Handing over the keys to the White House

Why is there such a long gap?

The American Constitution mandates it. It calls for the presidential election to be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and for the president to be sworn in on 20 January. (Until 1937, the inauguration took place even later, in March.) This gives the president-elect and his advisers about ten weeks to hire nearly 8,000 appointees to run the White House and 15 executive branch departments. During this time, aides to the incoming president set up shop in the White House and work alongside the departing president's staff, reviewing policies and budgets.

But is there much for them to do?

Masses. The FBI has to perform hundreds of background checks, and the new team must get up to speed on sensitive national-security issues. Indeed, there's so much to do that presidential candidates often start planning their transitions as soon as they've locked up their party's nomination. But typically, they keep quiet about those efforts, for fear of appearing presumptuous. When word leaked out that Barack Obama had formed a transition team well before the election was over, John McCain complained that his rival was "already measuring the drapes" for the Oval Office.

Are transitions just one big job fair?

No, they also set the tone for the first year of an administration - and beyond. Ronald Reagan, for instance, announced early on that his first cabinet appointments would be the secretaries of defence and treasury, a clear signal his defining issues would be a defence build-up and tax cuts. Bill Clinton's transition, by contrast, was chaotic and marred by internal disputes, as various aides jockeyed for position. Before taking office, Clinton added to his troubles by casually mentioning that he wanted to lift the ban on gays in the military. The ensuing uproar persisted into the first months of his administration, and as he struggled to find some way of appeasing both gays and the military brass, he lost focus on his major campaign themes of healthcare and the economy.

Have transitions always been so elaborate?

No. For most of American history, they consisted of just a few meetings between the outgoing and incoming chief executives. They only became part of the official process a few years after Franklin Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover, in 1932. With the country on the brink of the Great Depression, Hoover suggested that he and FDR make some joint declarations on the economy. Roosevelt refused ("It's not my baby," were his words), so Hoover found it impossible to rally support for his recovery plan, and by the time Roosevelt took office in March, a full-blown depression was underway. That disastrous delay prompted Congress to amend the Constitution and move the inauguration to January. Some feel that's still too long. "It is ironic," says former Senator Claiborne Pell, "that our Constitution provides for up to ten weeks of crippled leadership each time the presidency changes hands."

Are transitions always cordial?

A strained civility usually prevails, but not always. In the waning hours of his presidency, John Adams sabotaged his successor and erstwhile friend, Thomas Jefferson, by appointing loyalists as federal judges: he then skipped Jefferson's inauguration. In 1928, Calvin Coolidge refused to meet his successor, Herbert Hoover, though both were Republicans. "That man has offered me unsolicited advice for six years," explained Coolidge, "all of it bad." Winners can be just as rude. After Clinton's election in 1992, George H.W. Bush's spokesman Marlin Fitzwater invited Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos to his office to talk about the job. Stephanopoulos strolled in, put his feet up on the desk, and announced he could spare five minutes.

How can transitions go wrong?

Most unsuccessful transitions fall victim to self-inflicted wounds. Jimmy Carter started planning his transition in the spring of 1976 - almost a year before taking office - and appointed an old friend, Jack Watson, to head up the team. But after Carter's victory over Gerald Ford, his campaign manager, Hamilton Jordan, demanded a bigger say in setting up the new administration. So the transition had to start from scratch, appointments were delayed and Carter got tagged as disorganised. The first President Bush made trouble for himself by jettisoning appointees who had worked alongside him in the Reagan administration. "Everyone knew someone who had gotten a pink slip," says presidential scholar Stephen Hess. The hard feelings lingered, and when Bush's nominee for defence secretary, John Tower, ran into resistance, resentful Republicans offered little support and the nomination was rejected.

What about Barack Obama?

He has gone out of his way not to antagonise potential enemies and is being criticised, if anything, for being too cautious and failing to embrace "change". But even if incoming presidents go out of their way to avoid creating their own difficulties, outgoing presidents can still do their bit to make mischief for them.

What kind of mischief do they get up to?

Setting policies in their closing days that will be embarrassing for the next president to undo (see 'The transition scandal that wasn't', below). Days before Clinton left the White House, for example, he signed an executive order reducing permissible levels of arsenic in drinking water even though this would cause bureaucratic turmoil. As Clinton had anticipated, his successor, George W. Bush, quickly rescinded the order and was left with the unenviable chore of explaining to Americans why he wanted more arsenic in their water. But for sheer spitefulness, it's hard to top Coolidge, who, in the lead up to Hoover's inauguration, simply ignored urgent foreign and economic policy issues. Hoover had campaigned on his experience as an engineer, so when aides asked Coolidge what to do about these festering problems, he would reply: "We'll leave it for the great engineer."

The transition scandal that wasn't

It was the stuff of sensational news reports and indignant commentary. Departing Clinton staffers, the reports said, had shamefully vandalised the White House, destroying office furniture, leaving obscene greetings on voice-mail machines, and defacing walls with graffiti mocking incoming President George W. Bush. The Clintonites had even trashed Air Force One, wrote the late Tony Snow, at that time a columnist and later Bush's Press Secretary, "leaving it looking as if it had been stripped by a skilled band of thieves". Except that it never happened. After a year long, $200,000 investigation, government inspectors said White House offices suffered only ordinary wear and tear. Nothing was taken from Air Force One. And what little intentional damage had been inflicted in the White House was trivial, such as scraping the 'W' off computer keyboards. "What often happens in Washington," Snow later explained, "is that gossip becomes news. That's not a good thing." ·