Presidential hopefuls Al Gore and George W. Bush should set goals now for managing the federal bureaucracy and working with career civil servants, according to a new book from the Heritage Foundation.
The Democratic and Republican candidates should already be working on plans for their Presidential transition, in case they win the November election, experts argued in the book, The Keys to a Successful Presidency.
"Although the transition is said to begin immediately after the election, it actually begins before the election and runs well into the first year of a presidency," said the book's editor Alvin S. Felzenberg, a former Princeton University faculty member and visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Heritage, a conservative Washington-based think tank, published the book as part of an election year advice series. Dozens of presidential experts, including former White House chiefs of staff, former counsels to the president, and former White House personnel directors, offer their advice in the book.
Perhaps the biggest transitional hurdle involves getting personnel in place, the experts said. To expedite this process, presidential hopefuls should begin assembling a large pool of potential political appointees before the election.
Transition planning isn't a sign of overconfidence or bravado, but rather spells "the difference between success and failure in the first days of the new administration," the book said.
Managing the operations of the federal government, essentially the largest corporation in the world, with 4 million government employees and a $1.8 trillion budget, is a huge challenge facing the next President, experts said. Bush and Gore should make management goals a priority from the beginning, they argued.
"Almost every recent President eventually initiated numerous efforts to improve the management of the federal government once they realized that improvement was badly needed. But few of these efforts survived the particular administration during which the initiative was announced," said Joseph Wright, director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan.
Another key to effective management is striking a balance between career civil servants and the appointees who oversee them, said Robert Maranto, a Villanova University professor. Maranto suggested that political appointees do some legwork before taking over their agencies.
"I would urge them to conduct reconnaissance of their new agencies by asking all the previous appointees they can find of either party, of any administration, which career bureaucrats they can work with and which ones they have to watch," he said.
At the same time, experts urged that civil servants not be viewed as the enemy. "The really effective President does his level best to make the civil service feel it is his 'partner' in the bold experiment that lies ahead," said Felzenberg.