Civil servants said to play critical role in transitions

Future political appointees would be wise to tap career employees for advice on the inner workings of government, President Clinton's former press secretary said Monday.

"There are many wonderful career civil servants with institutional memory. Career employees have an important role and identifying that to the future President is valuable," said Mike McCurry, White House press secretary from 1995 to 1998, at a press briefing on the Presidential Appointee Initiative.

The initiative, established in 1999 by the Brookings Institution and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, seeks to help nominees ease into office and promotes reforms that simplify the appointments process.

Prior to joining the White House staff in 1995, McCurry served as a spokesman for the State Department and as deputy assistant secretary for public affairs under then Secretary of State Warren Christopher. McCurry said a foreign service officer who tutored and briefed him daily on issues was invaluable during his tenure at the State Department.

"There should be a formal process by which we recognize the achievements of civil servants and institutionalize them," McCurry said.

In addition to McCurry, Monday's briefing featured Sheila Tate, campaign and transition press secretary to former President Bush, New York Times veteran political reporter R.W. Apple Jr., and Brookings scholar Stephen Hess.

Hess discussed his report First Impressions: Presidents, Appointments, and the Transition, which looks at the last five presidential transitions and highlights important lessons for future transitions. Hess said President-elect Ronald Reagan's 1980 transition into office is widely recognized as the most successful, primarily due to early planning. The Clinton transition in 1992 was the most chaotic, according to the report.

Hess said Clinton's eleventh-hour scramble to create a diverse Cabinet that "looks like America" resulted in a delicate balancing act that took an enormous amount of time and energy to put into place.

Hess' advice for future administrations included planning ahead for the transition, appointing people as a team who can work well together, and having White House staff in place by Thanksgiving and Cabinet secretaries announced by Christmas.

"These lessons should be heeded early in the transition if Presidents want to avoid the accusation of drifting and maintain control over their own messages," said Hess.

Other groups are also helping political appointees make the transition to public service. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank, published the book The Keys to a Successful Presidency in August offering advice to presidential hopefuls from dozens of presidential experts ranging from former White House chiefs of staff to former White House personnel directors.

The General Accounting Office has compiled a list of questions aimed at uncovering the leadership qualities, or lack thereof, of each political appointee who goes through the Senate confirmation process.

In November, the Presidential Appointee Initiative and the Council for Excellence in Government will publish A Survivor's Guide for Presidential Nominees , a guide for the newly appointed on everything from filling out forms to handling the media.