Bush staff proceeds, but still hesitant

While excited by the court victories Monday, the transition team still is holding off on moving ahead at full speed.

©Washington Post, published December 5, 2000

When Judge N. Sanders Sauls issued his decisive ruling in favor of George W. Bush on Monday afternoon, a few war whoops went up in Bush's Austin, Texas, headquarters as staffers watched on television. But the cheers were muted.

"We've learned throughout this process that first impressions are often fleeting," explained Ray Sullivan, a Bush spokesman.

While Bush's team is one big step closer to the White House, the ruling did little to resolve the state of suspended animation between campaign and transition. Bush's designated chief of staff, Andrew Card, hailed the "very significant ruling" but quickly added that "we fully expect the Gore people would appeal." As for the transition-in-waiting, Card said, "we are still being responsible but cautious."

Uncertainty permeates the nascent Bush administration. Publicly, the Bush campaign says it is proceeding with a transition, but this is easier said than done. Of the 290 campaign staffers on the Election Day payroll (almost all of whom remain employed), only 13 have joined or are about to join the transition. Thirty more are distracted in Florida, while nearly 250 others sit and wait. Nobody knows what the future holds, so everybody is reluctant to show initiative.

Even those crucial to a transition have been distracted by the Florida mess. Monday, Bush policy director Josh Bolten, who has a law degree, hopped on a plane to Tallahassee to lend a hand in the legal dispute. Three other policy aides have also become ad-hoc legal advisers.

At Bush's makeshift transition headquarters in the Washington suburb of McLean, Va., staffers continued to trickle in Monday, finding rented furniture and still-unoccupied offices. "The charge here is just get stuff in place so when word comes we can hit the ground running," said Mike Gerson, Bush's top speechwriter, who arrived Monday. Gerson can collect resumes, but he can't yet offer jobs. Still, it's progress. In Austin, "I was just waiting on events which we thought would be much quicker," he said.

Some of the uncertainty would happen in any transition. "There's a sense of "What's next for me?' " says Ari Fleischer, Bush's transition spokesman. "That's inevitable and quadrennial."

Bush may be contributing to the problem with his management style. Michael Watkins, a Harvard Business School professor and co-author of a book on transition leadership, said Bush's "delegating, empower-your-subordinates style of leadership" would be more suitable if he had a broad, clear mandate to govern. But in the current circumstances, Watkins said, "he appears to be coming up short on the vision side," fueling uncertainty in the ranks.

The anxiety, said Al Felzenberg, a presidential transition specialist with the Heritage Foundation, "is always an issue that incoming administrations have to deal with." But Bush's aides have a particularly "grueling" lot, he said. "They didn't get the normal comedown time, the few days off."

Bush, for his part, dropped the qualifiers Monday in talking about a future administration. He met reporters at the Governor's Mansion with Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, who said, "It's going to be nice to have you as president." In brief remarks, Bush said that on Tuesday, "the vice president" -- running mate Dick Cheney, that is -- "is going to go up to Capitol Hill to further our discussions with the leadership and members of Congress."

Still, Bush wouldn't declare an end to the purgatory. While asserting that "I do believe that I have won this election," he said he would not echo Cheney's statement on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that it's time for Gore to concede, adding, "I think the vice president's entitled to his view."

Bush advisers have no doubt that, whenever the controversy ends, they are in for what one called a "crash transition."

"One thing you can't recount is time," said Fleischer, referring to the four weeks of lost planning time.

Bush, who is to meet today with his prospective national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, has created the beginning of a transition structure. Card is working on White House staffing and other personnel moves. Bush's friend and adviser Clay Johnson is also handling personnel, with more emphasis on federal agencies. Both men aim to avoid what they perceive was a mistake by President Clinton in 1992 when he handled Cabinet appointments first while failing to put in place a solid White House staff. Cheney, meanwhile, concentrates on high-level appointments.

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