Now, We Wait

The Obama transition is well under way at this point, and while the trickle of names of appointees to prominent positions is widening into a creek, in a way it feels like the first phase of the transition is over. In that first period, observers from every perspective and kind of media outlet, be they left, right, journalists, analysts, or voters, were waiting to see whether Obama would pull it off. How well had he prepared? What kind of people would he pick to serve in his administration? What kind of manager would he prove himself to be in his first acts as the executive of something other than a campaign?

But while a lot of my friends and colleagues in the blogosphere are debating the merits of Susan Rice at the United Nations or the choice of domestic policy coordinator, now that some initial questions have been answered about Obama's management style, I feel like those of us in the good government community need to settle in for a wait. Obama isn't likely to appoint an Office of Personnel Management in the first wave of major nominations. It's not clear how much information about the agency and policy review teams' conclusions will be made public. There are signs that Obama has ideas about management, although not perhaps a comprehensive management agenda, and it's not clear if someone will be tasked with a Reinventing Government-style effort.

We'll be running a story later today about a new Partnership for Public Service-Gallup poll that suggests public trust in government is at an all-time low, and Partnership president Max Stier argues that without that trust, it's extremely difficult for a president to gain a mandate. With that in mind, I want to argue again that the Obama administration would do well to incorporate discussions of management and a strong management philosophy into the discussions about its transition and its appointments. In some cases, it seems clear that management concerns have played a role in determining appointments: Larry Summers' troubles managing the faculty at Harvard (which, yes, went considerably beyond his remarks about women in science, just so we can avoid that debate) may have been the reason he's not running the Treasury department, for example. But making the link between policy-making and policy-implementation explicit every step of the way would go a long way to make the case for Obama's decisions every step of the way, and earn him political capital. With his ambitions, it's hard to imagine that he could ever have too much capital at this stage in the game.

But there's a lot going on, and there's a Turkey to pardon, and other nominations to make. So we'll all have to wait for a while.