Law Requires Empty White House

W A S H I N G T O N, Dec. 27, 2000 -- The White House is the hub of government, yetthe new staff that walks into the West Wing on Inauguration Daywill be lucky to find a scrap of paper to jot down a phone number.

When a president leaves office, the White House is swept clean.File drawers are emptied. Hard drives are yanked from computers.Office furniture is piled in the hallways. Institutional memorydisappears.

“The White House they enter is whistle clean. It contains emptydesks, no files from their predecessors,” says Martha Kumar, oneof several presidential scholars working to smooth the 10-weekpresidential transition, which is even shorter this year because ofthe postelection ballot drama.

But Is This the Best Way to Start?

This clean sweep is mandated by federal law, but presidentialexperts say starting from scratch might not be the best way tobegin a new presidency.

“When I walked in, there was not a piece of paper in thedrawers. I think the only thing I found was a paper clip in onedrawer,” said Edwin Meese, counselor to President Reagan in theearly 1980s and later attorney general.

“There’s some stuff at the National Security Council. And inthe White House counsel’s office there are some records, but not anawful lot. You kind of expect that the old administration is goingto have cleared out, but you’re a little bit surprised that theplace is as bare as it is.”

Law Requires Paper Purge

The Presidential Records Act, passed in 1978, requires the paperpurge.

It says the official records of the president and his staff arethe property of the United States, not the chief executive. TheNational Archives takes custody of them and preserves them foreventual public release.

In President Clinton’s case, boxes of papers already are beingshipped to a warehouse in Little Rock, Ark., site of hispresidential library, which will be administered by the archivist’sstaff.

“The most surprising thing to many people is that the computersare not functioning,” said Alvin Felzenberg, executive director ofthe President’s Commission on the Federal Appointments Process inthe Bush administration.

Kumar, a political scientist at Towson State University inMaryland, and others who have studied presidential hand-offs, thinksome material could be given to newcomers to help them get started.

Kumar’s “White House 2001 Project” has interviewed White Housestaff members from the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush andClinton administrations. The project is sharing the materials withPresident-elect Bush’s transition team.

Some Advice Not Wanted

Help from old White House hands, however, hasn’t always beenwelcome.

Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, who worked there during theFord-to-Carter transition and now is Bush’s transition chief,recalls: “The basic attitude is ‘If you’re so smart, how come webeat you? Why do we need to take your advice? You guys lost.“‘

Compiling a kind of Cliff’s Notes for the West Wing is just oneof a host of projects under way in Washington to ease the newpresident’s team into their jobs.

The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning thinktank, has the “Transition to Governing Project” to improve themove from campaigning to governing. The Brookings Institution, aliberal public policy institute, has the “Presidential AppointeeInitiative” aimed at simplifying and streamlining the process -and the blizzard of paperwork—involved in overseeing thousands ofappointments from the Cabinet to the defense secretary’sassistants.

The conservative Heritage Foundation is working on a projectcalled “Mandate for Leadership,” a series of publications andconferences to guide the next administration. And the nonprofitCenter for the Study of the Presidency plans to deliver a report tothe next president with case studies about presidential leadershipstyles.

“Americans deserve a functioning government,” said TerrySullivan, associate director of White House 2001 and professor atthe University of North Carolina. “When presidents come in andstumble and fumble their way through their first three months,Americans are disappointed.”