The Leader will be a person with the management skills to coordinate the activities of the Team, and to assure that the Team remains faithful to the objectives of the incoming President.

Certainly, the Bush Administration will rely in the first instance on its friends, since it would be both illogical and counterproductive to reward its adversaries.

The Reagan Administration, generally regarded as having conducted the most successful Transition of modern times, had managed during the election campaign to build bridges to the Democrats in some areas, notably foreign and national security policy.

Naming a transition team varies with the intentions of the candidate; some candidates have been careful to name a transition team as much as a year in advance.

Favoritism' is always a factor, and pressure always build for the appointment of friends of influential supporters of the President, or for the nominees of powerful Member of Congress from the incoming President's party.

The single most important aspect of the Transition involves the selection of personnel to manage the transfer of responsibility. The law provides roughly ten weeks to accomplish this process.

The 'transition' involves the transfer of power from one president to another. In recent times, the incoming President has designated a Director of the Transition, a team leader, to oversee and administer the orderly transfer of power.