Richard V. Allen Team Quotations

Naming a transition team varies with the intentions of the candidate; some candidates have been careful to name a transition team as much as a year in advance.

Jimmy Carter began his planning in the early summer of 1976, Ronald Reagan a year prior. The Clinton Administration, elected in 1992, lingered in naming its team, and as a result, took almost a year to staff its ranks.

A skilled Transition Team leader will set the general goals for a Transition, and then confer on the other team leaders working with him the power to implement those goals.

Unlike the Reagan and Bush Administrations, with but one exception, the Clinton administration failed to reach out to Republicans in creating a new team, and eventually paid a political price.

The Leader will be a person with the management skills to coordinate the activities of the Team, and to assure that the Team remains faithful to the objectives of the incoming President.

The 'transition' involves the transfer of power from one president to another. In recent times, the incoming President has designated a Director of the Transition, a team leader, to oversee and administer the orderly transfer of power.

Temporary teams of trusted people are generally sent to all Departments and to major agencies of government to assist in planning and to acquaint the incoming administration with the civil servants and bureaucracy that will remain in place in the new Administration.