War II presidents, only three have announced a major national security appointment in the first month of the transition. Eisenhower announced his secretaries of state and defense on November 20, 1952; Richard Nixon named Henry Kissinger as national security adviser on December 2, 1968 (the only time a national security adviser was announced before the Cabinet appointments); and George H. W. Bush announced his selection of James Baker as secretary of state on November 10, 1988, a decision he communicated to Baker two days before the election.2 The rest took longer to make their announcements. Some have announced their selections as a largely complete team. As noted above, Eisenhower named his secretaries of defense and state together on November 20, 1952. Both Nixon and Reagan named their choices for state and defense in the sixth week, while Clinton made his choices known in the seventh week, after announcing his economic team in the sixth week.3 Those who made individual announcements typically led with the secretary of state. Kennedy named Dean Rusk as secretary of state on December 12, 1960; Robert S. McNamara as secretary of defense on December 13; and McGeorge Bundy as national security adviser on December 29.4 Carter was early in naming his secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, on December 3, 1976, followed by Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser on December 16, and Harold Brown as defense secretary on December 21, 1976.5 George W. Bush announced General the right staff 63 Colin Powell as his choice for secretary of state on December 16, Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser a day later, and Donald Rumsfeld to head the Defense Department on December 29, 2000.6 As the national security establishment expanded during the cold war, the number of officials subject to “discretionary appointment” grew substantially, extending beyond the familiar Cabinet positions of secretaries of state and defense, director of the CIA (now director of national intelligence), and national security adviser, to their deputies, under secretaries , and scores of assistant secretaries.7 With the growing complexity and interdependence of national security issues in the post–cold war world, the range of positions that arguably compose the national security universe has grown to include officials at Treasury, Office of Management and Budget, Justice, Commerce, Energy, and even Health and Human Services. Staffing these...