In an Age of Terror, an Early Start on the Presidential Transition
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

WASHINGTON — At a luxurious hilltop estate with sweeping vistas of the Hudson River, an adviser to President Obama began meeting on Wednesday with aides to the candidates vying to replace him to make the first, early preparations for the day when Mr. Obama leaves office.

During a two-day gathering on the grounds of Kykuit, the manor built by John D. Rockefeller, they will attend breakout sessions, working lunches and dinners, and white-board-assisted discussions on how to execute a seamless transfer of power in an age when the threat of a terrorist attack like the one on Sept. 11, 2001, requires a fully functioning White House at all times.

That need was brought home forcefully to President George W. Bush after 9/11, and his concern that his successor lose no time in taking the reins of power led to what is regarded as a model transition when it was time for him to leave office.

Now, in an acknowledgment that its time is running out, the Obama White House has begun planning for the next transition, a task akin to a giant corporate merger, but one that involves the federal government’s 4,000 senior executives and a $4 trillion budget. And it will all be compressed into the 72 days between the election on Nov. 8 and the Jan. 20, 2017, inauguration.

“It is the most complex, most difficult takeover on the planet today, and probably in history,” said Max Stier, the founder and president of the Partnership for Public Service, the nonprofit group that is hosting the retreat and has established a Center for Presidential Transition to guide the process from the outside.

Mr. Stier declined to discuss the details of the meeting, including its participants, saying it was designed to provide a “safe space” for frank and confidential discussions about the transition process. But he said it was vital that the preparations begin now, removed from the chaos and rancor of the presidential campaign and the pressures of a White House bent on pressing Mr. Obama’s agenda while there is still time.

“Campaigns were always loath to do early or aggressive pre-transition planning for fear that they will be accused of measuring the drapes or being presumptuous, so they ended up doing it at the last minute,” said Mr. Stier. “And the White House doesn’t want to be viewed as lame duck, but they also, as stewards of our government, really need to ensure that the handoff is as thorough and clean as possible.”

Mr. Obama began pressing his senior advisers to begin planning for the transition late last fall, telling them he wanted to take the process seriously and match or exceed the job done by Mr. Bush, to whom he and his team give high marks for a well-executed handover in January 2009.

“He indicated that he wanted this to be a serious process,” Anita Decker Breckenridge, Mr. Obama’s deputy chief of staff for operations and the point person on the process, said in an interview.

Ms. Decker Breckenridge was herself the beneficiary of memorandums, briefing books and other materials prepared by Mr. Bush’s departing staff members that she called invaluable when she began work on Mr. Obama’s first day in office as the chief of staff at the National Endowment for the Arts.

The president “wants to do the same, if not better, for the next administration,” Ms. Decker Breckenridge said he told her. “This is just, at its core, good democracy, good government, and it’s critical.”

Denis McDonough, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, convened a meeting of the cabinet last month to begin thinking through plans for the transition, and Ms. Decker Breckenridge has begun meeting weekly with Andrew Mayock, a senior adviser at the Office of Management and Budget, to compare notes and go through task lists. Mr. Mayock will attend this week’s meetings in New York.

Fear as a Motivator

It was fear that drove Mr. Bush to plan early and carefully for an effective transition after terrorist attacks disrupted his presidency less than eight months after he took office, according to the former senior officials who executed the transition plan.

“We talked about 9/11 and, ‘Thank goodness it was Sept. 11 and not Feb. 11 because we would have been completely incapable of dealing with it then,’ ” said Clay Johnson III, a top Office of Management and Budget official in Mr. Bush’s White House who was a central player in his 2000 transition into office and his 2008 handover to Mr. Obama. “There are just so many more things that a new president has to be prepared for and say grace over now, it’s just the nature of our world.”

In its 2004 report, the independent 9/11 commission noted that Mr. Bush did not have his full complement of senior officials in place until six months after he took office, creating a dangerous situation that could be exploited in the future.

Mr. Bush took the issue to heart, telling his top advisers as early as 2007 that they were to begin planning for the handover.

“He told me this is the first transition in modern American history when the homeland has been under threat, and we need to make sure that it’s as good as it can possibly be,” said Joshua B. Bolten, his chief of staff at the time.

Mr. Bolten, who had been a low-level aide to the elder President George Bush, recalled how his transition out of office in 1993 — like those of his predecessors — had been relatively “thin” and poorly planned.

“It’s different now because we’re vulnerable, and we are essentially under attack here at home from terrorist elements,” Mr. Bolten said the younger Mr. Bush indicated. “There’s a particular moment of vulnerability as we switch over that terrorists may want to try to take advantage of.”

Planning Ahead

Mr. Bush’s advisers handed Mr. Obama’s aides detailed memorandums on policy issues and agency work plans after the election. They also collaborated on a tabletop exercise one week before Mr. Obama’s inauguration in which they postulated several simultaneous explosive attacks on American cities, and sat side by side in the Situation Room gaming out how the government would respond.

Since then, Congress has enacted legislation to codify some elements of the Bush-Obama transition process. Mr. Obama signed the most recent revisions into law without fanfare last month, and they are guiding Ms. Decker Breckenridge’s lengthy to-do list.

The measure sets an early May deadline — six months before Election Day — for the president to create a transition coordinating council at the White House and a transition directors council for federal agencies, each of which must appoint a senior career employee to manage the handoff.

Well before those dates, the National Archives and Records Administration — which by law must take custody of all the departing president’s records by 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20 — has to begin copying a vast amount of digital material to its servers. The job has grown exponentially larger in recent years as the White House has become increasingly wired and data driven. (When Mr. Obama took office, there were fewer than a dozen laptops in use at the White House; now, nearly every employee has one.)

While the Clinton administration produced roughly three terabytes — or trillions of bytes — of records, including 20 million emails, the Bush administration eight years later had to transfer about 80 terabytes, including 200 million emails. The archives administration projects that this president will turn over two and a half times as much: 200 terabytes. Recognizing the magnitude of the job, the White House resolved to begin the process, which involves copying the large files of email records, photographs and videos that have become a staple of White House communications during Mr. Obama’s term, several months earlier than in the past. It is expected to commence this month.

Cautionary Tales

A smooth transition has not always been a priority, and there are cautionary tales. In 2002, the General Accounting Office reported that “damage, theft, vandalism and pranks” had occurred at the White House during the transition from Bill Clinton to Mr. Bush, including several instances of computer keyboards missing their “W’s.”

But presidents and candidates have a powerful interest in an effective transition.

“You want to protect the presidency as an institution, and you also want to use transition as part of your legacy — you want to go out well,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, whose 2015 book, “Before the Oath,” dissects the 2008 transition. “For the campaigns, the impetus comes from wanting to be able to govern on Day 1. The beginning of an administration is when you have the greatest opportunity to bring about change but the least capacity to figure out how to do it.”

Being Ready

It is not yet clear, however, how much the presidential campaigns are prioritizing the transition.

Hillary Clinton, who has not yet selected anyone to lead transition planning, sent a midlevel policy staffer to this week’s meetings. Bernie Sanders tapped Michaeleen Crowell, his Senate chief of staff, among others, to participate. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio dispatched Kerry Knott, who served as chief of staff to Dick Armey, a former House majority leader, to attend and serve as the point person for transition preparations.

Michael Glassner, Donald J. Trump’s national political director, was also planning to attend. Officials for Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Ted Kaufman, a former senator of Delaware, who introduced legislation enacted in 2010 governing presidential transitions and who helped design the 2016 law, said savvy candidates would take the issue seriously.

“It was clear to me that you couldn’t wait until Election Day and leave yourself with basically two months to do this — you had to plan way in advance,” he said. “Anybody who is running knows that your first term is when you’re going to get done 90 percent of what you’re going to get done — second terms are to be survived — and the first 100 days is when you are going to accomplish most of it. So you have to be ready.”

美國總統交接 就職10月前啟動

美國總統大選是今年11月8日，新總統就職是明年1月20日，但歐巴馬政府團隊遠謀周諮，已在3月先期著手總統交接計畫，並且上周三（20日）開始會晤目前檯面總統參選人的助理，務期屆時交接順暢，無縫過渡。

《紐約時報》報導，歐巴馬政府體認事不宜遲，在新政權預計上台前十個月規畫交接。此事類似巨型企業合併，但深廣皆有過之，牽涉4000名政府高層主管與4兆美元的國家預算。

地球最複雜交接

華府非營利團體「公共服務合作組織」創辦人兼總裁史泰爾說：「這是當今地球上最複雜，最困難的交接。」該組織為此成立從外部督導白宮過渡事宜的「總統交接中心」。中心的用意是提供一個「安全空間」，坦誠、機密討論交接程序。而且討論必須現在就開始，一來遠離選戰的喧囂與火氣，二來不受白宮在歐巴馬所餘任期積極作為造成的壓力干擾。

史泰爾說，參選人過去不喜歡提早積極計畫接任，以免被視為猴急或僭越，因此往往把交接問題留到最後一分鐘，白宮則不願提早規畫移交，以免盡露跛鴨相。他表示，其實白宮在位者身為政府管家，真的有必要確保交接徹底且俐落。

紐時報導，歐巴馬去年秋末開始著眼過渡事宜，對幕僚表示他重視此事，要當一件嚴肅的事來辦，至少媲美、或最好超越2009年1月的布希「移交模範」。

歐巴馬指定副幕僚長安妮塔．戴克．布雷肯利吉負責過渡作業。她表示，歐巴馬受惠於布希盡善盡美的移交，他自己移交時亦當如是。她說：「好的民主，好的政府就該如此。」

法律明訂程序

歐巴馬的幕僚長麥克多諾3月開始細密計畫交接，布雷肯利吉則開始每周會晤白宮「管理與預算辦公室」要員，交換意見，共商交接事項。

美國國會已通過將布希與歐巴馬交接程序的要義明載為法律，歐巴馬上月簽字。新法包括規定5月為期限，亦即大選日六個月前，總統在白宮成立交接協調委員會，以及聯邦機關主管交接委員會。

數位檔案200TB

國家檔案/紀錄管理局必須在明年1月20日下午12點01前收管離職總統的所有文件，因此必須早在今年5月以前，開始拷貝巨量數位資料。柯林頓政府留下2000萬筆電郵在內的大約3兆兆位元（TB）文件，布希政府80兆兆位元，歐巴馬政府預估為200兆兆位元，拷貝工作浩瀚，非提早上工不可。

報導引述2015年新書《宣誓之前》（Before the Oath）作者瑪莎．詹特．庫馬爾的話說，人人都希望保障總統這個名器，移交者則希望留下「好來好去」的遺澤。現任總統和總統參選人都應該有興趣達成效率快、實效高的交接。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/us/politics/in-an-age-of-terror-smoothing-the-transition-to-the-next-presidency.html

2016-04-25．聯合晚報．A4．聯晚之眼．編譯彭淮棟