Obama's Transition Plans

My colleague Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic reports today that Barack Obama's campaign already has begun planning for a potential transition.

"Barack is well aware of the complexity and the organizational challenge involved in the transition process and he has tasked a small group to begin thinking through the process,” a senior campaign adviser told Ambinder. “Barack has made his expectations clear about what he wants from such a process, how he wants it to move forward, and the establishment and execution of his timeline is proceeding apace.”

This will inevitably lead to talk that Obama is jumping the gun, acting like he's already won, etc. But the truth is, the sooner a would-be president starts directing people to figure out exactly what will happen after he's elected, the better. As Ambinder notes:

New presidents have only three months to complete a herculean remaking of the equivalent of ten of the world's biggest companies. Most presidential candidates don’t spend precious campaign time thinking about [what] to do, so the questions come fast and furious: how do you your turn your ideas into policy? What do you do first? What does Congress expect? What last-minute executive orders should you overturn? What will your first 100 days look like? How will you vet and when will you appoint major cabinet secretaries and political appointees? What’s the proper balance of power between executive departments? Budgets, costs, logistics?

If Obama and John McCain are smart, they'll have their teams dig fairly deeply into the bureaucracy to address these kinds of questions. One thing they'll hopefully learn quickly is that there are key efforts underway in the areas of information technology, federal procurement and personnel issues involving agencies like the Office of Management and Budget, the General Services Administration and the Office of Personnel Management. These efforts may initially seem arcane and bureaucratic, but they could make all the difference between effectively using the levers of government and being tainted by embarassing mismanagement.

The transition is not just about who gets to be Secretary of State. It's about establishing an appropriate, efficient structure for running the government from day one.