An Electoral Victory Is Only the Beginning

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 2, 2000 | by Jamie Dettmer

The opinion polls slip and slide -- one moment George W. Bush is up, and the next the vice president is ahead. As political notebook predicted in the last issue of this magazine, the presidential race is rounding the poll and heading into the stretch with the candidates running neck and neck. That is, in terms of the popular vote. But in the Electoral College votes -- the ones that matter -- the Texas governor must be considered the favorite. Bush is leading in two dozen states with a total of 257 electoral votes, just 13 shy of what he needs to win. Al Gore, on the other hand, is 100 votes short of victory.

No one has a lock on this race, but that strong lead in the Electoral College has made preparations for a Bush White House more than an exercise in wishful thinking. As one senior GOP aide told political notebook, "The time between Election Day and inauguration is short, and before you know it you're in office and wondering what the heck to do."

Bush already has been clear about his first legislative priorities: education reform and help with prescription drugs for the elderly. But the planning now is less about what to do in policy terms than how to do it and with whom. The 10-week passage from successful candidacy to incumbency is fraught with peril -- get it wrong in the immediate postelection period and mistakes can derail a new administration at the get-go, resulting in a wasting of the traditional honeymoon period. Get it right and you can achieve altitude before the other guy's fighters get off the ground.

"It is striking that nonincumbents typically enter their transitions with confidence bordering on arrogance and hopefulness bordering on innocence," wrote Carl Brauer in his excellent 1986 book Presidential Transitions. That about sums up the start of the Clinton administration. With little Democratic executive experience to draw on, the administration found itself bogged down early. Controversy over gays in the military pushed Clinton onto the defensive and a series of screwups in the selection of an attorney general opened the White House to ridicule. It was not an auspicious beginning and is being treated as a cautionary tale by Bush's advisers, many of whom are old government hands who served his father.

Already a Bush recruitment drive is on: Chase Undermeyer, who was White House personnel director in George Bush senior's administration, is leading the early effort in head-hunting for all the posts that have to be filled, a job he performed for the senior Bush in the 1988 transition.

In terms of the top positions little is leaking out, but names are circulating and every now and again there are some tremendous hints. In the first week of September, Bush received his first CIA briefing. In the room with him was his national-security adviser for the campaign, Condoleezza Rice, which was predictable. Less so was the presence of Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney's deputy at the Pentagon during the Bush administration. His attendance suggests he has been earmarked for a Cabinet post, possibly defense secretary, secretary of state or CIA director.

Frank Keating, the Oklahoma governor, also is being mentioned a lot in Bush circles as a candidate for a top job. Capitol Hill sources say he is the favorite to replace Janet Reno at Justice, a department likely to undergo root-and-branch reform in a Bush administration.

Of all the government departments, Justice is occupying a lot of the thoughts of the Bush planners. There are several reasons. It is, of course, a big department that has its fingers in many pies. Justice shapes the whole thrust and direction of federal law enforcement as well as playing a major role in national security. A large part of the tenor and tone of a presidential administration is shaped by the decisions of the attorney general.

And the tone of the Clinton administration is not one the Republicans have liked. Issues concerning government ethics and integrity have been at the heart of the Bush campaign. Republicans have made no secret of their belief that under Bill Clinton the Justice Department has been heavily politicized and too often a water carrier for a White House under investigation and suspicion. Congressional Republicans now are drafting lists of Justice officials they want out within the first few weeks of a Bush administration rolling into town.

Heading the list are criminal division chiefs, especially those occupying public-integrity posts. The civil-rights section and its chief Bill Lan Lee can expect to be early casualties in the clean sweep -- so, too, some of the U.S. attorneys appointed by Clinton.

Will the actions taken to get the Department of Justice in hand be part of a settling of scores with the Democrats? Those involved in the planning insist they will guard against that and assure they will not carry out a Saturday Night Massacre of the U.S. attorneys, as Clinton did when he arrived in office. "We will be far more restrained," says a GOP aide.

Caution also marks the current thinking about what to do with the various Clinton scandal investigations, including campaign-finance inquiries, that a Bush administration would inherit. "For the sake of good government and the rule of law we need to follow through on them and even go back and look at what was done with past probes, but we have to weigh up a lot of factors," says a congressional source. He adds: "This has to be done quietly, and if we find there were laws broken we have to be very thoughtful how we then proceed. From the point of view of the rule of law, law-breaking should not go unpunished, but good government demands we go easy -- we don't want to set a precedent for future administrations to take revenge on outgoing administrations. Further, the public would not like it. They could say, `We voted you guys in to exorcise the past; now you are dragging us through it again.'"