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.

This land, which we have watered with our tears and our blood, is now our mother country, and we are well satisfied to stay where wisdom abounds and gospel is free.

Jimmy Carter began his planning in the early summer of 1976, Ronald Reagan a year prior. The Clinton Administration, elected in 1992, lingered in naming its team, and as a result, took almost a year to staff its ranks.

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.

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.

A skilled Transition Team leader will set the general goals for a Transition, and then confer on the other team leaders working with him the power to implement those goals.

Unlike the Reagan and Bush Administrations, with but one exception, the Clinton administration failed to reach out to Republicans in creating a new team, and eventually paid a political price.