NYT : Op-Ed Contributor: Between Presidents, a Dangerous Gap

Op-Ed Contributor: Between Presidents, a Dangerous Gap

By JAMIE GORELICK and SLADE GORTON | July 16, 2008

NOW that we have presumptive presidential nominees from the two major political parties, we need to turn our attention to the transition that will take place six months from now. One of the observations of the 9/11 commission was that the deeply flawed presidential transition of 2000 and 2001 created a dangerous period of vulnerability.

As always, the crowd coming in was dismissive of the concerns of the crowd going out. There was a mismatch between the concerns of the Clinton national security team and those of the incoming Bush team. While there were briefings between the election and the swearing-in, there was no trust — and thus no effective dialogue — between the members of the two administrations.

In addition, President Bush took too long to set priorities and direction for his national-security team. This was a result partly of the prolonged battle over the 2000 election, but it also reflected a basic problem in how we populate our government agencies — we do so much too slowly. Neither nominations nor confirmations come fast enough.

The 9/11 commission worried that terrorists would take advantage of our weakness during transitions, just as Al Qaeda did when it attacked Madrid just before Spain’s elections in 2004.

The lessons learned from the Clinton-Bush transition should inform what the candidates and the president do right now. The only way for a new administration to make important decisions in a fully informed way is to organize the transition into office very differently. The campaigns of both John McCain and Barack Obama are reported to be compiling lists of potential national-security nominees to speed the confirmation process next year, but that is just the beginning of what needs to be done.

First, the information given to the nominees must change drastically. It is customary to extend to nominees a daily intelligence briefing similar to the one the president receives, but we need to go well beyond that norm. To be ready to make the crucial decisions next Jan. 20 — and to take sensible positions in the debate about our national security in 2008 — both candidates (and a knowledgeable assistant) should be given full access, not just to the daily intelligence brief but to all the sensitive programs that we have in place to protect this nation. Either Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain will have to decide whether and how to continue the intelligence programs and other practices that are now in place. They should have knowledge of how they are working well in advance.

Second, the best transitions are led by those who would take over the federal government’s departments and agencies. Too often, an administration’s appointees are being selected as the transition is happening. That is ineffective and dangerous. The president-elect should be in a position to name his national security cabinet right after the election. To do so, he needs to be able to vet candidates now. We need to give the candidates the full resources — including F.B.I. background checks — they would otherwise get after the election to make their selections before November.

Traditionally, politicians, the news media and voters have been critical of a nominee “presuming” his election by identifying cabinet members before November, so the examination of possible leaders has been done in secret, undermining its effectiveness. When a campaign is worried that consideration of a possible nominee will become public, it refrains from fully vetting the person, to reduce the chances that the name will leak to the press. Our political culture needs to agree collectively that it would be good for the country for the candidates to vet their nominees now.

Third, prospective agency heads should begin meeting with those they would succeed immediately after the November election. The world has changed considerably over the past eight years — and our government has changed with it. We have an entirely new Department of Homeland Security and a director of national intelligence. One of the critical flaws in the Clinton-Bush transition was that the incoming administration discounted the concerns expressed by the outgoing administration, in part because the new administration had a dated view of which problems were most important.

It is extremely difficult for anyone outside the government, even the most avid students of public policy, to fully understand the challenges being faced inside government every day and what is being done to respond to them. The transmission of that information to a new administration is vital.

Current officials should share not just what is happening today but why they made the decisions they made. And during the transition they should share their thoughts on current decisions with those who will soon have to make them.

Fourth, the incoming administration cannot afford a “not invented here” attitude. However much this election is about change, there will be elements of the current team’s policies that are worth building on and continuing. The new president must be able to make informed decisions about what to continue and what to change.

Fifth, Congress must be involved. The Senate should be prepared to change its process for confirming nominations to deal with the heightened vulnerability during a transition. The Senate leadership, on a bipartisan basis, should pledge right now that hearings for national security and other key cabinet and sub-cabinet members will be held in early January and that votes to confirm or reject nominees will be scheduled for Jan. 20, the same day that the president takes office. Confirmation hearings for the other nominees should be concluded within three weeks of receiving nominations.

Our presidential transition process needs to adjust to the threats the United States faces. Improving the process will strengthen our ability to respond to those threats — and it might even result in better decisions in the early weeks and months of the next presidency.

Jamie Gorelick, a deputy attorney general from 1994 to 1997, and Slade Gorton, a Republican senator from Washington from 1982 to 2000, were members of the 9/11 commission.