Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s transition teams have been operating in near-total secrecy.
But based on a public schedule and a slew of hacked emails from when John Podesta headed the Obama transition in 2008, it’s likely that both teams have already gone a long way toward establishing detailed policy goals as well as picking the next White House staff and cabinet officials.
Both teams moved into office space provided by the General Services Administration in August. By the end of that month, according to a timeline created by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization that helps candidates navigate the transition to power, teams were presumably working with the White House to begin the staff changeover.
In mid-August 2008, for instance, according to one of the hacked emails published by WikiLeaks, Podesta met with George W. Bush’s chief of staff and other officials to discuss security clearances, an expedited confirmation process, and a presidential personnel database.
In September, the Partnership plan calls for the transition teams to determine staffing needs and continue requesting security clearances for agency review team members and other key advisors and staff.
And policy work is presumably ongoing. A mid-September 2008 memo from the transition team to then-Senator Obama noted: “All six of the major policy teams (national security, health care, education, energy, economy, and immigration) are on track to produce draft policy papers by the end of September that will be reviewed by the transition board… We also have a very large team of outside lawyers and consultants that is assisting the agency review team in researching specific federal agencies.”
In October, the plan recommends that teams identify key appointees and begin developing the structure of the White House. The Obama transition team started vetting appointments in early October 2008. Diversity was a key issue: Podesta was copied on an email to Obama from Mike Froman, transition team member and Citigroup managing director, listing possible appointments for the next administration. Froman divided the candidates into groups: Latinos, Native Americans, and disabled people, for example. In a separate document he listed women candidates.
Clinton has said that half of her cabinet will be women. And her campaign’s process for selecting a running mate suggests the same general procedures remain in place as in 2008. In March, Podesta, who is Clinton’s campaign chair, sent high-ranking members of the campaign a list of candidates. They were organized in categories by race, gender, or career affiliation — as Podesta called it, “food groups.”
By Election Day, the Clinton and Trump teams, according to the Partnership timeline, should have solidified policies, structural organizations for after the election, and personnel lists.
Each side surely has a transition website ready to go live on Wednesday as well. The Mitt Romney transition team’s website leaked the day after he lost in 2012.
Max Stier, president of the Partnership, began working with transition teams in 2008. Campaigns previously avoided this planning so as not to seem presumptuous, but Stier helped change that mentality. “Campaign job No. 1 is to win,” Stier told The Intercept. “Transition planning created vulnerability.”
Now, Stier said, the Partnership works with teams, “Helping them understand how to better identify talent.” He said: “any organization is really about the people and leadership.”
Hmmm… one of the candidate needs to get herself ready to ‘serve’ at the prison. Which is so good because she did take the dough from the prison lobby.
The broader question for Trump’s transition team is: who is calling the shots on policy!?
Trump basically went an entire election cycle without having any real fleshed out policies, so how the hell is his transition team supposed to begin establishing a framework? Someone else must be making policy decisions for Trump.
But hopefully it’s all a moot point by tomorrow.
Measure 97 actually raises more like 3 billion a year. Perhaps the confusion is that it’s a tax on gross revenue above $25 million?
https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Business_Tax_Increase,_Measure_97_(2016)
“…it’s likely that both teams have already gone a long way toward establishing detailed policy goals as well as picking the next White House staff and cabinet officials.”
Erm, that’s ALL they do to get the job as Prez. THAT IS THE JOB.
They meet and greet, pump flesh, cut deals with the Kingmakers. Those ARE the policies. Those ARE the personnel (well, their proxies anyway). That IS politics. Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Banking, Big Tech, Big Groceries (whatever you call Walmart), Big Business – they’ve all got clear policy requirements concerning the NSA, the military, allocation of federal funding, taxation – all the key political issues of the day.
But, hey, nice to have you fill in for the regular guys whilst they go get their “scoops”. They badly state the bleeding obvious a lot too. Naivety is kind of charming when it is not patronising.
I am opening a sweepstake on the time between Clinton’s confirmation and the first Cruise missile launch. Two miles off the coast of Beirut, New Jersey guns getting ready to shoot…
I give it 120 days after inauguration before Hillary Clinton opens up another “front” on our disastrous global war on scary nouns.
Donald Trump, if elected, will still be too busy vetting his cabinet positions and political appointees by how physically attractive they are and who kisses his ass with the most suction.
Either way this nation missed a prime opportunity to elect Bernie Sanders and at least start opening up a new conversation, new era and new politics in this nation, even if that didn’t result in immediate federal policy changes given GOP legislative obstructionism, cultural revanchism and flat out venality.
Democrats–never understanding the long game, and always selling out the American working class.
Well, if Bernie was so easily blackmailed by Team Hillary, as per Wikileaks, that he committed to a non aggression pact with his opponent, how in the world would Bernie ever have stood up to the world stage blackmailers and extortionist heads of State? Bernie may have had a point, but he turned out to be a weak messenger. Thanks goodness for the DNC rigging the nomination away from him. A blackmailable president is of no value.