WHTP's Report Series Index (4/9/2001)

The complete index to reports and briefing materials provided to President Bush's transition team by the White House Transition Project's WH2001 Project (pictured at right). The materials derive from extensive interviews with previous staff about the lessons they learned and the resources they wished they had had. The index includes materials available on both the public and the transition team websites, divided into five series:
[PDF Format]

• Guide to Transitions - original essays on presidential transitions. See below.

• White House Operations - original essays on general White House operations. See below.

• Staff Resources - resource materials to smooth contact. Only available to White House staff.

• Institutional Memory - office descriptions and other useful resources for seven key offices. See below.

• Appointments Reference - information about the appointments process. See below.

Lessons from Past Transitions(11/1/2000)
by John P. Burke

Based on his new book on transitions, Burke outlines the lessons learned from past presidential transitions: from what to think about early to how to start running the day after the election to how to manage the presidency.
[PDF Format]

Tales of Transitions 1980 and 1988 (11/1/2000)
by John P. Burke

What are the differences between the hostile and friendly takeovers of the past? This report outlines what to expect whichever side wins.
[PDF Format]

Meeting the Freight Train Head On(7/12/2000)
by Martha J. Kumar, George C. Edwards, III, James Pfiffner, & Terry Sullivan

Seizing early opportunities eases confirmations, furthers the President's agenda, and affords a new team a valuable reputation for competence. That is the consensus of people who have worked in top White House positions over the course of the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations. A report compiling the lessons learned by some former White House staff.
[PDF Format]

Opportunities and Hazards(9/1/1998)
by Martha J. Kumar

An early assessment by the Director of the White House Transition Project describing what is at stake in the presidential transition and how scholars working with former White House staff can smooth the way for the new administration. Commissioned by the Pew Chartiable Trusts, the study also assesses the use of a website in delivering materials to the new staff, ala whitehouse2001.org.
[PDF Format]

Chief of Staff Forum
James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
(a supporting institution of the WHTP's WH2001 Project) (6/15/2000)

The former Chiefs of Staff discuss running the White House at a Washington Forum, June 15, 2000.
I want to particularly underscore the efforts of the... White House 2001 Project, guided by Professor Martha Kumar, has worked so closely with the Baker Institute in preparing for this Forum. - James A. Baker, III
[Streaming Video]

Presidency & the Political Environment(11/1/2000)
by John H. Kessel

White House staffing must adapt to a number of significant forces. These forces are outlined by a leading expert on White House organization.
[PDF format]

The White House World: Start Up, Organization, and The Pressures of Work Life(12/12/2001)
by Martha J. Kumar

The White House staff extends the President's reach. This essay explores the nature of White House work, including the pressures placed on staff by the nature of the offices in which they work. It describes the degree of scrutiny, scale of operations, rythyms of work, and demands for error free decision-making placed on all staff. It also outlines the advantages of White House life.
[PDF format]

Each office report has two files.
	The first is a description of the office written by scholars expert on the office. Available in PDF format (you will need Adobe Acrobat's free viewer to open).
	The second file downloads a folder of organization charts in MSWord format. These are zipped together.
	To save essays to your hard drive for later review, right-click on the file name and choose "Save As".

	Chief of Staff	Staff Secretary
	Description. by Walcott, Warshaw, & Wayne		Description. by Hult & Tenpas
	Org. charts.		Org. charts.
	Management and Administration	Presidential Personnel
	Description. by Arnold, Patterson, & Walcott		Description. by Patterson & Pfiffner
	Org. charts.		Org. charts.
	Counsel to the President	Press Office
	Description. by Borrelli, Hult, & Kassop		Description. by Kumar
	Org. charts.		Org. charts.
	Office of Communications
	Description. by Kumar
	Org. charts.

WHTP Releases Study on Appointment Reform

"Its time to consider what we can fix," Terry Sullivan, Executive Director of WHTP said in a meeting recently. "For five years, WHTP has not considered the presidential appointments process and the mess that presidential nominees regularly face. America can do better and we intend to help." With that statement, WHTP released its newest study from it Nomination Forms Online Program, entitled "Rescuing the Presidential Appointments Process." Using its unique database on nominee inquiry, WHTP identified the general patterns of trouble for nominees and assessed a number of strategies for easing the burden on the government's top policy-making officials. "At least," Sullivan noted, "we can make it esier before they get their jobs."

After detailing a number of problems with the nomination and confirmation process, the report makes 18 recommendations. "Most of these recommendations identify ways to increase redundancy in the some 250 individual questions that nominees must muster answers for. And these are not easy questions to answer, dealing with financial conflicts of interest, disclosure, and legal entanglements as well as a whole range of questions about associations, travel, education, and employment."

To see more about this new report, click here.

WHTP cites Prior Sponsors

"In its nearly ten year history, the White House Transition Project has done great things." Professor Martha Kumar recently noted, "It has helped one presidency get off to a record-setting start. It has helped document and translate into useful advice the hard lessons learned in the world's most important governing institution. And it has passed those lessons on to those who govern, in this country and other democracies around the world, to their staffs here and abroad, and to the thousands of political appointees who manage policy-making day in and day out."
"Over the years, the White House Transition Project has received the assistance of a terrific board of advisors and the financial assistance of several institutions, public and private. And for their assistance, we are especially grateful and want to take this time to acknowledge them."
The following institutions have provided invaluable assistance to the WHTP:

Principal Assistance:

• The Pew Charitable Trusts
• Towson University
• The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University

• The American Enterprise Institute
• The Brookings Institution
• James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership & Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at University of Maryland
• National Archives & Records Administration
• Powell Tate, Washington, D.C.
• Presidency Research Group at American Political Science Association
• Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, & Public Policy, at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Former WH Chiefs' Visions of Governing

The White House Transition Project and The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University (a WHTP Partner) announce the release of a new book on transition preparations. The new book, Nerve Center: Lessons on Governing from the White House Chiefs of Staff is published as the second book in the presidential transition collection of Texas A&M University Press. (See below for the story on its first book: The White House World).

Nerve Center compiles the collective judgments of 12 of the 14 living former White House Chiefs of Staff:

• Vice-President Richard Cheney
• Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III
• Former Senate Majority Leader and now Ambassador Howard Baker, Jr.
• Former and current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
• Former Congressman Leon Panetta
• Former Governor John Sununu
• Erskine Bowles
• John Podesta,
• Jack Watson
• Thomas "Mack" McClarty
  
• Former Secretary of Transportatin Samuel Skinner and
• Kenneth Duberstein.

Their discussions in Nerve Center range over topics about staffing the White House, crisis management, political leadership, predatory partisanship in Washington, presidential decision-making, and a host of other topics associated with presidential transitions and governing from the modern White House.

In addition, the final chapter provides the first comparative analysis of the George W. Bush 2001 presidential transition identifying a number of standards for success and measuring the Bush performance against previous modern transitions.

Rescuing The Presidential Appointments Process. (9/12/2007)
by Terry Sullivan

Substantial revision of an earlier NFO reference report, this newly issued assessment covers strategies for rationalizing the presidential appointments process. It identifes two significant reform strategies each reducing the burden of inquiry on nominess by 30% without changing the reported information at all. 18 recommendations. An appendix covers questions asked on all forms and questionnaires nominees must file, including all of the Senate Committee forms.
[PDF format]

Additional Appointments Titles
WHTP releases these studies to help detail the inquiry difficulties facing presidential appointees.[All in PDF format]

• A Guide to Inquiry: Executive Questionnaires - assesses the nature of appointee inquiry in the Executive branch. The study is the first of its kind to compare questions across the most common forms nominees must file. (11/7/2000)
• Analyzing Questionnaires for Nominees - further analysis of questions nominees must answer and their relationship to the inquiry found in Senate forms.(12/4/2000)

For older WHTP (including WH2001) news, see
our Archived News page.