As a former President of the Consortium of Social ScienceAssociations (COSSA), I am very pleased to be a featured speaker onthe contributions of social and behavioral research to public policyand to help celebrate the Consortium's twentieth anniversary. In mytalk this afternoon, I want to address the important issue ofexpanding the domain of policy-relevant scholarship in the socialsciences.

The White House 2001 Project includes two programs designed to easethe entry into office of new administration members. The two are theWhite House Interview Program (WHIP) and Nomination FormsOnline (NFO).

White House transitions and operations are the focus of ourtransition preparation program because of the central position ofstaff in governing. A year prior to coming onto the presidentialticket with Governor Bush, Richard Cheney spoke of the criticalimportance of the White House staff to whatever it is a presidentdoes: “It's crucial in terms of how he's going to function aspresident, whether or not he's effective. His reach, his ability tosort of guide and direct the government, to interact with thecabinet, to deal effectively with the Congress, to manage hisrelationship with the press, all of those are key ingredients to hissuccess.” It is the White House staff that on a daily basis managesthose crucial relationships.

That the White House had no institutional memory—the problemprompting the White House Interview Program (WHIP)—represents justone area in which the White House 2001 Project affected thepresidential transition. In appointments, the Pew Charitable Trustsidentified a second transition problem. In 1996, the TwentiethCentury Fund produced a blue-ribbon study outlining several issuesundermining the appeal of government appointment. The study,entitled Obstacle Course: The Report of the TwentiethCentury Task Force on Presidential Appointment Process,convinced Pew to focus on the recruitment of presidential nominees.As part of that initiative, they contemplated a computer programthat would reduce the burden placed on nominees by filing numerous,intrusive, and repetitive questionnaires.

Attracting the most talented citizens to public service has been achallenge for America's leaders since the inception of our nation.Thomas Jefferson expressed concerns about finding honest and capablepublic servants for his administration, pledging “to seek out thebest through the whole Union.” No executive duty “excites moreanxious concern…” Jefferson wrote. “No duty, at the same time, ismore difficult to fulfill.”

Our Transition to Governing Project is dedicated to understanding andimproving the transition from campaigning to governing. Started in1998, the project is an American Enterprise Institute project inconjunction with the Brookings Institution and the HooverInstitution funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Norman Ornstein,AEI, and Thomas Mann, Brookings, are codirectors, and John Fortier,AEI, manages the effort. The project has addressed the transition inthree broad areas: (1) facilitation of the transition of a newadministration into office; (2) scholarly analysis of the blurringof the lines between campaigning and governing, sometimes referredto as the “permanent campaign”; (3) improvement of the quality ofthe presidential campaign by focusing media attention on thegoverning qualities of the candidates.

At one level, George W. Bush's transition to the presidency wasunique and without much precedent as a guide. Unlike the situationfacing his predecessors, Bush's “official” postelection transitiondid not begin until December 14, the day after Al Gore's concessionspeech. Roughly half the time of a “normal” transition had been lostas the controversy over the Florida vote dragged on.

It was to be the single most visible decision of George W. Bush'sfirst year in office, inspiring even a rare prime-time televisedaddress to announce and explain to the American people his decisionon government support for stem cell research. For weeks, the WhiteHouse press office told of the President's wide-ranging search foradvice: the meetings with ethicists and scientists, with interestgroup representatives, and with dozens of ordinary citizens.

Nothing challenges a new President's team more than its need to fillout the executive. The White House 2001 Project played a significantrole in this aspect of the presidential transition. Its White HouseInterview Program provided useful information gleaned from therarified ranks of White House personnel, and its NominationForms Online Program detailed for the first time theexact particulars of the inquiry process. Already well under way bythe time the Bush team began planning in 1999, the White House 2001Project provided the Bush staff with details about two of the fivegreat transition challenges affecting personnel: scale andcomplexity.

When terrorists struck on September 11, 2001, President Bush'sresponses would develop from information and decision-makingchannels established well before he entered the White House.Organizational work during the transition and people he brought intohis administration shaped the structure he needed to respond. Whiletransitions color the start of an administration and its goodwill,they are even more significant for how the administrationoperates.

The early months of a new presidency represent the most importantperiod for establishing the tone and character of the White House'srelationship with Congress. It is the time of closest scrutiny andthe greatest vulnerability to making major mistakes. Taking theright steps early and avoiding errors can lay the foundation for aproductive working relationship. Actions taken early create lastingimpressions.

Even before the 36-day fandango following the election, George W.Bush and his team focused both on the presidential transition andthe initial days of the presidency. Bush and chief political adviserKarl Rove had read history, examining how previous presidents hadhandled their initial phases in transition and in office; early on,Rove cautioned reporters and analysts to watch not the first 100days but the first 180 days for an early measure of the president'scapacity and success.

The circumstances of the 2000–2001 presidential transition will neverbe repeated, or at least I hope not for the sake of all concerned.Nevertheless, what we planned and what actually happened are highlyrelevant to future transition efforts. Most observers agree that theBush-Cheney Administration got off to a strong start in large partbecause it made good use of the time available to it during theabbreviated transition period. Understanding this may help futurepresidents-elect plan their own transitions.

They called me Sisyphus at the White House. While bearing noresemblance to the Greek king of Corinth who rolled boulders up amountain in Hades, I pushed nominees up Capitol Hill, helping themwin Senate confirmation. And like Sisyphus, my work often camecascading back over me, in the form of delayed hearings, stallednominees and requests for additional information from Congress.

Although political campaigns have long been thought to haverelatively minimal effects, recent literature suggests a moredefinitive role for campaigns in determining election outcomes. Thisarticles contributes to this growing body of research by focusing ona campaign that is widely viewed (albeit in the absence of muchempirical analysis) as having been decisive—the presidentialcampaign of 1948.

With the 2000 census showing very large increases in Latino urbanpopulations, the issues of minority incorporation and interracialcoalition are becoming more complicated than politics in black andwhite. Will Latino participation resemble the patterns of AfricanAmericans, in which minority mobilization relied in part on thesupport of ideological liberals? Or will the path taken by Latinosbe qualitatively different from that of African Americans?

Although “the ties between women's rights movements and nonviolencehave been deep and enduring,” women's movements are not the onlymovements to rely upon nonviolent collective action. The Indiannationalist movement with Gandhi innovated with passive resistance;the U.S. black civil rights movement employed nonviolent civildisobedience as its major collective action; and peace andenvironmental movements in the 1980s and 1990s have employednonviolent tactics. The ties between women's movements andnonviolence, however, are notable insofar as nonviolent tacticspredominate in the collective action repertoires of women'smovements (Rucht forthcoming). Because nonviolent tactics prevail,they are more visibly connected to those movements.

There is still a controversy over adjusting the census because thestatistical adjustment of the census did not work in 1990, nor didit work in 2000. The adjustment process, in both theory andpractice, is complicated and flawed. The chance of it working infuture censuses without major changes is small. Anderson andFienberg continue to twist language and report partial results inorder to confuse the debate.

We appear to agree with Brunell on four factual matters:

1. “Census 2000 is over; thedebate over adjusting the census isnot”.

2. The computer coding errorin 1990 would not have erroneously shifted anycongressional seats has adjusted data been used forreapportionment.

3. In March2001, the Census Bureau announced that it was “unable toconclude … that the adjusted Census 2000 data are moreaccurate forredistricting.”

4. The CensusBureau has refused to release the adjusted 2000 censusdata.

Otherwise we find Brunell's arguments against census adjustmenteither distorted or confused.