The Executive Branch - 20 November 1992

We're now well launched on the transition – an interesting word, everybody who speaks English knows what it means, its the process of going from here to there, but like many another ordinary English word it has a deceptively special meaning in American politics. How about senatorial courtesy, which is not primarily about courtesy; interstate commerce, a phrase and a doctrine that calls up memories of tremendous fights between president and Congress and the Supreme Court battles long ago.

However, the transition we're talking about is the process of transferring power from one president to an incoming president of an opposition party. It may sound a little pedantic that but you can't say from one government to another because the whole non-partisan side of government, civil services, the quangos, the commissions remain. And in the Congress there's no transfer of power, something easy to overlook if you live in a parliamentary system. The new Senate has emerged from the polls with exactly the old balance Democrats 57 seats, Republicans 42, one to go to be certain about. The Democrats are a touch disappointed they'd hoped to win three more seats and have a total of 60.

By its own rules, the Senate requires 60 votes to override a filibuster – a notorious American institution disposed of in a Parliament by the Speaker telling a gabby orator to stop persisting in irrelevance, but the filibuster is an ancient device in the Senate and has been one of the most powerful and effective weapons of not the opposition party necessarily, but of any group of senators that rallies in opposition to a bill they find obnoxious. The rules allow them to talk in succession for as long as they have breath and eventually make the bill sponsors cry help and withdraw it.

And there's no need to talk on the subject in a famous filibuster, the Louisiana demagogue Huey Long once spoke for 15 hours much of the time reciting his mothers and other wonderful Louisiana recipes for such niceties as crab gumbo, Johnny cake, chicken jambalaya and Creole devilled oysters. I believe the record is still that of Senator Strom Thurmond, a Democrat who left the Party and became a Republican in order to fight integration and the rights of the blacks. When his old party introduced a Civil Rights Bill in 1957, he talked without stop for just over 24 hours; he'll be 90 next month and is still going – I won't say strong, but up there in the Senate usually in attendance and still going frail, but incidentally strong for integration. Some of his best friends are blacks.

In the House, the Democrats were mighty pleased, you may remember what a hullabaloo there was throughout the summer and fall about a nationwide revolt against incumbent congressmen. Never, said the pundits, had so many Americans wanted to throw the bums out, never before had several states, 14 in all, put on their ballots of proposition to limit the terms of a congressman/congressperson – and they all won.

Now the present system is that the congressman/congressperson's term is for two years, but they can go on and on. And indeed, one of the chronic complaints of the Republicans and it was said of the people was that once a man gets into the house it's almost impossible to unseat him next time round. That's true and why? Because the House is essentially the body that deals with money, bills with who gets what and how much, the very beef essence of government, surely. And congressmen because they're there for only two years really don't spend sleepless nights thinking about foreign policy or the national interest, senators can indulge that luxury since their there for six years on end, so the congressmen gets busy at once being re-elected by passing on to his constituents a juicy loin of pork. Pork – local favours, local projects, the things, the, the roads, the hospitals, the school bond issues that you want to see happening in your neighbourhood, your constituency and the longer you stay or keep coming back to Washington, obviously the more connections you make so there really is no mystery about the fact that year after year or every two years over 90% of sitting congressmen are re-elected. This time it was 93%.

So, what happened this time in the face of the public's righteous whirlwind, throw the bums out, pluck out corruption, send in the new men, the new brooms. Well, in the dying Congress, the Democrats had 268 seats against the Republicans 167 an impressive majority. In the new Congress, the Democrats will have 259 they lost only nine seats they are well content, they approve of the people's indignation against that banking scandal and creeping corruption in general. Next year, they will be pure.

So we ought first to note that while everybody is getting excited and lyrical about the great changeover and the end of the old order, we ought to note that the two Houses of Congress stand in weight of prejudice and relative party strength just about where they've stood for the past 60 years, the Democrats massively in control. The cheerful difference they're promising so far as the presidency is concerned is that since Mr Clinton is of their majority party, he's of a like mind and will put up bills they can pass, and as for the bills they want he's pretty certain not to veto many. Mr Bush set up a record of presidential vetoes. With that note of warning against rash expectations out of the way, let's look at the transition, the business of changing the guard, transferring power in the executive branch the presidency from one man to another.

Every four years, the first thing that strikes me and this is surely due to the prejudice of having been born in England, is that in London, the transition takes roughly eight hours – as long as it takes a moving van to lift the incoming PMs goods and chattels from his/her house to 10 Downing Street. On the other hand, the brisk no-nonsense hustling Americans take just under three months. How – many may gasp – come? Well, it's one question that has an undisputed answer, in a parliament, the chief executive is a creature of the legislature, he lives there, he has his being there. In the Federal system, the executive, the president is the enemy and he may walk into the legislature only by invitation. The prime minster picks his cabinet from the men who sit and argue daily at his elbow from other members of parliament. Of course, where else would he choose them? The transition from the out to the in party is swiftly merely a matter of shifting material possessions because in a parliamentary system the cabinet is already in place, the blessedly useful institution of the shadow cabinet, and ready to spring into action tomorrow.

In America since the executive is a wholly separate branch of government, its head is certainly not going to go to the Congress, the enemy to pick his cabinet, he goes immemorially to his buddies, old cronies most of the time, sometimes and rarely to a distinguished man he's heard about, admired, thinks might be just right. John Kennedy had never met Dean Rusk until he called him and asked him to be secretary of state. So a president has complete freedom to choose his cabinet not bound by any partisan ties like serving in the same Congress.

I'm trying to think if this has ever happened, I mean choosing an ex-congressman or senator. I'm sure it's happened maybe once, but overwhelmingly and all the time you go to old friends and new advisors. Old pals for the staff jobs with Kennedy, old Boston campaign workers that we called the Irish Mafia and for the top jobs men and women more or less distinguished in public life who are of your party and that you know well, not always of your party. Franklin Roosevelt had a Republican as secretary of war during the Second World War. And Clinton has hinted he won't hesitate to recruit any able moderate Republican who thinks along the same lines on some vital issue. But the main point is the cabinet and about another 10 or more high posts, head of the CIA, the FBI, national security advisor will all be un-elected people. Think of some of the great names who've conducted a president's policy – Acheson, General Marshall, Dulles, Kissinger, Rusk, Haig, Shultz, Weinberger, none of them so far as I know was ever elected to anything in his life.

When you think it over, this is a curious and curiously ironic feature of a system that makes such a to do about its uniquely democratic character a system in which the most powerful single branch to do the day to day governing blithely ignores a democratic method, so you're going to hear lots of new names and they will be the ones running the country, they think. When they first arrive in the White House to become secretary of state, agriculture whatever, they feel very proud and grand and important. The first thing they learn is the first thing a president has to learn, he must waste no time getting to know and consult the leaders of the opposition in the Congress, there are going to be weekly meetings at which the president will sit side by side with the elected dogs of war, the opposition so to speak. That sounds reasonable, it does if you think the first thing Mr Major did when he came in was to beg Mr Kinnock and Mr Smith to go to Downing Street and get used to having a weekly breakfast there.

Beyond the cabinet and the close aids, the president has enormous patronage to confer. In the next year or two, he's almost certainly going to have to appoint about 100 federal judges and his largest is patronage extends down through thousands of federal jobs down to the humblest postmaster. Do you wonder that Mr Clinton's transition team is 600 strong?

By the way there's a story about an English transition, which is old and ripe enough now to be told in public. Suddenly, Churchill has returned for his second administration and he wanted of course to move his things into 10 Downing Street next morning, but when he went there to hold his first cabinet meeting, the lobby and the vestibule and the landings were cluttered with the packed belongings of the outgoing PM Clement Attlee who had begged 24 hours grace, he had an appalling case of tinea pedis, commonly known as athlete's foot. Churchill was not in the best of tempers, he held a meeting and when it was all over his secretary greeted him as he left the cabinet room "Everything go smoothly sir?" he asked. "Smoothly" growled Churchill, "Cl...Clements feet have thrown the whole parliamentary system in to a state of abeyance."

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