First 100 Days: Terry Sullivan

Dr. Terry Sullivan, in his study, “Presidential Work During the First One Hundred Days,” analyzes the work schedules of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower through George H. W. Bush during their first 100 days in office. With 50,000 observations of 20,000 events over nearly four decades, the report takes on two tasks: describing the president’s workday and drawing conclusions about commitment, engagement, isolation, organizational choices, and effectiveness.

 

In an interview with Government Executive’s Michelle Williams, he says “it’s an easy standard to hold every president against, to compare every president to.”  In this vein, several media outlets are monitoring “the first 100 days.”  These include:  BBC’s Obama Diary, CNN’s First 100 Days, and Huffington Post’s Obama’s First 100 Days. 

 

Dr. Sullivan’s data, which took a number of years to compile from a variety of official records, shows that presidents experienced a 30 percent increase in their workdays since Eisenhower.    His look at details, such as the amount of time on the phone, in one-on-one meetings, in groups, events, or on travel, showed interesting patterns between presidents during their first 100 days and, in some cases, dispelled some historical myths.  For example, Reagan, not Nixon, was the most isolated.  Sullivan also found that president’s with greater hierarchy in their operations had not only more productive work days but also had increased ranges of engagement with outsiders.

 

It will be interesting to see how future scholars rate the more recent presidents.  They’ll have to add a new time-tracking category for President Obama – time spent on email and his Blackberry!

Engaging Civil Servants

President-Elect Obama will be meeting with President Bush and living past-presidents on January 7^th in the White House to learn first-hand about their experiences.  President Bush has no agenda, but one topic might be:  how to engage civil servants in carrying out large-scale changes.

 

President George H.W. Bush met with members of the Senior Executive Service a few weeks after he took office in 1989; senior executives who attended still talk about it, even though it included no give-and-take with his audience.   President-Elect Obama has been urged to emulate this event.

 

However, presidential scholar Dr. Martha Kumar notes that: “there is another model and one that has the benefit of working with President Obama’s strength of listening to people who have much to say in addition to telling people about the goals of the administration and their role in it. 

 

“When President Jimmy Carter came into office in 1977, one of his first actions was to do a series of visits to each of the then-eleven government departments to talk to career staff about the importance of their work to the success of his administration.  These were sessions held from January 26th to March 1st 1977, ones where President Carter learned a great deal about the programs and achievements of each of the departments and their agencies.  In each meeting, he spoke a few minutes about what his hopes were for the departments and his need for the support from the career staff.  But the longer part of these sessions was the question-and-answer part he had with departmental employees. In addition to all of their benefits, the preparation for these visits served as a quick initiation for President Carter into the programs and people of each of the eleven departments.”

 

Kumar notes, “In 2009, these kinds of sessions could serve several purposes:

* Let the career civil servants know President Obama plans a partnership with them and what their common goals will be.

* Remind the American people of the fine career staff working on their behalf in the federal government.

* Learn about departmental programs through the preparation for the individual events and the questions the career staff ask. The public would learn from such sessions as the press corps following President Obama would write about the event and the issues.”

 

She also observes that it offers the President an opportunity to tell employees what he wants from them and what they can do together.  About two-thirds of career senior executives have not been through a presidential transition, so this would be an opportunity to engage them as well.

 

Kumar has identified the weblinks to the transcripts of those long-ago meetings that President Carter held (which remind me a bit of the cabinet townhall meetings that Vice President Al Gore held as part of his reinventing government initiative in 1993).

 

She notes: “While the sessions last varying amounts of time, there are similarities among them.  At each one, President Carter talked about his administration and their important role in it.. . . his central message of the partnership of the President and career civil servants was a solid one for his audience and the country as well. He opened with remarks about the direction of his administration and then took questions from his audience varying from a half dozen to a dozen questions.  The queries included ones about administration policies, work place issues (labor unions, flex time, day care), regulations, and budgetary ones.” 

Was this the best use of a new President’s time in his first 100 days in office?  Will the pressures of the challenges facing President Obama allow this level of interaction?  Are there new ways of creating such interaction, given the Internet? These are questions the transition team is likely grappling with.  Still, this might be an interesting topic of conversation when the Presidents get together.

 

For the history buffs, here are the dates of each of the sessions at the then-eleven departments as they took place and a link to the transcript of each session as well.  They are an interesting trip back in history!

 

Department of Justice – January 26, 1977. This was a different session than the others as he went to Justice for the swearing-in of Attorney General Griffin Bell and did not have a question-and-answer session that was recorded. He took a tour of the department and most likely answered questions then.

Department of Labor – February 9

Department of Commerce – February  9  

Department of Treasury – February 10  

Department of Housing and Urban Development – February 10

Department of Health, Education, and Welfare – February 16

Department of Agriculture – February 16

Department of Interior – February 18

Department of Transportation – February 24

Department of State – February 24

Department of Defense – March 1

Transition 1988: George H.W. Bush

The Reagan to Bush transition has been characterized as a “friendly takeover.” This may have been true at the very top levels, but people I knew who were “on the ground level” in agencies saw it as being more difficult than a changeover between political parties.

Pre-Election

Transition planning began almost a year in advance; Chase Untermeyer raised the topic during a Christmas party at the Bush residence and was subsequently asked to explore what needed to be done. No work was begun until April 1988 after the primaries left Bush as the clear candidate. Untermeyer’s work was limited: he was told not to address personnel or policy issues, or White House organizational issues. He was to focus on the stand-up of the transition headquarters and lay out the structure for making personnel and policy decisions during the transition period.

In parallel, President Reagan’s staff undertook efforts for an orderly transition. The director of Presidential Personnel met with Untermeyer on the organization and operation of the Office of Presidential Personnel, going through each department, job-by-job. President Reagan’s chief of staff developed a checklist for the incoming transition team, as well.

Post-Election

President-elect Bush unveiled his key transition team the day after the election. He appointed Craig Fuller (his vice presidential chief of staff) and Robert Teeter (a key campaign strategist) as co-directors, with Untermeyer and C. Boyden Gray as deputies. Untermeyer headed the personnel function and Gray served as legal counsel.

Untermeyer recommended a small transition staff of about 100, but it ultimately grew to about 225 (GSA had prepared office space for 500!). Untermeyer was asked to provide 3-5 names for each cabinet position and 50 state recruiters were encouraged to come up with “fresh faces.”

Because there were no large agency teams, President Reagan’s chief of staff sent out a memo to agency political appointees to provide requested briefing book information. Binders were prepared for incoming cabinet appointees with information about their jobs and advice on proper behavior during the transition period.

Sub-cabinet positions were filled later; the selections were made jointly between the incoming secretary and the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, with the White House office suggesting potential appointees. Lower-level appointments were more highly controlled by Presidential Personnel.

President-elect Bush asked John Sunnunu to be his chief of staff 9 days after the election. Bush had wanted a strong chief of staff, but there was tension among his close associates immediately after the election about who should fill the position. According to media reports, both Fuller and Teeter were opposed to Sunnunu’s selection and chose to not join the new Administration. Instead, they both left after the transition.

In the end, according to historian John Burke, “The president-elect had assembled a cabinet and staff populated with longtime friends, most with a high degree of prior governmental experience.”

*** This story was abstracted from John P. Burke’s book, “Presidential Transitions: From Politics to Practice.” If you were involved in this transition, please feel free to add your stories, as well! ***