Dimensions: 6'' x 9'' 250 pages AEI Press  (Washington) Publication Date: October 2000 Hardcover ISBN: 0844741396 Price: $ 25.00 Add to Cart   Examination Copies

October 2000
Preparing to Be President: The Memos of Richard E. Neustadt
By Richard E. Neustadt, edited by Charles O. Jones

Richard E. Neustadt is the nation’s preeminent scholar of the American presidency. His book Presidential Power has been the classic political science study of the presidency since its publication in 1960 and through its five editions and numerous printings. In addition to his public work, Neustadt was also a private adviser to a number of presidents on the subject of how to make a smooth transition into office. Preparing to Be President: The Memos of Richard E. Neustadt is a collection of memos Neustadt wrote to presidential candidates, presidents-elect, presidents, and their top aides, beginning with a memo addressed to Sen. John F. Kennedy on September 15, 1960. The eighteen memos in this collection contain Neustadt’s advice to Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis, and Bill Clinton.

In addition to the memos, Neustadt has written a new essay, "Advising the Advisers," which explains how he came to write the memos and looks at modern day transitions and the hazards a transition adviser might encounter. It is particularly relevant for the contemporary presidency, given the transition into office that President George W. Bush faced in January 2001.

Charles O. Jones, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, edited the volume. He includes an essay interpreting the memos and their relevance for the present day and a bibliographical essay discussing Neustadt’s memos in relation to transition memos written by others.

Richard E. Neustadt was serving as an adviser to Sen. Henry M. Jackson’s Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery when Jackson, who was the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, asked him to write a memo on the transition tasks that would impose themselves upon his candidate before inauguration, January 20, 1961, if Kennedy won the forthcoming election. Jackson then introduced Neustadt to Kennedy and presented him with the memo. Kennedy read it and asked Neustadt to prepare more memos, "especially about White House deadlines and organization." This began Neustadt’s tenure as a transition adviser to Kennedy, during which he wrote several batches of transition memos and had numerous conversations with Kennedy past Inauguration Day.

Kennedy read Neustadt’s memos with great interest. In A Thousand Days, Arthur Schlesinger recounts one exchange between Neustadt and Kennedy:

In Toledo, [Neustadt] was asked to come onto the Caroline, Kennedy’s plane. After a time, Archibald Cox, who was aboard, said the Senator was ready to see him but cautioned against conversation; "he's saving his voice for Chicago." Neustadt, going back to Kennedy, handed him a bundle of memoranda and said, "You don't have to say anything--here are the memoranda--don’t bother with them 'til after the election." One memorandum listed priority actions from election to Thanksgiving. Another dealt with cabinet posts. Another was called "Staffing the President-Elect;" sensing Kennedy’s affinities, Neustadt added to this appendixes discussing Roosevelt’s approach to White House staffing and to the Bureau of the Budget. Half an hour later, Kennedy bounded out of his compartment in search of Neustadt. Finding him, he said, "That Roosevelt stuff is fascinating." Neustadt said, "You are not supposed to read it now." Kennedy repeated, "It’s fascinating."

Neustadt became a transition adviser again in 1980 when Republican colleagues of his at Harvard asked him to write a memo to James Baker, whom Ronald Reagan had named chief of staff. In 1988, Neustadt was asked by Paul Brountas of the Dukakis presidential campaign to write down his thoughts on the planning for transition that needed to occur before the election. In 1992, he penned a series of memos to Clinton advisers Robert Reich, Reed Hundt, and Diane Blair.

The Kennedy Memos

The first three memos offer a coherent set of guidelines for taking charge, all posited in the context of the
president-elect having decided what his presidency is about. These three, "Organizing the Transition," "Staffing the President-Elect," and "Cabinet Departments: Some Things to Keep in Mind," provide topical advice, historical experience, attention to the Eisenhower operation, and reminders of what should continue and why. While comprehensive and instructive, the memos emphasize the choices that have to be made. Neustadt never forgets who it is that will be the president.

In the first memo (September 15, 1960), Neustadt provides a review of basic issues associated with the transition: the pressures of meeting expectations in the first hundred days; deciding what the message of the new administration will be; selecting the most trusted aides for the White House; designating the cabinet; organizing the process for subcabinet appointments; initiating liaison to and reassuring the bureaucracy, Congress, the outgoing administration, and the press; arranging to move into the White House and the government; and preparing for the first cabinet meetings and the inaugural. It truly is a memo for all time, ever sensitive to who the president is and what he wants to do, as well as citing caveats regarding preinaugural traps. It is no wonder that Senator Kennedy wanted more after reading this first briefing paper.

The second memo (October 30, 1960) directs attention to staffing needs. Neustadt begins by stressing the singularity of a president’s needs. He repeats points made in the first memo: "A president’s needs for staff are bound to be different in many ways from a senator’s, or even from a candidate’s. But your needs in the presidency will also differ from Eisenhower’s." He then defines the challenge for the president-elect in fashioning his staff: Clarify your needs first because "you are the only person you can count on to be thinking about what helps you." Then consider the needs others have for presidential help.

Notable in this second missive is attention to the experience of other presidents. Sensing that Kennedy preferred the more collegial staff of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Neustadt explained that "a collegial staff has to be managed; competition has to be audited. To run a staff in Roosevelt’s style imposes heavy burdens." As reinforcement, Neustadt attached summaries of Roosevelt’s approaches to staffing the White House and the Bureau of the Budget. The first of these summaries remains one of the most succinct and sophisticated treatments of the Roosevelt style of governing ever written. It was, understandably, welcomed by Kennedy for the lessons it contained.

The third memo in this collection (November 3, 1960) focuses on cabinet departments. Neustadt clarifies that his purpose is not to be involved in various political criteria for appointments. Rather, consistent with his overarching theme, he identifies factors that "bear upon your own ability as President to conserve your freedom of action and to guard your reputation." Neustadt advises Kennedy, a Democrat, to consider naming a Republican to head the Treasury Department, an action later taken by Kennedy with the appointment of Douglas Dillon. Also highlighted is the Department of Justice, where "the full utility ... as a presidential asset has not often been perceived by sitting Presidents." Failure to be so attentive can cause (and has caused) the department to be "a passive drag or a decided liability."

Two other memos, the seventh (December 20, 1960) and twelfth (January 26, 1961) in this collection, also deal with cabinet matters. The seventh warns Kennedy about designating "cabinet assistants," because expectations may then quickly develop that Eisenhower’s cabinet system would be adopted. Neustadt counsels against immediate acceptance of procedures already in place as cabinet secretaries orient themselves to their new jobs, pointing out that "vested interests in the present Cabinet system would spring up in each of your departments." His advice to Kennedy can be summarized this way: Do not let the past determine your future.

Consistent with the collegial style of White House organization, the fourth (December 3, 1960) and fifth (December 7, 1960) memos advise Kennedy to be cautious in designating titles for his staff. Titles should be "unspecific" so as to permit shifting assignments and to prevent "automatic formation of a clientele with which the man is openly identified." As with the first three, the eleventh memo (January 18, 1961) is a set of recommendations for all time. No one can quite know what it is like to be president in advance of serving (though some, vice presidents who become presidents, are likely to have a strong sense of the experience), so this memo directs attention to those early weeks when the president is taking a crash course on his job, during which time "flaps" are inevitable. Neustadt identifies the types of likely emergencies and how they will present themselves, along with advice on who should handle them and how.

The Reagan Memo

What Neustadt prepared for Reagan was of a very different order from the memos written for Kennedy. Neustadt was part of the Kennedy team in 1960, the governing insider. In 1980, he was the contemplative outsider. In that role, he reviewed the problems of staffing the White House. Predictably, he began with advice to build a structure suited to the president’s "preferred way of doing work."

Following that orientation, Neustadt provided advice regarding mismatches in the operating styles of staff, the effects of how the Carter administration staffed the White House, changes for the sake of change, cabinet management and use, the association of foreign and domestic perspectives, and the prevention of staff growth (possibly producing "high-level loose cannons," as in Watergate). The lessons are richly illustrated with historical examples of the successes and failures of White House staff operations. And, of course, the point is not to provide engrossing gossip about a past administration. It is rather to encourage thought about how best to promote good advice for the president.

The extent to which Baker absorbed these specific lessons of history is uncertain. No mention is made of Neustadt’s memo in the various volumes on the organization of the Reagan presidency. Yet Neustadt’s central maxim was clearly followed: Organize the White House staff to suit the needs and style of the incumbent. Reagan and Kennedy were both highly staff-dependent presidents, though for different reasons: Reagan for having set goals, then delegating; Kennedy for having extended his reach with generalists like himself. Their transitions into office were among the more successful in recent decades.

The Dukakis Memo

Neustadt also advised presidential candidates who lost. His memo to Paul Brountas, a Michael Dukakis aide, is included here primarily because it treats the important matter of transition planning during the campaign. It is worth noting that the memo was written in late, May when Dukakis was definitely competitive with George H. W. Bush in the polls. In the memo, Neustadt advised that those engaged in transition planning be integrated into the campaign, not sit "on the side-lines as a post-election planner." He provided historical examples, noting the success of Baker because he was a part of the 1980 Reagan campaign, not in the least a sideliner. Neustadt also portrayed the tensions between those working in the campaign and those planning for governing after. These stresses are certain to occur; they are amplified if the planners are set off from the campaigners, as with the Carter and Clinton planning efforts.

The Clinton Memos

By the time of Clinton’s 1992 campaign, Neustadt had seen several presidents come and go since he wrote his original memos. His former student, Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.), was on the ticket with Clinton, and one of his colleagues at Harvard, Robert B. Reich, was a close Clinton friend and the future secretary of labor. It was in response to Reich that Neustadt propounded ten "lessons" for the prospective transition, forwarded to Clinton in August 1992. One is struck by the greater urgency in appointments recommended by Neustadt here compared with his advice to Kennedy. Also apparent is the greater sensitivity to institutional developments that made it even more imperative that an "out-of-towner" organize carefully. The clear implication of Neustadt’s lessons is that the press, Congress, the bureaucracy, and the presidential branch had all become significantly more active during the transition period, thereby increasing the challenges to the new president. Finally, Neustadt advises Clinton not to repeat several of the mistakes of Jimmy Carter. Given the similarities in their political circumstances and experiences as southern governors, this guidance was appropriate. As it happened, however, much of Neustadt’s counsel was ignored and mistakes of the past were, in fact, repeated.

The other memos in this set are unique as transition documents. The first, to Reed Hundt, a lawyer friend of Al Gore, addresses the case of the vice president (specifically, Neustadt’s former student). In it, Neustadt identifies the "special vantage point" of the vice president as the president’s campaign and election partner. Therefore, if the president has the wit to acknowledge this advantage, he will have a second mind through which to pass the issues of the day. This mind will have been tempered, too, by the special political experience of running for the presidency. No one else can perform that role, and therefore the vice president needs to nurture it.

The last memos in this collection direct attention to the role of the first lady, a subject not usually considered as a transition issue apart from the personal adjustments made within the family. The case of Hillary Rodham Clinton was special, however, because voters were promised "two for the price of one." The prospective first lady had been actively involved in policy issues during her husband’s service as governor of Arkansas, both within the state and nationally as president of the Children’s Defense Fund. Thus, most analysts believed that Hillary Clinton would play a direct role in the new administration.

Advising the Advisers in 2000

Neustadt adds to his earlier writings about transitions in a new essay, "Advising the Advisers." He highlights three hazards for transition advisers that have not received due attention in the past. First, advisers may find themselves in a time warp. Neustadt recounts the changes in congressional expectations of a president and of the revolution in media and technology. These developments have changed the presidency and have opened up new possibilities for presidents that cannot be recognized merely by relying on old experience. Second, Neustadt indicates the importance of seeking advice from the people in the administration that is leaving office and the tendency of incoming aides to ignore that advice. "The insights of thoughtful incumbents, still in office but already slated to leave, hence in a reflective mood, are an invaluable source of timely information on the way the government works, in a time span bound to be of relevance for their successors--whether or not the latter understand that at the start," he writes. Third, Neustadt worries about the lack of institutional memory in the White House. There is a tendency to forget past White House organization and ignore what did and did not work. Neustadt counsels new administrations to study past practice, "but do not trust it more than at the most two presidential generations back, unless the oldsters can attest that they were personally present at an earlier creation."