The Morning After

"On the morning after election the successful candidate stands at the peak of political success." Then "many problems that until now have been only dimly sensed and perhaps deliberately avoided come fully into view ... the next ten or eleven weeks seem like a short time."

So warns onetime University of Chicago Political Scientist Laurin L. Henry in Presidential Transitions-a detailed history of the last four party changes (1916, 1920, 1932, 1952) in the U.S. presidency. But, mainly due to Henry, this week's winner will get sage advice from Washington's nonpartisan Brookings Institution, which is publishing Henry's book as part of a unique effort to educate the President-elect.

How to Take Over. The key problem is that the U.S.--with 2,380,475 federal employees, a $77 billion annual budget, and a cold war on its hands--has no constitutional machinery for transferring power from one administration to another. To smooth the way, a Brookings team set up liaison with Clark Clifford, onetime counsel for Harry Truman, representing Kennedy, and Brigadier General Robert E. Cushman Jr., speaking for Nixon. Advised by a 14-man committee headed by former Under Secretary of State Robert Murphy, the Brookings team has interviewed some 60 top-level veterans of changeovers. Last week their accumulated wisdom went out to both candidates in the first three of ten memos on the subject. According to Brookings, the President-elect should:

P:Place "observers" in the State and Defense departments and the Budget Bureau. Precedent is Harry Truman's election-night telegram to Ike in 1952: "Congratulations on your overwhelming victory . . . You should have a representative meet with the Director of the Budget immediately." (Ike did.) P:Be prepared to offer a revised budget soon after inauguration. Candidate Nixon estimated that his program would cost nearly $5 billion more than President Eisenhower's, and Candidate Kennedy's avowed plans would presumably cost considerably more than Nixon's. P:Appoint Cabinet members--not forgetting the gravely important presidential science adviser--by mid-December so they can be "informed and ready to make decisions."

Tea & No Sympathy. Such detailed planning was unknown as recently as 1952. Despite Truman's budget invitation, his relations with Eisenhower were cold, and the old problem of "communications" between administrations was not solved. Still, the days have long passed when the outgoing President merely invited his successor in for a quiet White House tea on inauguration eve. That ritual ended in 1933, when F.D.R., calling at the White House, roiled Hoover's feelings by suggesting that the President would probably be too busy to return the call. Snapped Hoover: "Mr. Roosevelt, you'll learn pretty soon that the President of the U.S. doesn't call on anybody."

So casual was the takeover process in 1912 that newspapers worried chiefly about the fate of a gift cow, named Pauline, that William Howard Taft had grazing on the White House lawn (Taft sent it back to the donor). President-elect Wilson whisked off on Nov. 9 to Bermuda, where a cable breakdown left him out of touch with the world for five days--to his delight--and about all Wilson asked of Taft was a "candid opinion" of the White House housekeeper.

*Brookings Institution; $7.50

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