Earlier than the Oath: How George W. Bush and Barack Obama Managed a Switch of Energy

An professional on presidential transitions illuminates the components obligatory for a profitable handoff.

Winner of the CHOICE Excellent Educational Title of the Alternative ACRL

It’s one of many hallmarks of American democracy: on inauguration day, the departing president heeds the need of the folks and fingers the keys to energy to a successor. The transition from one administration to the subsequent sounds easy, even ceremonial. However in 2009, as President George W. Bush briefed President-elect Barack Obama concerning the ongoing wars and plummeting financial system he’d quickly inherit, the Bush staff revealed that they had been grappling with a late-breaking menace to the presidency: U.S. intelligence sources believed {that a} terror group with hyperlinks to Al Qaeda deliberate to assault the Nationwide Mall in the course of the inaugural festivities. Though this violence by no means materialized, its risk made it clear that well-laid contingency plans had been important.

Political scientist Martha Joynt Kumar uncovered this secret peril whereas interviewing senior Bush and Obama advisers for her newest guide. In Earlier than the Oath, Kumar paperwork how two presidential groups―one outgoing, the opposite incoming―should forge trusting alliances with a purpose to assist the brand new president reach his or her first time period.

Kumar loved unprecedented entry to a number of incumbent and candidate transition staff members, and she or he combines in-depth scholarship with one-on-one interviews to place readers squarely behind the scenes. Utilizing the Bush-Obama handoff as a lens by means of which to look at the presidential transition course of, Kumar interweaves examples from earlier administrations way back to Truman-Eisenhower. Her topics describe in vivid element the challenges of sowing marketing campaign beliefs throughout a sprawling government department as Congress, the media, and exterior occasions press in. Kumar’s vigorous account of classes discovered and pitfalls encountered throughout previous presidential transitions supplies a necessary street map for presidential aspirants and their advisers, in addition to marketing campaign employees, federal workers, and political appointees.