Date of election | November 8, 1988 |
---|---|
Inauguration date | January 20, 1989 |
President-elect | George H. W. Bush (Republican) |
Vice president-elect | Dan Quayle (Republican) |
Outgoing president | Ronald Reagan (Republican) |
Outgoing vice president | George H. W. Bush (Republican) |
Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
Co-directors | Craig L. Fuller and Robert Teeter |
| ||
---|---|---|
Transitions | ||
Planned transitions | ||
Related | ||
| ||
---|---|---|
Pre-vice presidency 43rd Vice President of the United States 41st President of the United States Policies Appointments Tenure Presidential campaigns Vice presidential campaigns Post-presidency
| ||
The presidential transition of George H. W. Bush began when then-Vice President Bush won the United States 1988 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect, and ended when Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 1989.
The transition was a "friendly takeover", in which the outgoing president and the president-elect were of the same political party.
This transition was an instance of a "friendly takeover", a term used for a presidential transition in which both the outgoing and incoming presidents are of the same political party. [1] [2] [3] [4] In November 1988, Chase Untermeyer would embrace describing the Bush transition with this term. [4] In this instance, both the outgoing Ronald Reagan and the incoming Bush were Republicans, and Bush was the incumbent vice president, having served under Reagan since 1981. This was the eleventh instance of a post-election "friendly takeover" in United States history, [5] and the first instance of one since Herbert Hoover, in his presidential transition, succeeded Calvin Coolidge. [6] [4] This was also the first presidential transition in which an outgoing president was handing-over power to their own vice president since the 1836–37 transition, when Andrew Jackson was succeeded by his vice president Martin Van Buren. [7] [8]
Ahead of the 1988 election, there was bipartisan agreement that changes needed to be made to presidential transitions in order to make them easier. This agreement between parties, perhaps, was attributable to the fact that there would be a presidential transition occurring in the year 1988, since President Reagan was term-limited. [9] One of the changes being pushed in congress was to increase the amount of funds provided by the government to a transition. [9] Since 1976, the government had provided $2 million to the president-elect's team and $1 million to the outgoing president's administration to fund a transition. [10]
Legislation named the Presidential Transitions Effectiveness Act was successfully passed in 1988. [7] In part, this legislation increases the amount given to presidential transitions to $3.5 million for the president-elect's team and $1.5 million to the outgoing president's administration. [7] [10] It also required that private contributions to transitions and the names of transition personnel would be publicly disclosed. [7] It required, in return for receiving federal services and funding, transition teams would formally disclose the date, source, and amount of all privately contributed funds within 30 days after the inauguration. [7] The legislation also placed a cap of $5,000 on private contributions from any one person or organization to a transition team. [7] The bill also required transitions to disclose information about transition team members prior to initial contact with a federal department or agency. [7]
There had also been an unsuccessful effort to altogether stop president-elects from accepting private contributions to help fund their transitions, a bill for which was approved in the United States House of Representatives on March 31, 1988. [11] [12]
Early discussions about a prospective presidential transition for Bush began in late 1987. [13] In January of 1988, Bush privately selected Chase Untermeyer to lead the pre-election planning of his potential presidential transition. [3]
Six months before the election, in April of 1988 (after Bush had become the Republican Party's presumptive nominee), action for the planning for a potential Bush presidential transition began in earnest, being led, at this stage, by Untermeyer. [3] [14] [15] [2] This planning effort maintained a low-key profile. [3]
At the same time, Reagan's staff took steps to prepare for a presidential transition. [2] This included having his director of President Personnel meet with Untermeyer for discussions, and having his White House chief of staff, Kenneth Duberstein, prepare a checklist for the transition team of whichever candidate would win the election. [2]
In mid-October, Bush said that, if elected, he would be ready to quickly name his Cabinet picks. [16]
On November 9, Bush named Craig L. Fuller and Robert Teeter as the heads of his transition team. [7] [14] Fuller was his Vice presidential chief of staff, while Teeter had been his campaign's top pollster and senior strategist. [14] This would be indicative of the rest of the transition, where Bush largely relied on close advisors and political allies he had become acquainted with over his career to lead the effort. [3] Bush also named Chase Untermeyer as its personnel director, and pledged "major turnover" in order to "reinvigorate" the government. [14] He named C. Boyden Gray , his longtime legal counsel, as the transition's legal advisor, and Sheila Tate, who had been the campaign's press secretary, as the press secretary of the transition. [14] These members Bush named at the start of his transition were largely young, in the 30s and 40s, had reputations as moderate-leaning Republicans, had years of experience in Washington, D.C. politics, and had (except for Tate) worked with Bush for several years. [7] [14]
Untermeyer remained on the transition as a deputy. [2] Bush also named James Baker as an advisor on "key aspects" of the transition. [7] While Untermeyer's original recommendation was for the transition to have a small staff of roughly 100, the staff would grow to around 225 members. [2] Even still, this transition was much smaller than the previous Reagan transition, which had accumulated a massive 1,000 to 1,500 volunteers and paid staff. [3] [4] Bush had publicly expressed his desire to run, "a somewhat leaner transition organization than we had in 1980." [4]
The transition team received $3.5 million and the outgoing White House received $1.75 million in funding from the federal government. [17] The outgoing White House received $250,000 less than the normally would be given to a transition, due to the fact that the incumbent vice president (Bush) would not be transitioning out of government. [17]
In mid-November, Bush opened his transition office on Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.. [7] [4] The transition opted to use a private building at expense, rather than the alternative of having the General Services Administration provide his team office space in a federal government property, which would have been free-of-charge to the transition. [17]
On November 22, 1988, Duberstein requested that both Cabinet members and agency heads provide information to the transition team pertaining to organizational matters, goals and functions, resource descriptions, congressional oversight committees, regulatory programs, and other important matters of relevance to each agency. [7]
By the end of November, the majority of executive branch agencies had already designated internal transition leaders to assist Bush's transition liaisons. [7] Because the transition did not have large teams for each agency, Duberstein sent a memo to agency political appointees urging them to prepare briefing brooks for incoming appointees. [2] In regard to White House aides, the transition suffered from a lack of communication between the outgoing aides and their counterparts in Bush's planned administration. [18]
On December 7, Bush joined Reagan for the Governors Island Summit with Soviet Union general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.
Nine days before Bush's inauguration, his wife Barbara received a tour of the White House from Reagan's wife Nancy. The two wives had a unfriendly relationship with one another, and it was reported that the tour that Nancy Reagan gave was rather curt. [19]
Reagan is credited with, during this transition, having begun a tradition of presidents leaving a handwritten note in the Oval Office for their successors. [20]
As many as about 5,000 jobs would be available for the incoming president to appoint new holders to. [4]
The day after the election, Bush named his first Cabinet secretary designee, designating James A. Baker as his choice for secretary of state. [4] This was unusually early, at the time, for a president-elect to begin naming Cabinet designees, as the earliest any of the last several president-elects had begun doing so in their transitions was when Dwight D. Eisenhower did so 16 days after his election. [4]
Nine days after winning the election, Bush chose John H. Sununu to serve as his White House chief of staff. [2] Per media reports, in the days after the election, there had been tense disagreement among his staff about who should hold this position in Bush's administration. According to these reports, both Fuller and Teeter were opposed to the choice of Sununu, and this would be the reason that neither of them chose to join Bush's presidential administration after the transition. [2]
Reagan had asked his appointees to submit letters of resignation, to make way for Bush appointees. [1] [21] Reagan requested that cabinet appointees and more than 500 other political appointees tender their resignations in time for Bush's presidency. [4] However, many appointees, wrongly presuming they would be retained in the "friendly takeover", did not do so. [1] [21] Reagan's White House chief of staff, Kenneth Duberstein, would later recount having to have uncomfortable conversations with individuals to persuade them to tender their resignations. [1] While many Reagan appointees were expected to resign, it had been anticipated from the start of the transition that select recent Reagan appointees, who Bush had had input in hiring, would remain for the Bush administration. [8] Bush did keep a number of Reagan appointees. For instance, of his 53 White House staff hires, 27 had held a role in the Reagan administration. [22] Bush also had said shortly after the election that he would retain three Reagan Cabinet secretaries, treasury secretary Nicholas F. Brady, attorney general Richard Thornburgh, and secretary of education Lauro Cavazos. [22] Additionally, Bush selected many more Reagan high-ranking administration officials to different top positions than the ones that they had held under Reagan. [23]
Many of Bush's Cabinet selections were longtime associates with strong levels of prior government experience. [2] Bush's picks for his Cabinet were more ethnically diverse than those of the Cabinets previous Republican Party presidents, including two women, two hispanic Americans, and an African-American. [22]
Some of Bush's Cabinet picks would attract controversy. [22] For instance, his pick for secretary of health and human services, Louis Wade Sullivan, encountered some resistance from "pro-life" conservatives because of his previously stated stance on abortion. Sullivan had previously been quoted as saying that, while he opposed federal funding for abortion, he supported what he regarded to be a woman's right to elect for an abortion if she desires one. [24] Sullivan, once nominated, would say he would side with Bush's stance of opposing abortions in most instances. [25] Sullivan would ultimately express opposition to abortion during his United States Senate confirmation process, and was confirmed. [22] [26] John Tower, Bush's selection for secretary of defense, would later attract tremendous controversy during his United States Senate confirmation process in the early days of Bush's presidency, ultimately becoming the first Cabinet nominee formally rejected in a U.S. Senate vote in 30 years, and the most recent one. [22] [27] [28]
In early March of 1989, it was reported that many experts argued that Bush's transition, and the first two weeks of his presidency, had both been lackluster. [39]
Some have retrospectively characterized the transition as having been somewhat bumpy, [21] In March 2001, Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution wrote that the transition had been "uneasy". [22]
Some have given the transition great praise. In 2020, academic Barbara A. Perry gave it as an example of a "good" presidential transition. [40] In 2000, journalist Jonathan Weisman of The Baltimore Sun called it "among the best transition teams". [41]
During President Jimmy Carter's presidency, he nominated four people for four different federal appellate judgeships who were not processed by the Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee before Carter's presidency ended. None of the four nominees were renominated by Carter's successor, President Ronald Reagan. Three of the nominees who were not processed were nominated after July 1, 1980, the traditional start date of the unofficial Thurmond rule during a presidential election year. All four seats eventually were filled by appointees of President Ronald Reagan.
In the United States, a presidential transition is the process during which the president-elect of the United States prepares to take over the administration of the federal government of the United States from the incumbent president. Though planning for transition by a non-incumbent candidate can start at any time before a presidential election and in the days following, the transition formally starts when the General Services Administration (GSA) declares an “apparent winner” of the election, thereby releasing the funds appropriated by Congress for the transition, and continues until inauguration day, when the president-elect takes the oath of office, at which point the powers, immunities, and responsibilities of the presidency are legally transferred to the new president.
The presidential transition of Barack Obama began when he won the United States presidential election on November 4, 2008, and became the president-elect. Obama was formally elected by the Electoral College on December 15, 2008. The results were certified by a joint session of Congress on January 8, 2009, and the transition ended when Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009.
In the 1980 United States presidential election, Ronald Reagan and his running mate, George H. W. Bush, were elected president and vice president, defeating incumbents Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale of the Democratic Party.
The 1988 State of the Union Address was given by the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, on January 25, 1988, at 9:00 p.m. EST, in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives to the 100th United States Congress. It was Reagan's seventh and final State of the Union Address and his eighth and final speech to a joint session of the United States Congress. Presiding over this joint session was the House speaker, Jim Wright, accompanied by George H. W. Bush, the vice president.
The 1985 State of the Union Address was given by the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, on February 6, 1985 — Reagan’s 74th birthday — at 9:00 p.m. EST, in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives to the 99th United States Congress. It was Reagan's fourth State of the Union Address and his fifth speech to a joint session of the United States Congress. Presiding over this joint session was the House speaker, Tip O'Neill, accompanied by George H. W. Bush, the vice president.
The presidential transition of Benigno Aquino III began when he won the 2010 Philippine presidential election. On June 9, 2010, at the Batasang Pambansa Complex, in Quezon City, the Congress of the Philippines proclaimed Aquino as the president-elect of the Philippines, following the 2010 election with 15,208,678 votes, while Jejomar Binay, the former mayor of Makati, was proclaimed as the vice president-elect of the Philippines with 14,645,574 votes, defeating runner-up for the vice presidency Mar Roxas, the standard-bearer of the Liberal Party for vice president.
The presidential transition of George W. Bush took place following the 2000 United States presidential election. It started after Bush was declared the victor of the election on December 12, 2000, when the Bush v. Gore decision by the Supreme Court halted the election recount in Florida, making Bush the victor in that state. The decision delivered him the state's 25 electoral votes, thus giving him a total of 271 electoral votes. This was one more vote than the 270 needed to win the presidency outright, making him president-elect.
Patrick Pizzella is a former American government official who served as the 36th United States Deputy Secretary of Labor from April 17, 2018 to January 20, 2021. He was formerly a member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority appointed by President Barack Obama. He held positions in several agencies during four prior Administrations. In 2019, after the resignation of Alexander Acosta, Pizzella served as the acting United States Secretary of Labor for more than 2 months. He currently serves as the elected Mayor of the village of Pinehurst, North Carolina.
The White House Presidential Personnel Office (PPO), sometimes written as Office of Presidential Personnel, is the part of the White House Office tasked with vetting new appointees. Its offices are on the first floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C. The PPO is one of the offices most responsible for assessing candidates to work at or for the White House.
The presidential transition of Joe Biden began on November 7, 2020, and ended on January 20, 2021. Unlike previous presidential transitions, which normally take place during the roughly 10-week period between the election in the first week of November and the inauguration on January 20, Biden's presidential transition was shortened somewhat because the General Services Administration under the outgoing Trump administration did not recognize Biden as the "apparent winner" until November 23.
The presidential transition of Bill Clinton began when he won the United States presidential election on November 3, 1992, and became the president-elect. Clinton was formally elected by the Electoral College on December 14, 1992. The results were certified by a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1993, and the transition ended when Clinton was inaugurated on January 20, 1993.
The presidential transition of Ronald Reagan began when he won the 1980 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect, and ended when Reagan was inaugurated on January 20, 1981.
The presidential transition of Jimmy Carter began when he won the 1976 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect, and ended when Carter was inaugurated on January 20, 1977. Carter had become president-elect once the election results became clear on November 3, 1976, the day after the election.
The presidential transition of Richard Nixon began when he won the 1968 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect, and ended when Nixon was inaugurated on January 20, 1969. Nixon had become president-elect once the election results became clear on November 6, 1968, the day after the election. This was the first presidential transition to take place following the passage of the Presidential Transition Act of 1963.
The presidential transition of John F. Kennedy began when he won the 1960 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect of the United States, and ended when Kennedy was inaugurated on January 20, 1961. Kennedy had become president-elect once the election results became clear on November 9, 1960, the day after the election.
The 1992 presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush was an unsuccessful re-election campaign for 1992 United States presidential election by incumbent president George H. W. Bush, who had taken office on January 20, 1989. Bush and incumbent vice president Dan Quayle were defeated by Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton and vice presidential nominee Al Gore. Bush, a Republican president and former vice president under Ronald Reagan, launched his presidential bid on October 11, 1991, and secured nomination for his re-election on August 20, 1992. He was challenged in the Republican primaries by former White House Communications Director Pat Buchanan, who received less than one percent of the delegates in the Republican National Convention.
The presidential transition of Dwight D. Eisenhower began when he won the United States 1952 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect, and ended when Eisenhower was inaugurated on January 20, 1953.
Constance Joan Horner is an American businesswoman, known for being the third Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management as well as President Reagan's chief advisor on Federal civil service personnel matters. She was a presidential appointee in the Administrations of President Reagan and President George H. W. Bush.
The presidential transition of Woodrow Wilson began when he won the United States 1912 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect, and ended when Wilson was inaugurated on March 4, 1913.