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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
39
7
08/15/1968
Memo
Preparing for the post-election transition. 30
pages with 12 duplicate copies.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Page 1 of 1
August 15, 1968
MEMORANDUM FOR MR. NIXON
PREPARING FOR THE POST-ELECTION TRANSITTON
Until November, you will be processupied with winning the election.
A few steps taken now, however, can give you a headstart on meeting the
wholly different, and almost impossible, demands that face a President-
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 some of your most crucial decisions.
First, you will have to make a few dozen top appointments. You
will entrust the nation's fate and your own place in history to
men you may not know, after a selection precess necessarily less
thorough than that of any professional firm, business organization,
or university.
Second, you must initiate the alterations in government organization
most critical for your objectives.
Third, you must formulate the substantive positions necessary to make
best use of the "honeymoon period," to engage the enthusiasms 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 imperative. But there are two
problems. First, you and your immediate staff must give top priority
to the campaign. Second, advance preparations might be misunderstood as
overconfidence of victory. (There would be little risk of such misunder-
standing if it were known that both major candidates were undertaking
advance preparations.) Both problems can be overcome if you entrust
these preparations to discrest and trusted personal advisers not immersed
in the campaign.
The four areas requiring advance work are personnel, substantive
program, government organization, and transitional arrangements.
I We recommend that you now ask at least one person to bagin
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 acquaintences and
possess good judgrent about people and about the qualities needed for
effective government service. In addition, he must understand the
particular qualities demanded by particular positions. He must be known
to be a man of great integrity with no tendency to "play favorites."
Hopefully, he would be intimate enough so 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 select, but only gathers names
3.
and information for you. This adviser might or might not be useful
in the post-election period when you may wish to entrust larger scale
recruitment to a different person, possibly one now more actively
engaged in your campaign. Two or three pre-election advisers, acting
separately, might be equally or even more useful. We describe in a
later section those key appointments which require decisions almost in-
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 to six months of 1969, issues
likely to demand some carly response from your administration, and issues
otherwise likely to be important in your first year program, particularly
those to be stressed in your Incument] and other ealy messakes.
To some extent, the campaign apparatus is now doing this, but additional
steps outside the compaign 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 pursuit of issues in sufficient depth or concreteness to
provide for specific executive actions or legislative proposals. Third,
such an effort might enlist participants or 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
& later section.
III We recommend that you solicit selected studies on government
organization. The success of your administration in carrying out your
4.
policies will depend primarily on the quality of people selected. The
division of responsibilities among executive departments and between the
departments and the White House Staff could, however, influence your
choices for particular posts. You may need to determine how you expect
to handle national security policy or welfare-urban-labor-transportation
problems even before you make your major Cabinet and Staff appointments.
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 pursue 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 within emisting
statutory authority and thus be of immediate relevance to you. We offer
further observations later.
IV Me 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-
gests 1t, earlier. You and your appointees will also need advice on 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 campaign and
similar to those you will soon need in the White House. We would be pre-
pared to offer suggestions in a later memorandum.
5.
I
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 appointees upon whom the fate of your administration will largely
depend. No President-elect 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 nade, coupled with the
shortness of time, impairs the selection process. Turther complicating
the President-elect's almost impossible task is pressure to reward feith-
ful service to campsign or party. The authors-who have never felt the
heat-believe that the dissatisfaction of disappointed office-seckers and
their supporters are transient and minor compared to the harm to the
country, and to the President, reculting 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 marely
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
6.
recall that the original Cabinets of your predecessors included men not
at all well-known to the President-elect. (Rusk, McNamara, and Day
fall into this category among Kennedy's 1960 appointees, George Humphrey
is the obvious example In Eisenhower's 1952 Cabinet.)
A well-conducted pre-and post-clection talent hunt could turn up
prospects for Cabinet as well as Cabinet posts. Its major targets,
however, would be potential sub-Cabinet Presidential appointees. In ad-
dition, your Cabinet and Agency heads might find the results of this
research of use to them in making their own deportant personnel selections.
3. A committee. Unless you have available an ideal recruitment
chief, you might proceed by appointing a small sercening connittee. This
method offers the advantages of multiple sources and multiple evaluations,
You might think in terms of three to five men of roughly equal
stature, Elder statesmen beyond personal subdition yould to useful, bus
they may be somewhat out of touch with younger generations. But also suf-
ficiently beyond ambition for these purposes are many persons established
in secure and relatively prestigious positions (such as a substantial
industrialist or financier; senior professor, or leading partner in a major
law firm). Your adviser or advisers--whether or not a committee is used--
need a wide personal acquaintance in industry, finance, the professions,
government, universities, etc.
You may wish to instruct your personnel advisers to consider not
only registered Republicans but also qualified independents and even
Democrats. (It is particularly important not to insist unduly on political
7.
credentials for younger persons, lest the opportunity be lost--as in
1953-1960---to draw new vitality 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 who might be useful later in the administration.
The places to look are many. Among the more obvious sources are
(1) foundations, (2) boards of directors of national companies (and es-
pecially of the insurance companies that often expend considerable effort
to secure broadly qualified and public spirited national representation),
(3) metropolitan law firms, (4) major investment banking firms and other
financial institutions, (5) universities, and (6) such business organi-
zations as the Committee for Economic Development. The latter may be of
particular a1d in identifying able middle-level corporate executives.
B. Seminars with Prospective Appointees
4. The traditional method by which Prooidents-elect have selected
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, or the Council of Economic Advisers.
They could receive invitations and be given agenda a week OI so in advance.
In an hour or two with such a group, you could inform yourself on complex,
8.
technical subjects, and at the same time obtain impressions of how these
men might perform as members of your administration.
In a less technical area, you might alternatively invite a few
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 interact with experts and with each other. This
device is available before the election 88 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 as much before
January 20 as possible. The new appointees need time to familiarize
themselves with the fundementals of their offices before assisting actual
responsibilities, to get to know one another, to extricate thomselves from
their previous occupations, and to make the necessary personal moves. A1-
though it was once' customary to announce the Cabinet On Inauguration Day,
major appointments should now be made as soon as possible after the election.
We have divided appointments into "immediate" and "less-iumediate" 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 1s generally proferable to name a
department's Secretary before naming its Assistant Secretaries. 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 was made ambiguous both with
respect to his nominal subordinates and with respect to the White House.
That is not the way to make the departments effective entities (and es-
pecially not in State with its chronic organizational difficulties). The
President-elect should, of course, participate in selecting major depart-
mental appointeos--especially the Deputy or Undersecretary. But we
believe he will achieve a more effective coministration if he accords
the Secretary-designate some role in this process.
7. Criteria for immediate appointments. Before maning the positions
that should be filled immediately a list that is meant to be suggestive
rather than definitive- we enumerate some relevant criteria. 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 disastrous 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-organized, 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 appointees whose appointment
10.
requires some attention from 2 Secretary-designate.
(4) The agency is likely to be confronted by early urgent
demands for executive action or legislative recommendations such that
concrete agency preparations must begin at once. (Treasury and others)
(5) The position is SO 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 will 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, Early 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 assistant or more for each 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 considering 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-Inauguration responsibilities. The functions to be performed for you
both during the transition and later are:
a) Management of your calendar and of administrative arrangements
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 permanent
Press Secretary.
c) National security liaison 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 naed for two persons: one
concerned with the general talent hunt and the other handling patronage
recommendations.
f) Oversight of task forces and sinilar 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 a
Sherman Adams or Theodore Sorensen. This function could be divided among
several men who would also collect ideas and prepare initial drafts of
your Inaugural Address and later public messages. Actual assignments
depend, of course, on many factors including the distribution of literary
talent.
g) Special contact for Senators and Congressmen. This could be
done by your permanent Congressional liaison assistant
The following functions need to be performed only during the
transition and for a short time thereafter. You might assign them to men
whose wisdom you want but who, because of business consitments, age,
health, or some other reason, will not accept long-term appointments.
h) Advice on organization and reorganization.
12.
i) Advice on transition questions and transition contact with
the old administration.
Among decisions which you will have to work out before or
during the transition period will be some regarding organization of your
White House Staff. You will have to determine how much access 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 be
served by giving each assistant 8 strict functional assignment or by using
them to some extent interchangeably. 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 memovandum.
9. Early appointments in the national security orea. Most of the
following positions meet several criteria for early eppointment:
*
a) Secretary of State and two Undersncretazios. The qualities
you scok will depend in part on your conception of his office. See Par. 21
below. **
* Lest we presumptuously state the obvious, we relegate to the Toornotes
our limited observations on the qualities needed for certain offices.
** Also, we believe it important that the top tesm in State have the capa-
city to advise 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, Lerter,
and Rusk each possessed some of these qualities, but the lack of confidence,
communication, and team spirit at the top level of the Kennady-Johnson State
Department is not a happy precedent.
13.
b) Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary. ***
c) Central Intelligance Agency Director. If you intend to
appoint a new Director during your first few months, he should be ap-
pointed early. You might wish to continue Mr. Helms, who is a CIA
official with, we understand, an excellent reputation. That course
requires no immediate action; you would simply have to ask him sometime
before Christmas to stay on and to announce that fact. (Either an in-
definite reappointment or a consitment of six months or 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.
e) The JCS. The terms of both 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 consideration. These decisions will
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 cooporation you and your appointees
*** The prescription is easy to state: judgment and wisdom plus Clifford's
reputed ability to deal with both the Congress and the JCS and McNamara's
reputed analytical ability.
14.
obtain from the inner reaches of the Pentagon. Many complex issues
are involved, especially if, as a result of your decisions on Vietnam,
or for other reasons, you were to contemplate asking the other two chiefs
to step down or to take other posts. (Admiral Moorer's term as Chief of
Naval Operations runs to 1971; General Hestmoreland's as Chief of Staff
of the Army to 1972.) We are prepared to submit an additional memorandum
on this subject.
£) The field commander in Victnam? We raise the question because
reconfirmation or replacement might have significant effects in Saigon or
Paris and on your concepts for the conduct of the war within Vietnam.
10. Early supointments in foreign operations.
a) The Ambassador to Moseow is an important bridge between the
two governments. Not only are his functions important, but he may also
be a symbol to the Rusciens of your administration's prospective atti-
tudes. Moscow is no place for an inexperienced academic or other amateur.
Unless early inquiries persuade you otherwise, you will want to consider
reconfirming the present embassador 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 desirable to permit the new ap-
pointee to consult fully with his predecessor.
b) Ambessador to Saigon. This post will remain important for
the foresecable future. If you intend to continue the incumbent, it 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
15.
for change in Vietnam policy--the successor should have a maximum time
to prepare.
c) Paris negotiating team with North Vietnam. 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 Vietnom
experts the appropriateness or manner of changing the Paris team. If
you continue them for the near future as a symbol of a 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 us, but
its government is so highly sensitive and difficult to deal with that on
early appointment is advisable.
e) Ambassadors at large. These positions, as such, do not
require immediate attention unless you have particular functions in mind.
f) 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, Warsew, 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 smbassadors would be asked to continue (i) indefinitely,
16.
(11) for a few months, or (11i) 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 if 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-designate
could form an advisory committee to identify the ambassadors who should
be dropped quickly (former political appointees of modest quality), those
who should be retained (the best carder people and those non-career
ambassadors who have served with unusual distinction), and to screen
names proposed for vacated posts.
11. Early "domestic" amointments.
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 outlock virtually
as broad as that of the President, and he must be able to judge not only
costs but also relative importance among competing programs. The office
needs a man of wisdom and vision with understanding of many policy issues.
Though no particular professional background is vital, all testimony we
have taken suggests that economists have proved unusually effective in
this post. An early appointment is crucial to master 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 payments, taxation, and the general state of the economy
will argue for a November appointment. If the economic front is quiet,
however, it may be possible to delay this appointment until December.
c) Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. This post
should be filled early if the Treasury is. The Department is a powerful
agency and its Secretary has tended to consider himself the President's
primacy oconomic adviser. In any case, it may he useful to have the
Chairman of the CEA at hand from the beginning.
d) Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and/or Secretary
of Housing and Urban Affairs. ** The new administcation has two problems
in this area: it will encounter strong definds for action and legislative
reccomendations to deal with the "urban crisis." Because 1t is important
* A Republican administration enjoys the presuptive confidence of the
financial community. Thus, your appointment need not be specially directed
to assuring them. But a different suddence may need reassurance: your ap-
pointes should not only understand compensatory fiscal policy; he should be
able to speak the language and perhaps even appail to the economists and
economic critics who do nost 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 wall as the short. This
"criterion" 1s almost certain to be cotisfied 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 assurance of "solu-
tion" in principle or legislation in proctice. Innovations are necessary,
but innovations (e.s., the "negative income tex") may be costly and ir-
reversible even though experience or later enalysis may prove them unwise.
Yet, the pressure for action from politics and "the streets" will be enor-
mous. And it is a Republican administration in particular that needs to win
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 proposals will
force it into an unhappy 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. Certain outstanding
appointments could induce opposition critics to "veit and see" 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 Agriculture. There seems 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 orientation.
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 men who can Lanage the depart-
ments, who can delegate but not too much, who can both reign and rule, who
can react and appraise but who can also innovate and generate enth tasm,
who can refrain from bucking every denand up to the White House, who have
sufficient idealism and clarity of purpose to demonstrate "concern" and
"commitment" and indeed to push for improvement but who are also suffi-
cient team players to accept intra-administration "defect" without leaking
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, riot control, organized crime, the FBI. The course of the
campaign, in particular, may require an early appointment for symbolic
purposes. Nevertheless, the Attorney General has relatively less need
than, for comple, the Secretory of Defense to master the technicalities
of ongoing problems, or to prepare for early crises (at least if riots
remain infrequent during the winter).
b) Secretary of Labor.* Appointment before Thanksgiving would
source of their problem: they relied for advice on an Attorney General who
did not learn or appreciate the significance of an appointee's judicial
philosophy but who relied instead on others' conclusionary appraisals of
quality and political opinions. A President may have his most lasting in-
pact through his judicial appointments (including the lower courts); the
Attorney General will have a role in that process. It is important to have
an Attorney General who will do you and the nation credit in that role. To
do so with appropriate attention to Senatorial and other patronage requests
requires great judgment and finesse. (2) The Solicitor General's office
treditionally attracts brilliant talent from 100 fires and Ing schools.
With appropriate leadership from the Actorney General, the Department can
do the same both at the lovel of Presidential appointees and below. This
resulting reservoir of high-povered talent can multiply the Department's
effectiveness and also serve, by loan or ocherwise, other departments and
the White House. (3) The Attorney Coneral's rectitude, vigilance, and
readiness to inquire can give you an 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 want to deal
with you and your representative. And, of course, neither management nor
Congress will respect a mere union labor spokesman, whatever his title.
To advise you, to serve as a buffer and (when appropriate) mediator on
industrial relations matters, to supervise the mediation services, and to
deal (as appropriate) with the National Labor Relations Board--your ap-
pointee must 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 uspires; or even in a Business School, Economics
or Law faculty.
20.
not seem necessary unless (1) there is or might be pressure for federal
involvement in important national strikes in progress or prospect before
March, or (2) you intend to take a very early position on "wage-push"
inflation.
c) Secretary of Transportation.* Nothing inherent in this post
requires that appointment be made in November rather than December.
There is a serlous 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 is to be done, 1+ should be done from the begin-
ning and calls for roughly simultaneous appointments. Thus, if one is
appointed early, all should be. (Alternatively, if 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 bolding operation may not be too difficult in this
department. It will not be easy, 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
protegonists of the merchant marine or supersonic transports. He will also
have to consider the desirability of new steps to consolidate or coordinate
Executive Branch operations with those of the "independent" Civil Aero-
nautics Boards and Interstate Cornerce 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 General. Appointment before Thanksgiving is
not required unless you must take a position in your first few 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 impade reform, your appointee cannot
begin soon enough to appraise the substantive morits and political possi-
bilities of reform.
c) Secretary of Commerce. There is less need for appointment
before December. The basic question is whether you can make something
more 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 seam
necessary.
8) 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 ves filled in 1961. The
same sensitivity can be expected today. A strong and relatively early,
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 clsewhere.
* In addition to the usual functions, it's worth noting that the man who
can cleanse our rivers, save our parks, and conserve our 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 partisaes and keep
the oil and mineral interests off the President's back will be doubly
precious.
22.
h) FBI Director. Unless you are persuaded that you want Mr.
Hoover to continue, judicious silence about this post should give him
ample opportunity (which he might welcome 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 "above politics. 11 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 then a first-rate
urban police chief, an effective administrator not now in police work, or
an elder 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 semi-sovereign agency. Although your Attorney
General should probably have a voice in the appointment, its importance
requires your close attention.
1) 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 Coldman)
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-
23.
and post-Inauguration Lask forces is both (1) an effective and easy way
to impress "intellectuals" and (2) useful on the merits.
13. Immediate action by new appointees. Many of your appointees
will need time--perhaps six to eight weeks--to extricate themselves from
other affairs. Even so, all appointees should be asked to begin immedi-
ately, 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 then, and learn the
routine of their agencies.
D. Political Criteria Generally: Holdever Personnel
14. Political considerations have an inevitable place in appointments.
Many excellent candidates will also enjoy excellent political credentials.
But not all those with political support will be worthy of important res-
ponsibilities.
a) Though judgeships need no special caveat 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 weak.
Even when this is not the case, the weak appointees vote, and not always
wisely. It has reached the point where well-qualified 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 assurances that he will fill future vacancies with men of
similar high quality.
b) There are positions--often wasteful and unnecessary--of
some prestige that can be filled with persons of minimum quality without
undue damage to you or to the nation. A thorough (and sectet) pre-
and post-election attempt to identify such positions would be useful
to you.
15. Some personnel and patronage advisers have, in past 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 win independents to the Republican cause.
There is obviously reason to avoid highly partison Democrats, but inde-
pendents and even nominal Democrats should be welcomed with open BILLS even
as Presidential appointees and especially at lower levels. 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 agency 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 by your appointees prior to their of--
ficial Senate confirmation.
25.
b) Some Presidential appointees in the outgoing administra-
tion are essentially career men of a quality you will wish to retain.
(This is especially likely in such departmental positions as the Assistant
Secretary for Administration--who will be useful for a few months at 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-and post-election 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 for from mentioning the Bay of Pigs, though
that episode dramatizes the dangers facing an administration that takes
office 111-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 bureaucracy 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 appointees will be less willing than later to go
against what seems a consensus among departmental experts. As with the
Bay of Pigs plan, they may feel hesitant to express doubts. In other
instances, they may hesitate to question bureaucratic advice that some-
thing or the other cannot be done.
(3) Your appointees will be less prone than later to recommend
courses of action involving risks of public or Congressional criticism.
With each hoping for mardimum accomplishments, each will be reluctant to
see you incur political costs except in behalf of his program. After six
months or so, your appointees vill hopefully have become not only more
realistic but more conscious of how their departmental interests fit into
the whole program of the edministration.
18. From mere mention of these problems, several obvious conclusions
emerge:
(1) Your appointees should identify as quickly as possible the
hobby horses of otherwise valuable and trustworthy men in the permanent
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.
27.
This means that you will need to make a number of early
decisions about policy issues and to communicate these decisions as
clearly as possible to your prospective and actual appointees. These
decisions will concern not only policy positions, many of which will be
developed during the campaign, but also relative priorities, tactics to
be followed (i.e., a push for legislation, an effort first to stimulate
public pressure, or simple administrative action), and desired timetables
(c.g., some symbolic action on cities before the Summar 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 soon 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, monetary
policies, threats to wage-price stability, and the balance of payments.
(2) A second group consists of issues with continuing or long
range remifications requiring early decisions. This category does not
admit easy definition and is perhaps better described by example. General
defense and space programs, NATO, ADM, 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 administration.
28.
(3) A third group of issues would be in those areas in which
you plan early 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 pre-election 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 might well consider
the extent to which you will want your Secretary to be your principal
adviser on all foreign policy problems, including military, financial and
economic policy. This decision will affect both the qualities you will
seek 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 considera-
tions. We are prepared to develop a further memorandum on the subject.
a) Meanwhile, 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 Secretary-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 diplomacy, but in much
broader terms.
b) If State does not perform this role, such a staff must be
part of the White House 02 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 staffs.
22. In any event, there are perenndal 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 men, 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 about the efficiency of State and
that he must address this problem, or at least entrust it, 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.
30.
B. Organizing to Deal with Urban Affairs
23. The ability of the federal government to respond to urban
problems 18 reduced by the diffusion of responsibility and power in
this area among many governmental departments and agencies. No matter
how much responsibility is transferred to states or localities, the
federal government will remain concerned with inter-urban transportation,
assistance to local police, and other forms of grants-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 here are whether and to what extent federal
responsibility for dealing with urban affairs should be centralized,
and if so, whether the centralization should occur within the existing
departmental framework, within the White House or Executive Office staff,
within some other agency, or within a super-department created by nerging
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 to
rebuild the ghettos, then pre-election studies of how the White House could