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Making Sense Of White House Transitions

washington.org

President-elect Donald Trump will have to fill 4,000 federal positions. The process can take up to a year. Planning the transition into the White House begins in May or June of an election year. With around 1,000 appointments requiring the approval of the Senate, the Trump White House might not be complete for weeks after Inauguration.

If certain cabinet appointments, such as picking Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary, seem at odds with Trump’s earlier message of economic populism, Dr. Lauren Wright, a White House expert, said that is due to an inevitable post-Inauguration tone shift.

“There is a tone shift because now your team is responsible for putting policy into place. That could not be more serious,” Wright said. “The minute after the Inauguration ceremony takes place, it really hits the President that they have to do these things that their team has been planning for months. Reality hits and the tone changes. These processes continue to formalize.”

Another factor in some appointments or considerations for appointments is the salving of post-election wounds. Critic and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is reportedly on a short-list for a job as Secretary of State in the Trump White House. Wright said that, in reality, much of Trump’s cabinet may have already been decided.

“Some of these selections may have actually been made already but only a certain number have been announced. There is the public process we see taking place—and Trump has kind of created his own version of The Apprentice with, ‘these are my four finalists and I’m down to two and aren’t these people great,’—but there’s also an internal process taking place of vetting,” she said. “You’ll see a lot of different stories circulated and some of them will be true and some of them won’t be.”

In 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the Pre-election Presidential Transition Act, which allocates resources to ease in the incoming administration.