President Clinton's Dysfunctional Transition

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A presidential transition, which includes pre-election planning through a president’s first hundred days, is about building the most institutional capacity with a limited amount of institutional memory. Due to the limit of institutional memory for a new administration, mistakes are bound to be made during the transition. Such mistakes, however, if large enough can lead to a dysfunctional transition. One such mistake could be neglecting to institute a clear chain of command in the president’s White House. I think that a presidential administration can overcome a dysfunctional transition and develop its institutional capacity if a clear chain of command is established through a disciplined White House structure. This strategy is likely to be …show more content…

Clinton’s early hub-of-the-wheel structure was freeform, allowing many different voices from any position to talk to the president, making the president’s decision process long and ineffective (Hess and Pfiffner 2002, 156). Mack McLarty, Clinton’s first chief of staff, was unable to rein in Clinton and implement structure and professionalism in the White House, telling his replacement that he had never seen a chain of command in place (Graham 2017, 4; Hess and Pfiffner 2002, 156). As said by former Chief of Staff Jack Watson Jr., “one of the hardest and most important jobs his White House Chief of Staff has is to protect Mr. Clinton from his own instinct to do too much and sleep too little” (Watson 1993, 431). McLarty’s replacement, Leon Panetta, understood the importance of organization, creating a chain of command and controlling the president’s meetings. Panetta immediately put in place two daily staff meetings and knew what everyone in the White House was doing in order to work with the president and minimize contradictory information (Graham 2017, 4; Thrush, et al 2017). The regular meetings complemented the hierarchical channels of communication, fostering productive discussions about the policy agenda (Cohen 2016, 18). Leon Panetta exhibited his strength in managing the White House staff and making it clear to Clinton that by listening too long to too many voices his decision-making was inefficient and, thus,

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