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It’s Time to Think About the Presidential Transition
It’s hard to imagine a tougher presidential transition than we saw after the 2020 election. As Martha Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, described it, “The inauguration occurred as prescribed by the Constitution, yet the circumstances were far from normal.”
“With a nation scarred from the COVID-19 pandemic, a faltering economy and months of racial disturbances, followed by the insurrection at the Capitol, President Biden came into office with challenges few presidents have faced,” she said in a report.
A report by the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition, a nonpartisan source of information and expertise on the transfer of power, called it “the toughest transition in history.” Yet when election disputes and other tumult were through, a 78-day transition period was effectively reduced to 56 days. That means an administration tasked with hiring 4,000 people, 1,200 of whom required Senate confirmation, lost 22 days.
With the U.S. again facing a wire-tight election this year, smart public affairs teams should be asking a key question: What will the transition look like this time? After all, plans for that transition are already underway.
The Timing of Presidential Transition
The transition from one administration to the next is a massive undertaking as the incoming president takes the helm of a federal government that spends $5.6 trillion a year and employs roughly 2 million people. Ensuring national security, making the handshake with world leaders, choosing and vetting cabinet members, hiring thousands of staffers and prioritizing policy changes for the first 100 days is challenging — even under the best of circumstances.
That burden extends far outside the White House as public affairs teams in every industry work hard to track the changes, meet new faces, educate leaders, and push or protect their policy agendas. It’s a lot of work for teams that are often short-staffed and overburdened, having to also track and address changes in Congress and the states.
The presidential transition officially takes place between the close of the election, which is Nov. 5 this year, and the inauguration of the winner, which is usually Jan. 20. But preparations traditionally begin much earlier.
For about a month now, both the Harris and Trump campaigns have been preparing to take charge if they win, including creating teams that will move into every executive branch department and agency to take control after the new president is inaugurated. This part of the election is not often covered, eclipsed by events on the campaign trail, but there are some indicators that both campaigns are behind in transition planning.
While preparations usually start in the first quarter of an election year, they did not start until August of this year. Harris reportedly tapped Yohannes Abraham, a former ambassador and executive director of the Biden-Harris 2020 transition, to lead her planning. Trump chose Linda McMahon, former administrator of the Small Business Administration, and Howard Lutnick, the billionaire CEO of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
If everything goes smoothly after the election this year — a very big question — the transition period would be about 76 days. But that time could easily be eaten away by court cases, recounts, and other irregularities. It is also true that the transition often extends long after the inauguration is done as the Senate does its confirmation work.
What Governs Presidential Transition?
So, how does the presidential transition actually work? The transfer of power from one president to another is controlled in part by federal law and in part by traditions and norms, according to the Center for Presidential Transition.
Congress passed the Presidential Transition Act in 1963, which requires the General Services Administration to provide office space and other support to major party presidential candidates so they can plan a transition. It also requires the sitting president to begin planning even before the election, including the creation of White House Transition Coordinating Council and an Agency Transition Directors Council. The GSA must also name a federal transition coordinator.
While many decisions about transition are still left to the winning candidate, the law has given candidates “political cover” to begin planning before the election is done. “Transition planning is now seen less as an act of overconfidence and more as an obligation for aspiring presidents to fulfill their constitutional obligations,” according to the Center for Presidential Transition report.
What a Harris Transition Might Look Like
In the case of the 2024 race, there is much to look at when trying to predict what the next transition will look like. Harris is the sitting vice president. Trump is a former president. Both have records that indicate how this could go.
In the case of a Harris presidency, there may be some continuity because she would take the handoff from her former running mate, Joe Biden. Many officials would — or at least could — stay on in their roles. When Harris took over from Biden as the Democratic candidate during the campaign, the transition was relatively smooth. Harris was also intimately involved in the transition in 2020, and the Biden administration was fairly transparent.
For example, the administration released a list of hundreds of people involved in its agency review teams, which were tasked with assisting the transition in every department and agency. These people, most of them volunteers, came from universities, think tanks, nonprofits, associations, companies, unions, law firms, Congress, city and state governments and many other organizations.
What a Trump Transition Might Look Like
In the case of a Trump presidency, we can look to Trump’s transition as incoming president after the 2016 election. Trump’s efforts were initially led by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whose team produced 30 volumes of transition planning. However, Trump replaced Christie and much of that work was reportedly never used.
“That plan was thrown in the trash,” Christie wrote in his book, Let Me Finish. “Literally. All thirty binders were tossed in a Trump Tower dumpster, never to be seen again.”
Michael Lewis, bestselling author of Moneyball and The Big Short, wrote a book called The Fifth Risk about the Trump transition, describing a chaotic process that was far different from the traditional transfer of power.
“On the morning after the election the hundreds of people who had prepared to brief the incoming Trump administration sat waiting,” he wrote, according to an excerpt. “A day became a week and a week became a month … and no one showed up. The parking spots that had been set aside for Trump’s people remained empty, and the briefing books were never opened.”
Trump’s transition out of the White House after the 2020 election was also characterized as chaotic. “Trump’s refusal to concede the election led to a delay in ‘ascertainment,’ the formal decision that initiates the government’s post-election financial and substantive support for the winning candidate,” according to the report by the Center for Presidential Transition. “In addition to delaying funding and access to federal agencies, some members of the Trump administration were not fully cooperative with the incoming Biden team.”
What Your Organization Can Do
So, knowing all of this, what can your organization do? In a word, prepare. Many organizations are active in the election, the inauguration, and Senate confirmations. Transition work is adjacent to all of this, but often stands alone as its own initiative.
Transition time is fast-paced and overwhelming, so getting ready to manage information and response is critical. Here are some things that every organization can do:
- Know What is Important. No organization can track everything, so determine what really matters to your policy agenda. Identify which aspects of the transition are critical, such as those that may require input or response. That might be news that an executive order is being drafted for signing after the inauguration. Or it might be names floated for a cabinet position. Understand your top priorities.
- Know Who is Important. Cabinet nominees get all of the news coverage, but the people named to the subcabinet may ultimately be more important to a working public affairs team. Track who gets named as deputy secretaries, chiefs of staff and other top positions in the agencies that matter—then make a plan to reach out when the new administration takes office.
- Track the Action. When you know the information and the positions you care about, you can assign staff to track it. Politico, Axios, and other news organizations monitor the transition in some granularity. Many associations and lobbying shops also offer briefings. Create a system to collect information and disseminate it within your organization. A new monitoring platform can and CRM is useful
- Know the Rules. Before you reach out to advise or educate anyone in the transition, realize that the teams are often subject to an ethics policy, much like public officials. You want to stay on the right side of the rules. In the past, several law firms have offered an analysis of the policies. For example, Wiley Rein and Covington & Burling did so in 2020. The Alliance for Justice offered a guide for nonprofits this year.
Can your organization participate directly in a transition team? The answer is maybe.
The transition teams that lead the charge are made up largely of people outside government, though many have government experience. Biden’s agency review teams, for example, included people from the AFL-CIO, the Air Line Pilots Association, Amazon, the Environmental Defense Fund, Linkedin, the Mortgage Bankers Association, Salesforce, Uber, and hundreds of other organizations.
So, it can be done. But much depends on the nature of your organization, the experts in your stable, and the connections you have with each campaign. If you feel like your organization is well-positioned, you can make inquiries. As the saying goes, personnel is policy.