This series provides the essential information needed to assure a smooth transition. Reports in this series detail organization and operations in a range of offices critical to a properly functioning White House. These reports rely heavily on the extensive interviews conducted by WHTP's White House Interview Program, an innovative program that has given practitioners a useful way to pass on their experiences to those that follow, regardless of party. Pictured at left, WHTP Director, Martha Kumar reviews with Bush Transition Director Clay Johnson one of the briefing books WHTP provided for each of the offices covered by the 2001 series: Chief of Staff, Staff Secretary, Director of Personnel, White House Administration, White House Counsel, Press Secretary, and Office of Communications. Mr. Johnson had served as the Bush for President Transition planner and had worked with WHTP staff for almost two years by the time the new administration took office. He would go on to serve as Director of Presidential Personnel in the new White House.

The institutional memory series office descriptions detail basic organizational structures, as well as typical work routines, identify what those who have done the job commonly think has worked and what has not.

The series for 2009 begins with updated descriptions for each of the seven offices covered in the original and highly acclaimed 2001 series. In addition, this series includes organizational charts for many offices typically running from 1978 through 2000 at six month intervals.

A shortcut to the Institutional Memory Series, The White House World gathers and digests the same material provided to the Bush White House staff in 2001.

This series details general challenges to previous transitions. The reports here come from authors and practitioners alike. Click here to jump to the General Transition Series or select one of the individual studies listed below for the specific report. This series has two sets of reports, covering past transitions and the general topic of transitions. [All in PDF Format]

General Guides

• Presidency & the Political Environment by John H. Kessel
• The White House World: Start Up, Organization, and The Pressures of Work Life by Martha J. Kumar
• Meeting the Freight Train Head On: Planning for the Transition to Power by Martha J. Kumar, George C. Edwards, III, James Pfiffner, & Terry Sullivan

Presidential Transition Discussions
A Partnership with the Council on Excellence in Government

• Martha Kumar on the Importance of Transitions.

A Special Symposium of the Public Administration Review (reprinted here by permission PAR)

• Getting Ready for Day One by Martha J. Kumar
• For an Effective 2008 Transition by Clay Johnson III
• Preparing to Be President on Day One by Harrison Wellford

Evaluating Past Transitions

• Lessons from Past Transitions by John P. Burke
• Tales of Transitions 1980 and 1988 by John P. Burke
• Evaluating Transition 2001 by Terry Sullivan

A new series for the 2009 transition, these briefing papers concentrate on issues and resources identified in discussions with past White House staff, including those attending the WHTP and James Baker Institute's meeting of the former White House Chiefs of Staff.

New Institutional Data

• Presidential Work During the First 100 Days
  by Terry Sullivan
• The President on the Road
  by Brendan Doherty
• The Cost of the White House
  by Bradley Patterson from his new book from Brookings
  (released here by permission of Brookings Press)
• Presidential Power in National Security: A Guide to the President-Elect
  by Louis Fisher
• Presidential Communications Lessons Learned by Martha Kumar
• Presidential Interchanges with Press by Martha Kumar

Appointments Database and Analysis

• The 2008 Plum Book has arrived. WHTP makes it available by download (pdf): download here.
• The Details of Inquiry — Fixing the Presidential Appointments Process by Terry Sullivan Revised!
• The Real Invisible Hand: Presidential Appointees in the Administration of George W. Bush by G. Calvin MacKenzie

Special Report: The View from the Nerve Center

In its first book in the special studies series, WHTP and its partner The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University focus on the specific operational problems faced by the White House Chief of Staff. The book, Nerve Center: Lessons on Governing from the White House Chiefs of Staff is published by the Texas A&M University Press.

Nerve Center compiles the collective judgments of 12 of the 14 living former White House Chiefs of Staff who convened to discuss the challenges that present every White House trying to move the nation's agenda forward. "Some of us have tried to oust others of us from office," noted James A. Baker III in his remarks opening the conference, "but on many issues about how to do the nation's business, we are all agreed there is no partisan answer. Every new administration deserves a chance to realize the electorate's will without stumbling through the simplest mistakes. We've all been there and regardless of who steps into this job on the twentieth of January, we want the best for them."

Those involved in the conference and covered in the book include:

• Former Congressman, Sec. of Defense, and Vice-President Richard Cheney
• Former Sec. of Treasury and State James A. Baker III
• Former Senate Majority Leader and Ambassador Howard Baker, Jr.
• Former Congressman and Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
• Former Congressman Leon Panetta

• Former Governor John Sununu
• Erskine Bowles
• John Podesta
• Jack Watson
• Thomas "Mack" McClarty
• Former Sec. of Transportation 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. Two scholarly articles summing up the operational dilemmas the Chiefs face and evaluating the 2001 transition round out this useful resource from the WHTP.

• Appointments Summary, Year End Review (1/20/10)
• WHTP Analyzes Appointments Reform

Appointments Summary at First Year's End:
Administration Closes in on Completing the Policy Government
Senate Delays Yield Larger Than Normal Backlog

The Senate backlog continues to grow, now reaching over 200 pending nominations, not counting the large number of nominations to ambassadorships and federal attorney positions, which WHTP does not track. The 208 in the Senate backlog is about 70 more than the Senate had backlogged at the end of 2001, amounting to a 53% increase over the Bush backlog. "I think this performance lag tells us something about the Senate's capacity for vetting appointments," Terry Sullivan, who heads the appointments study, points out, "something we didn't know before." While the Executive Branch has a substantial operational capacity charged with vetting, located in the White House and elements of the FBI and OGE, the Senate must rely on its own policy-oriented, committee staff to pull double duty. "When the Senate's policy work fills out in the second half of the year," Professor Sullivan notes, "vetting slows down dramatically. There is simply a limited capacity for vetting."

General Summary on Appointments Pace

As of the end of the president's first term, the Obama administration has secured 353 of its own Senate confirmed appointments. This figure does not include another 185 appointments the administration carried over from the Bush Administration on fixed term appointments. The latter includes a few officials (like the Secretary of Defense) asked by the President to remain in office. It also includes many commissioners and board members for important regulatory commissions (like the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), as well as much lesser known federal agencies, e.g., Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and the Delta Regional Authority.

These statistics on "filling out" the government compare closely to figures compiled by WHTP for the George W. Bush presidency at the same point in that administration. By 01/20/2002, for example, the Bush White House had gotten confirmations on some 360 appointments. President Obama has sent to the Senate 561 nominations for positions tracked by WHTP while President Bush had sent 496. "Throughout most of this first year, the Obama White House has tracked the Bush White House on appointments," notes Terry Sullivan, WHTP Executive Director. "These data might suggest for the first time just how common the appointments process is for all new administrations."

Snapshot Of PAS Nominations
(As of 01/20/10 and excluding holdovers)

Special Note on Federal Judges

Possibly reflecting the relative importance placed on the Federal Judiciary by each president, the Obama White House lags far behind the Bush Administration on nominations to the federal bench. A top priority for President Bush, by this point in his tenure, he had nominated 76 to the bench. In the same time period, President Obama has nominated 44, a bit more than half the Bush number.

Of those 76, by the end of his first year in office, President Bush had secured confirmations on 43% of his nominations or 33 judgeships. President Obama has secured 15 of his smaller 44 nominations for a success rate of 34%.

Summary for PAS Appointments to Cabinet Departments - with overall comparisons for President Bush and including holdovers

Improved Comparisons by Cabinet Agencies

WHTP has recently upgraded its cabinet agency comparisons. These now produce both comparative statistics on the George W. Bush administration, data on fixed term appointments in the cabinet agencies, and information on holdover appointments. "While these fixed term appointments are very atypical in cabinet agencies," noted Terry Sullivan, "some, like the Director of the FBI, the IRS Commissioner, and Inspectors General play important roles in their respective cabinet agencies." These new data and comparisons provide a far more accurate picture on "staffing up" at the cabinet agency level than ever before.

Currently, President Obama overall performance tracks closely with President Bush's at this point in the administration. In the cabinet agencies, President Obama has filled some 266 positions (about 69%), whereas President Bush had filled 254 positions (77%). President Bush needed to fill about 70 fewer positions and had another 50 fixed term holdovers already in place.

Notes on Sources

The research relies on White House releases and information found in the Senate and Senate committee calendars for Presidential Appointees requiring Senate confirmation(designated "PAS" in OPM lists). It tracks all appointments from the point of an administration announcement through to a Senate decision. Similar resources inform comparisons with the George W. Bush administration.

WHTP Analyzes Appointments Reform Suggestions

One of WHTP's primary missions has focused on understanding the details of the presidential appointments process. "There is so much of that process that is simply myth," said Terry Sullivan, who directs the Institutional Anatomy Series. "Until WHTP got into it, no one really understood the breadth or depth of the inquiry that nominees face and which demoralizes them and threatens the system."

WHTP has published research on reforming the appointments process: The Details of Inquiry. The report covers three problems with appointments: inexperience, lengthening process, and needlessly adversarial and tedious inquiry. That analysis underscores 8 ways relieve nominees of 31% of their reporting burdens. Access this and other reports in the Institutional Anatomy Series on this site by clicking here.