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NA to RN re: preparing for the post-election transition. 30 pgs. [Memo], 8/15/1968
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NA to RN re: preparing for the post-election transition. 30 pgs. [Memo], 8/15/1968
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Richard Nixon Presidential Library
White House Special Files Collection
Folder List
Box Number Folder Number Document Date Document Type Document Description
31
22
08/15/1968
Memo
NA to RN re: preparing for the post-election
transition. 30 pgs.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Page 1 of 1
August 15, 1968
memorandum FOR MR. NIXON
preparing FOR THE post-election TRANSITION
Until November, you will be prooceupted with winning the election.
i few stops taken now, however, con give you a headstart on meeting the
wholly different, and elmost : wessible, dowands that face a Puesident-
elect.
There are only ten-plus weeks between election and Inauguration.
Within that period, and in many cases within the first few weeks of it,
you will face COME of : your most crecial decisions.
Diret, you will have to make a few dozen top appointments. You
will entrust the nation's fate and your over place in history to
nen you may not know, after a selection process necessarily less
thorough than that of any professional firm, business organization,
b
of university.
Second, you must initiate the alterations in government emisation
most critical for your objectives.
Third, you must formulate the substantive positions necessary to make
best use of the "honeymoon period," to engage the enthusisiasms of a
divided nation, and to deal with early crises,
2.
The quality of your administration may be determined in the ten
weeks before you take office.
Advance preparations are therefore importive. But there are CITO
problems. First, you and your invediate staff must give top priority
to the compaign. Second, advance preparations might be misunderstood as
overconfidence of victory. (There would be little risk of such micunder-
standing if 1t were known that both major candidates were undertaking
advance proparations.) Both problems can be overcome 18 you entrust
these proparations to discrest and trusted personal advisers not immersed
in the compaign.
The four areas requiring advance dork are personnel, substantive
program, government organization, and transitional arrangements.
I We recommend that you now ask at lendt one person to begin
identifying possible appointees for specific key positions. If his
activities are to be of real use to you, a personnel adviser must enjoy
your complete trust. He should have a wide circle of acquaintances and
possess good judgment about people and about the qualities needed for
effective government service. In addition, he must understand the
perticular qualities destanded by particular positions. He must be known
to be a man of great integrity with no tendency to "play favoritce."
Hopefully, he would be intimate enough 80 that you and he could discuss
specific individuals in candid detail. He ought also to enjoy the full
confidence of your staff.
It should be understood by the adviser and by any others who might
learn of his activities that he does not sclect, but only gathers names
and information for you. This advisor might or might not le useful
in the post-clection period when you may wish to entrust larger scale
recruitment to a different person, possibly one new more actively
engaged in your campaign. Two OF three pre-clection advisors, acting
separately, might be equally OT even Lore useful. We describe in a
later section those key appointments which require decisions almost 1m-
mediately after the election. If you undertake this preliminary effort,
you will be much better prepared for that ordeal.
II We recommend that you request substantive studies on issues which
may be in crisis during the first three in six months of 1969, issues
likely to demand some early response from your administration, and finnues
otherwise likely to be important in your first year program, particularly
those to be stressed in your Inaugural Address and other early messages.
To some extent, the campaign apparates is now doing this, but additional
steps outside the campaign effort may be vital for three reasons: First,
there are issues which may be important to you as President, but which
are not important campaign issues. Second, campaign priorities usually
preclude the purcuit of issues in sufficient depth or concreteness to
provide for specific executive actions or legislative proposals. Third,
such an effort might enlist participants OT consultants who would not be
available for the campaign itself. It is difficult to identify the issues
worthy of special pre-election inquiry, but we offer some suggestions in
2 later section.
III We recommend that you solicit selected studies on government
organization. The success of your administration in carrying out your
4.
policico will depend primarily on the quality of people relected. The
division of responsibilities enong executive departmento and between the
departments and the White House Staff could, however, influence your
choices for perticular posts. You may need to determine how you expect
to handle national security policy or welfare-urbau-lsbor-transportation
problems even before you make your major Cabinet and Staff appointmento.
Your personal preferences and working habits will determine the kind of
White House Staff that would best serve you and would bear strongly on. the
other questions as well. You will have little time to you'se or even
discuss these questions before the election, but prior staff work in these
three areas at least (national security, urban problems, White House Staff)
should facilitate the actions you must take immediately after November 5.
You might, for example, wish to ask a man experienced in each area to
recommend sensible approaches that could be implemented vithin existing
statutory authority and thus be of immediate relevance to you. We offer
further observations later.
IV We recommend that prior to the election you prepare administrative
arrangements for the transition period. You will need someone to deal with
the old administration after the election, or, if President Johnson sug-
geors it, earlier. You and your appointees vill also need adv: 00 useful
past transition experiences and on methods of moving smoothly and efficiently
into power. These are clearly temporary functions. More generally, you
will need staff services other than those required during the companign and
similar to those you will soon need in the White House. We would be pro-
pared to offer suggestions in a later memorandum.
5.
(-)
APPOINTMENTS
1. An impossible task. In the brief period between election and
Inauguration, you will have to select most of the several hundred top--
level appointoes upon whom the fate of your administration will largely
depend. No President-elact can know beforehand more than a handful of
men qualified for these posts. Many of those he chooses will be
strangers. The number of appointments to be made, coupled with the
shortness of time, impairs the selection, process. Further complicating
the President-elect's almost impossible task is pressure to reward faith-
ful service to campaign or party. The authors--who have never felt the
heat--believe that the dissutisfaction of disappointed office-seskers and
their supporters are transient and miner compared to the harm to the
country, and to the President, resulting from appointees of modest COM-
petence or mere acceptability. The next President's responsibilities are
too grave to be entrusted either to the bureaucracy or to the merely
competent.
A., Large Scale Talent Hunt
2. You will need a large-scale talent hunt primarily for the several
hundred sub-Cabinet posts you must fill. For your Cabinet, you will
probably draw on your intimate advisers and other major political figures.
These sources in turn may suggest to you people whom you will want to use,
but whom you may know casually, if at all. It may be instructive to
%
credenticls for younger persons, lest the opportunity be lost--as in
1953-1960-- to drew now vicelity into the party.) They should seek not
only the more senior people who would be appropriate Presidential ap
pointees but the younger men who might be their deputies and assistants,
or the might be useful later in the administration.
The places to look are mony. Among the more obvious sources are
(1) foundations, (2) boards of directors of national companies (and es--
pecially of the insurance companics that often expend considerable effort
to secure broadly qualified and public spirited national reprecentation),
(3) motropolitan law firms, (4) major investment banking fines and other
financial institutions, (5) universities, and (6) such business organi-
zations as the Committee for Leonomic Development. The latter may be of
particular aid in identifying able middle-level corporate executives.
B. Seminars with Prospective Appointees
4. The traditional method by which Proaidents-elect have solected
appointees has been the private interview. In some instances, your
interests could also be served by arranging for a few seminars to be con-
ducted by small groups, including some possible appointees.
The format of such seminars should not be uniform. To one on
domestic and international financial matters, three to six men might be
invited; most would be "experts" in the sense of having qualifications for
appointment to the Treasury, Commerce, 01 the Council of Economic Advisers.
They could receive invitations and be given agenda a week or so in advance.
In an hour or two with such a group, you could inform yourself on complex,
8.
technical subjects, and at the time obtain impressions of how these
men might perform 20 members of your administration.
In a less technical area, you might alternatively invite a Ser
possible appointees to join you in a briefing session conducted by repre-
sentatives of the departing administration. You could find it profitable
to see how these men internet with experts and with each other. This
device is available before the election as well as later, and it could
both extend the range of your knowledge and spare you some fruitless
private interviews.
C. Appointment Priorities
5. Earlier the better. To be ready to operate the government upon
its inauguration, the new administration must be formed GO much before
January 20 as possible. The new appointees need time to familiarize
themselves with the fundamentals of their offices before assuming actual
responsibilitics, to get to know one another, to extricate themselves from
thair previous occupations, and to make the necessary personal mov_s. A1-
though it was once customary to announce the Cabinet on Imauguration Day,
major appointments should now be made as soon as possible after the election.
We have divided appointments into "inmodiate" and "less-inmediato" cate-
gories and arbitrarily placed the dividing line at fifteen days after the
election. All major appointments should be completed by mid-December.
6. Superior positions first. It is generally proferable to name a
department's Secretary before naming its Assistant Secretarics. This
might seem obvious, but President Kennedy tried the opposite in order to
plant his own men" in the departments and thus provide alternative
9.
channels to the departments. The Kennedy effort did not accomplish
that purpose but tended to impair effective working relationships within
the departments; the Secretary's position VAG made anbiguees both with
respect to his nominal subordinates and with respect to the White House.
That is not the way to make the departments effective outities (and C:Sm
pecially not in State with its chronic organizational difficulties). The
President-elect should, of course, participate in selecting major depart-
mental appointoes especially the Deputy or Undersecretary. But we
believe he will achieve a more effective administration 11 he accords
the Secretary designate some role in this process.
7. Criteria for immediate spyointmento, Before marding the positions
that should be filled immediately--a list that is meant to be suggestive
rather than definitive- we enumerate some relevant criteric. Prompt ap-
pointment seems required for positions with one or more of the following
characteristics:
(1) The agency is concerned with matters in which decisions are
required and in which wrong decisions may have discotrous consequences.
Here the appointee must be given the utmost time to prepare. (State,
Defense, and perhaps Justice)
(2) The agency is so complex, so ill-brganized, or SO poorly
staffed or all of these--that successful mastery by the new administration
requires the longest possible preparation. (State, Defense, and, depending
on your plans, HEW, HUD, or Transportation)
(3) For these or other reasons, early preparation must be under-
taken by second and third level Presidential appointocs whose appointment
10.
requires some attention from a Secretary designate.
(4) The agency to likely to be confronted by early urgent
demands for executive action OF legislative recommendations such that
concrete agency preparations must begin at once. (Tressury and others)
(5) The position is GO prestigious or of such controversial
policy importance that the leading political figures in the party are
regarded as contenders. Until such positions are assigned, the President-
elect vill have difficulty obtaining impartial advice regarding the many
other posts he must fill.
(6) The position requires early appointment for psychological
or symbolic reasons. (UN Ambassador)
8. Barly staff appointments. Your own staff needs for the transition
period must be attended to. Summarizing matters of great complexity, we
would suggest that you will need one accistant OZ DODO for cash of nine
functions. Since you will require permanent White House Staff to handle
all but two of these functions, you might appoint to your transition staff
men whom you are considerang using in the same roles after January 20. The
transition period can then give you an opportunity to find out in advance
whether they have the special capacities needed to help you carry your
post-Innuguration responsibilities. The functions to be performed for you
both during the transition and later are:
a) Management of your calendar and of administrative arzangemento
for yourself and your staff. This could be your permanent Appointments
Secretary.
b) Contact with the press and advice on public relations. One
11.
man usually performs both functions and he could become your perminent
Press Secretary.
c) National security linison and advice--a role similar to that
performed by Rostow for Johnson, Bundy for Kennedy, and Gray and Goodpaster
for Eisenhower.
d) Liaison for and "translation" of military and intelligence
documents.
e) Personnel advice. There might be need for two persons: one
concerned with the general talent hunt and the other handling patronage
recommendations.
1) Oversight of took forces and similar substantive work. This
might be done by a general aide for policy and programs--by a man with
the breadth of jurisdiction (though not necessarily the powers) of B.
Sherman Adams or Theodore Sorenson. This function could be divided among
several men who would also collect ideas and prepare initial drafts of
your Inaugural Address and later public measages. Actual assignments
depend, of course, on many factors including the distribution of licensey
talent.
g) Special contact for Senators and Congressmen. This could be
done by your permanent Congressional liaison assistant(s).
The following functions need to be performed only during the
transition and for 2. short time thereafter. You might assign them to men
whose wisdom you want but who, because of business consitments, ago,
health, or some other reason, will not accept long-term appointments.
h) Advice on organization and reorganization.
12,
1) Advice 011 transition questions and trensition contact with
the old aduinistration.
Among decisions which you will have to work out before or
during the transition period will be some regarding organization of your
White House Steff. You will have to determine how much accoss each assis-
tant is to have and, for example, whether there is to be a staff coordinator
like Adams. You will have to decide whether your best interests will Le
served by giving each assistant a strict functional assignment or by using
them to some extent interchnugeably. Since the purpose of the White House
Staff is to give the President the extra eyes, ears, and hands he needs for
his incredibly difficult task, your decisions on these questions and others
related to them could have profound effects on your presidency. We hope to
describe the issues in greater detail in a subsequent memorandum.
9. Early appointments in the national security area. Most of the
following positions meet several critoria for early appointment: *
a) Secretary of State and two Undersccretarics, The qualities
you seek will depond in part on your conception of his office. See Par. 21
below. the
* Lest vo prosumptionsly state the obvious, we relegate to the footnotes
our limited observations on the qualities needed for certain offices.
** Also, we believe it important that the top team in State have the capa-
city to advice the President, to guide the Department, to deal with friends
and critics in Congress, and generally to explain administration policies
in ways that will maximize public understanding and support. Dulles, Herter,
and Rusk each poscessed some of these qualities, but the lack of confidence,
communication, and team spirit at the top level of the Kennedy-Johnson State
Department is not a happy precedent.
13.
b) Secretary of Defice and Deputy Secretary. ***
c) Control Intelligence Agency Director. If you intend to
appoint a new Director during your flrst few months, he should be cp-
pointed early. You might wish to continue Mr. Helms, who is a CTA
official with, we. understend, an excellent reputation. That course
requires no immediate action; you would simply have to ack him cometime
before Christmas to stay on and to announce that fact. (Edther an in-
definite redppointment or a commitment of six months OX so would seem
courteous in such a case.)
d) Ambassador to the United Nations. If you wish to continue
the symbolic importance of this position and to fill It with a prominent
figure, then the appointee will have to be named about the same time as
the other high national security officials.
c) The JCS. The terms of born General Wheeler, the Chairman,
and General McConnell, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, will expire
in 1969. Following the precedent set by President Eisenhower, you could
indicate before Inauguration, or even in November, your choices for these
posts, or you could defer action. Your decisions both on individuals
and on timing will require careful considexation. These decisions vill
be taken as indicative of many of your policies. They will also be read
as suggestive of your basic attitude toward the military establishment
and can influence the amount of cooperation you and your appointees
*** The prescription is easy to state: judgment and windom plus Clifford's
reputed ability to deal with both the Congress and the JCS and McNamara's
réputed analytical ability.
14.
obtain from the innor reaches of the Pentagon. Many complex insues
are involved, copecially if, as a result of your decisions on Victnes,
02 for other receips, you waste to contemplate asking the other two chiefs
to step down or to take other posts. (Adnival Moorer's town as Chief of
Navel Operations runs to 1971; General Resthoreland's as Chief of Staff
of the Army to 1972.) We are prepared to submit an additional memorandum
on this subject.
f) The field commander in Vietnam? We raise the question because
reconfirmation or replacement might have significant effecto in Saigon or
Paris and on your concepts for the conduct of the war within Vietnam.
10. Early appointments in foreign operations.
a) The Ambassador to Moscow 18 an important bridge between the
two governments. Not only are his functions important, but he may also
be a symbol to the Ruscians of your admimintration's prospective arti-
tudes. Moscow is no place for an incxperienced academic or other smateur.
Unicos early inquiries persude you otherwise, you will wont to consider
reconfirming the present ambassador as a symbol of continuity. If there
is to be a change, the new appointee must be highly qualified. In any
event, an early announcement would be decirable to permit the new cp-
polutee to consult fully with his predecessor.
b) Ambassador to Saigon. This post will remain important for
the foresseable future. If you intend to continue the incumbent, 10 could
be wise to announce it early to preserve his effectiveness in Saigon. If
you make a change--perhaps necessary as a symbol of the popular mandate
35.
for change in Vistmen policy- the successor should have a unximum time
to prepare.
c) Parks negotiating team with North Victnam. Your actions
here will appear to signal the direction of your policies toward the
negotiations and the war. You will want to consider with your Victnes
experts the oppropriateness OT manner of changing the Paris team. If
you continue them for the near future S.S a symbol of is continued "tough"
negotiating position (if that would be its meaning), it would be advisable
to announce your decision quickly.
d) Ambansador to Paris. The country is important to UD, but
its government is so highly sensitive and difficult to decl with that an
early appointment is advisable.
e) Ambassadors at large. These positions, 38 such, do not
require immodiate attention unless you have particular functions in mind.
£) Most other ambassadorships can probably be deferred until
after Inauguration in favor of more pressing work. A few caveats are,
however, in order: (1) The State Department's views on the relative
urgency of other positions should be considered. Bonn and Tokyo, for
example, might be thought to require early attention, as might London,
Prague, Warsaw, Rio, OT the special ambassadors to NATO and the OAS. (2)
The governments notreceiving immediate attention may feel slighted and
undervalued by the United States. To preserve feelings, you might dis-
patch special envoys to explain the delay and give assurances of our
interest. (3) Most ambassadors would be asked to continue (1) indefinitely,
16.
(11) for C few months, or (M1) briefly. This will present few problems
for career officials who would stay or for political hacks who won't be
missed. Others may require gentle treatment 15 you wish them to remain.
(4) The longer such posts remain unfilled, the greater will be the
pressure for political appointments. Your Secretary of State-denignate
could form an advisory committee to identify the ambassadore who should
be dropped quickly (former political appointees of modest quality), those
who should be retained (the best career people and those non-career
embasandors who have served with unusual dictinction), and to sereen
hames proposed for vacated posts.
11. Early "domestic" appointments.
a) Budget Director. This agency's name does not connote the
breadth of qualities required by the office. The Budget Bureau and the
White House Staff provide the President's principal protection against
departmental and congressional special pleading. Only with their help
can he make the executive apparatus serve his purposes. The Budget
Director should be the one man in government with an outlook virtually
as broad as that of the President, and he must be able to judge not only
costs but also relative importance among compating programs. The office
neads a man of wisdom and vision with understanding of many policy issues.
Though no particular professional background is vital, all testimony WC
have taken suggests that economists have proved unusually effective in
this post. An early appointment is crucial to noster the current budget
and to gain early use of the invaluable resources of the Budget Bureau.
17.
b) Secretary of the Treasury.* It is likely that the problems
of balance of phyments, and the schoral state of the сводску
will argus for a November appointment. If the economic front is guiet,
however, it may be possible to delay this appointment until December.
c) Chairman of the Council of Economic Advicors. This post
should be filled early If the Treasury 10. The Department 10 a powerful
agency and its Secretary has tended to consider himself the President's
primary economic advisor. In any case, it may be useful to have the
Chodrann of the CEA at hand from the beginning.
d) Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and/or Secretary
of Housing and Urban Affeirs. ** The new administration has two problems
in this area: it will encounter strong demands for action and legislative
recommendations to decl with the "urban crisis." Because it is important
* A Republican administration enjoys the presumptive confidence of the
financial community. Thus, your appointment need not be specially directed
to assuring them. But a different audience may need reassurance: your ap-
pointee should not only understand compensatory fiscal policy; he should be
able to speck the language and perhaps even appeal to the aconomists and
economic critics who do most of the popular and serious writing in this
area and who thus tend to shape the general reception of an administration's
economic program often in the long-run as well as the short. This
"criterion" 1s almost certain to be satisfied by your CEA Chairman.
** These are critical agencies for the new administration. This is the area
of key and explosive domestic challenges with the least accurance of "solu-
tion" in principle OF legislation in practice. Innovations are necessary,
but innovations (0.8., the "negative income tax") may be costly and 1x-
reversible even though experience or later analysis may prove them unvise.
Yet, the pressure for action from politics and "the streets" will be enor-
mous. And it is a Republican administration in particular that naeds to vin
acceptance, trust, and confidence in this area. These agencies require at
least as much attention and care as are customarily assigned to the State
18.
to respond and because a failure to push affirmative propossive will
force 10 into ou unliappy defensive posture, the new administration must
be ready to move. Secondly, a Republican President has a strong need to
demonstrate concern with poverty, urban decay, and associated problems.
An early appointment could dramatize your concern. Cortain outstanding
appointments could induce opposition critics to "wait and DGG" and to
give the administration a chance "to prove itself." And the earlier the
appointments are made, the sooner you can begin to ask your administration
for results.
e) Secretary of Aguiculture, There seens to have been a sweeping
partisan turnover of Agriculture personnel in 1961. If similar turnover
is to occur in 1969, the Secretary should be appointed early to allow time
for departmental recruiting and oricutation.
12. Other appointments.
a) Attorney General. * He is involved in matters that are in-
trinsically and politically of great importance: civil rights, criminal
and Defense appointments- and even more because the qualities required are
even rarer. It will be difficult to find the man who can manage the depart-
ments, who can delegate but not too much, who can both reign and rule, who
can react and appraise but who CAR also innovate and generate enthuriona,
who can refrain from bucking every deceased up to the White who have
sufficient idealism and clarity of purpose to demonstrate "concern" and
"commitment" and indeed to puch for improvement but who are also suffi-
cient team players to accept intra-adoinistration "defeat" without looking
all or resigning in a huff. Whether such persons exist outside of heaven,
we cannot say.
* The Attorney General can be a much more important asset to an administra-
tion than is commonly realized. (1) Presidents may lament the subsequent
behavior of their Supreme Court appointees without appreciating the Frequent
19.
procedure, viot control, organized crimi, the FAI. The course of the
compaign, II particular, may require an early appointment for symbolic
purposes. Novertheless, the Attorney General has relatively less need
then, for comple, the Secretary of Defense to master the technicalities
of ongoing problems, or to prepare for early crises (at least if rioto
remain infrequent during the winter).
b) Secretary of Labor.: Appointment before Thankogiving vould
source of their problem: they relied for advice on an Attorney General who
did not learn OF appreciate the significance of an appoinces's judicial
philosophy but who relied instead on others' conclusionary appraisals of
quality and political opinions. A President may have his most Insting 100
pact through his judicial appointments (including the lower courts); the
Attorney General vill have 2 role in that process. It is important to have
an Attorney General who vill do you and the untion credit in that role. To
do so with appropriate attention to Senatorial and other patrouage requests
requires great judgment and finesse. (2) The Solicitor General's office
traditionally attracts brilliont talent. from law firms and law schools.
With appropriate leadership from the Attorney Coneral, the Department cm
do the same both at the level of Presidential appointics and below. This
resulting reservoir of high-powered talent can multiply the Department's
effectiveness and also serve, by loca or otherwise, other departments and
the White House. (3) The Attorney Central's rectitude, vigilance, and
readiness to inquire can give you on important defense against corruption
within the government.
*This position has commonly been viewed as "labor's voice in the Cabinet."
When important matters are at stake, however, union leaders vant to deal
with you and your representative. And, of course, neither management nor
Congress will respect a mere union labor spokesmen, whetever his title.
To advice you, to serve as a buffer and (when appropriate) mediator on
industrial relations matters, to supervise the modiation services, and to
deal (as appropriate) with the National Labor Relations Soard--your ap-
pointee MUSE be tolerable to labor but probably not a union man. You
might find the right man in industrial relations; among respected arbi-
trators, mediators, or umpires; or even in a Business School, Economics
or Law faculty.
20.
not seem necessary unless (1) there to OF might be pressure for federal
involvement in important national strikes in progress or prospect before
March, or (2) you intend to take & very early position on "vege-push"
inflation.
c) Secretary of Transportation.* Nothing inherent in this post
requires that appointment be made in November rather than December.
There is a serious organizational problem on the domestic welfare
front. As one interim approach, you might insist that the Secretaries of
HEW, HUD, Labor, perhaps Transportation, and perhaps others form a sub-
group of the Cabinet and work very closely together to formulate and
implement policy. If that to to be done, it should be done from the bagin-
ning and calls for roughly simultaneous appointments. Thus, if one is
appointed early, all should be. (Altornatively, of you intend to give one
Secretary primary responsibility for the overlapping welfare functions of
the several departments, he could be appointed early and the others late.)
* A trouble-avoiding holding operation may not be too difficult in this
department. It will not be essy, however, to find a man who can promote
innovation and cope with it in the effort to keep the country livable not-
withstanding its expanding and increasingly-concentrated population. More
common than creativity, but still rare enough to emphasize is the strength
to stand up to the special interests, such as the "highway lobby" or the
protagonists of the merchant marine or supersonic transports. llc will also
have to consider the desirability of new steps to consolidate OF coordinate
Executive Branch operations with those of the "independent" Civil Aero-
nautics Boards and Interstate Commerce Commission. Whether new steps would
be both wise and politically practicable is not clear, but your appointee
should be one who can both answer the question and carry out any necessary
steps.
21.
d) Postmaster Coneral. Appointment before Thanksgiving 10
not required unless you must take a position in your flxst ficur months
on the proposal of the recent Presidential Commission that the postal
service be performed not by a regular government department but by a
public corporation. If delay would impode veform, your appointes cannot
begin soon enough to appraise the substantive merits and political possi-
bilities of reform.
c) Secretary of Commerce. There is less noed for appointment
before December. The bosic question 10 whether you CRD maire something
move of this post. than it has been in recent decades. If you are consider-
ing merging the Labor and Commerce Departments, your appointees should be
made aware of this at the time of appointment.
f) Secretary of the Interior.* Again, early action may not seem
necessary.
ε) White House Scientific Adviser. The "scientific community"
attaches great importance to this post and became very restive about
President-elect Kennedy's intentions until the post was filled in 1961. The
same sensitivity can be expected today. A strong and relatively carly,
though not necessarily immediate, appointment can reassure this community
of your respect for them and help gain their respect for your White House
and thus facilitate the recruitment of top scientific talent in Defense
and elsewhere.
* In addition to the usual functions, it's worth noting that the man who
can cleanse our rivers, save our parks, and conserve ONE natural spaces
in the face of growing population will make a President's place in
history and in the here-and-now as well if it doesn't cost too much.
And the man who can please public and private power portisons and keep
the oil and mineral interests off the Precident's back will bc doubly
prectous.
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h) FBI Director. Unless you are perouzded that you what Mr.
Hoover to continue, judicious silence about this post should give him
caple opportunity (which he might vulcome in view of his age) to indi-
cate that he does not wish resppointment. If a new appointment is to
be made, it must receive the greatest care, for you cannot later remove
the Director without being charged with "political misuse" of an agency
that should be "abore politics." For an agency long subject to single
control, there is reason to appoint an outsider who could look at the
Bureau with a fresh eye. At least, there should be no automatic presump-
tion that a present Bureau official would be better than & first-rate
urban police chief, an effective administrator not now in police work, or
an older statesman who could serve for a short period, reassure the public
and give you a breathing spell in which to assert your control over this
important but currently sumi-sovereign agency. Although your Attorney
General should probably have a voice in the appointment, its importance
requires your close attention.
i) White House liaison with the academic community. Your two
predecessors had resident academics in the White House presumably in the
hope of generating a sympathetic chronicle and a bridge to "intellectuals"
at large. The first function is unsure (compare Schlesinger with Goldman)
and the second silly. You reach "intellectuals" not by having a special
communicator for that purpose, but by the actions and statements of
your administration. By all means, do not neglect academics in your
operating and staff appointments. And, of course, their use in pre-
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and post-Inuuguration task forces is both (1) an effective and easy way
to impress "intellectuals" and (2) useful on the maxits.
13. Immediate action by now sppointees. Many of your appolutions
will need time-parhapo six to eight weeks to extricate themselves from
other affairs. Even so, all appointees should be asked to begin fushedi-
ciely, if only on a part-time basis, not only to familiarize themselves
with their new jobs, but to confer with members of the outgoing adminis-
tration, meet the civil servants who will work for them, and learn the
routine of their agencies.
D. Political Criteria Generally; Holdover Personnel
14. Political considerations have an incvitable place in appointments.
Many excellent candidates will also enjoy circellent political credentials.
But not all those with political support will be worthy of important ICE-
ponsibilities.
a) Though judgeships need no special cavent since everyone
understands their importance, regulatory agencies do. They are often
viewed as convenient "dumping grounds" for persons of minimum qualifications,
the assumption being that a commission of five or seven members can carry a
few weak members. Often, however, most of the members turn out to be week.
Even when this is not the case, the weak appointees vote, and not always
wisely. It has reached the point where well-cuelified men frequently
decline to serve on regulatory commissions. To correct that situation, the
new President would need to instruct his personnel recruiters in unequivocal
24.
terms and, in order to Induce a good man to join an agency, he may have
to give assurences that he will fill future vacancies with men of
similar high quality.
1,) There are positions- vesteful and unnecessary--of
some prostige that can be filled with persons of minimum quality without
undue damage to you or to the nation. A thorough (and secret) pre-
and post-clection attempt to identify such positions would be useful
to you.
15. Some personnel and patronage advisers have, in pust administra-
tions, appeared to insist on political credentials for every Presidential
appointee and for every lower position at the disposal of such appointees.
Such an approach will deprive your administration of valuable services and
will miss the opportunity to will independents to the Republican cause.
There is obviously rèason to avoid highly partisan Democrats, but inde-
pendents and even nominal Democrats should be welcomed with open arms even
as Presidential appointees and especially at lower lovels. And if academics
who supported Democrats are excluded from task forces and from consultation,
an important resource will be lost.
16. Continuing old officials.
a) At least one Presidential appointee in each agancy should be
asked to remain for a few days after Inauguration in order to provide each
department with an "Acting Secretary" to perform the formal departmental
functions that cannot be performed Ly your appointees prior to thair of-
ficial Senate confirmation.
25.
1:) Some Presidential appointons in the outgoing administra-
tion are essentially coreer been of a quality you will wish to retain.
(This is especially likely in such departmental positions as the Assistant
Secretary for Aduinistration--who will be useful for a few months st least.)
c) Some non-career officials of the outgoing administration
might be of such outstanding quality that you would want them to stay. Your
pre-end post-clection personnel advisers should make the effort to identify
any such persons.
d) The preceding considerations are applicable with even greater
force to those non-Presidential appointees occupying positions that are at
the disposal of the new administration.
II
SUBSTANTIVE POLICY PLANNING
17. We have refrained thus far from mantioning the Bay of Pigs, though
that episode dramatizes the dangers facing an zdministration that takes
office ill-prepared for the exercise of power. We refer to it now because
it illustrates some problems almost certain to face you in your early
months in office.
(1) Elements in the bureehcracy will refurbish and attempt to
sell ideas studied and rejected by the previous administration or, as in
the case of the Bay of Pigs plan, represent as beyond the point of no
return programs about which the previous administration had, in fact, been
skeptical, reserved, or undecided.
26.
(2) Your oppointions will be less willing then later to go
against what seens a consensus among departmental emports. As with the
May of Pigs plan, they may feel hesitant to express doubts. In other
instances, they may hositate to question bureeucratic advice that some-
thing or the other cannot be done.
(3) Your appointoes will be less prone than later to recomend
courses of action involving risks of public or Congressional criticism.
With each hoping for maximum accomplishments, each will be reluctant to
see you incur political costs except in behalf of his program. After six
wonths or so, your appointees will hopefully have become not only more
realistic but more conscious of how their departmental interests Sit into
the whole program of the administration.
18. From mere mention of these problems, several obvioun conclusions
emerge:
(1) Your appointees should identify as quickly CO possible the
hobby horses of otherwise valuable and trustworthy men in the permenent
government. They should also make every effort to learn from their prede-
cessors the exact status of issues likely to arise between January and
July, 1969.
(2) Your appointees will need to acquire as much advance knowledge
as possible about higher-level personnel in their agencies and about the
major issues which they are apt to face in the settling in period.
(3) To cope with the third problem, your appointees will need
better understanding than has been the case in the past of what the
President expects--of what you expect.
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This водая that you will need to make a number of early
Conditions about policy Assucs and to communicate these decisions as
clearly as possible to your prospective and actual appointice. These
decisions will concern not only policy positions, many of which will be
developed during the compoign, but also relative priorities, tactics to
be followed (i.e., a push for legislation, an effort first to stimulate
public pressure, OF simple administrative action), and desired timetchles
(e.g., some symbolic action on cities before the summer even if high
priority measures have to come later).
19. With this as prologue, we suggest below some of the more obvious
issues on which you might want to initiate serious pre-claction study, with
a view to helping you make the tough decisions on policy and tactics which
you will want to make as scon as possible after November 5:
(1) A first group of issues would be those which could be in
crisis in early 1969: Vietnam, Thailand, Berlin and East Europe, the Middle
East, urban "ghettos," federal-state-local welfare programs, nonetery
policies, threats to wage-price stability, and the balance of payments.
(2) A second group consists of issues with continuing or long
range ramifications requiring early decisions. This category does not
admit easy definition and is perhaps better described by example. General
defense and space programs, NATO, ABM, manned bombers, relations with Cuba
and Red China, long-range anti-crime policies, and relations with regulatory
agencies all illustrate in several ways matters upon which you may have to
make early choices that will set in motion programs lasting the length of
your aduinistration.
28.
(3) A third group of issues would be in those areac in which
you plan carly legislative proposals. You, of course, know what these
will be; any guesswork on our part would be irrelevant.
A considerable body of experience exists with regard to
task forces and how to get the most out of them. We would be happy to
prepare a summary on this subject if it would be of use.
III
THE IMPORTANCE OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
20. In a number of key policy areas your ability as President to
formulate, coordinate, and execute programs will depend on putting into
particular posts men who can do what you want the occupants of these posts
to do. Given the number of high level officials that must be named soon
after the election, you might usefully have some prevelection attention
given to the division of responsibilities most compatible with your purposes
as President. The following paragraphs will identify two major issues
bearing on your prospective appointments.
A. Responsibility for National Security
21. Prior to choosing your Secretary of State, you wight well consider
the extent to which you will went your Secretary to be your principal
adviser on all foreign policy problems, including military, financial and
economic policy. This decision will effect both the qualities you will
seck in a Secretary, and the breadth of charter you will assign to the
National Security adviser on your own staff.
29.
You face many alternatives, each involving complex concidera-
tions. We are prepared to develop a further memorandum on the subject.
a) Monnwhile, it is important to recognize that if you choose
to give your Secretary of State a broader mandate, the consequence will
be twofold: First, the Sccretary-designate must be a man who wants this
role and who understands what he has to do to perform it effectively.
Second, the State Department would have to recruit a staff of men able to
think of foreign policy not merely in terms of diplomncy, but in much.
broader terms.
b) If State does not perform this role, such a staff must be
part of the White House or National Security Council staff under the
direction of a national security adviser. Thus, resolution of this
issue affects not only the requirements for a Secretary of State, but; also
those for your national security adviser and their personal stefis.
22. In any event, there are perennial organizational problems within
the State Department which in the past have prevented it from being as
useful to the President as it might be. In particular, the relationships
among foreign service and non-foreign service man, the regional desks and
functional bureaus, and the foreign service on the one hand and program
groups such as AID on the other, need to be rationalized. The Secretary-
designate must understand that you care bout the efficiency of State and
that he must address this problem, OT at least entrust 11, to an Under-
secretary with genuine delegated power. You will want to be sure that your
top team in State has the interests and resources to perform both the
policy and the management tasks.
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B. to Danl with United ACCeive
23. The ability of the federal government to respond to urban
problems is reduced by the diffusion of responsibility and power in
Chic amea among many governmental departments and agencies. No matter
how much responsibility to transferred to states oz localities, the
federal government will remain concerned with inter-urben transportation,
assistance to local police, and other forms of grante-in-aid. Moreover,
the transfer of other responsibilities will require considerable study
and, at best, will take time. In short, the problem will continue.
24. The major issues have are whecher and to what extent federal
responsibility for dealing with urban affairs should be contralized,
and if so, whether the contralization should occur within the existing
departmental framework, within the White House or Exccutive Office staff,
within some other agency, or within 2 supor-department created by worging
existing departments and agencies. Any such steps would, of course, affect
your personnel requirements for Justice, HUD, OEO, and White House assist-
ant (s) primarily concerned with urban affairs.
25. If you contemplate reorganization requiring Congressional action,
preliminary studies looking toward proposals for legislation might well be
undertaken prior to election. And if, as you have indicated, you are to
provide encouragement to the development of locally owned housing and
business in black communities and to enlist private industry in efforts is
rebuild the ghettos, then pue-election studies of how the White House could