Now Andy Card is the designated chief of staff for the younger Bush, if and when W finally takes power. Bush spent much of the tense weeks since Election Day conferring with Card and others at his Crawford ranch, pausing to walk his springer spaniel, Spot, and dashing back to Austin last weekend for crab cakes and green beans at a soiree for his friends. But even as he waited for the Florida drama to play itself out, his shadow administration was taking shape. Bush II would be the nexus of three worlds. The West Wing offices closest to Bush would probably house the Texans he’s used to having around. Old Bushies who served his dad would mostly run the foreign-policy team; among the visitors to the ranch last week were Colin Powell, the presumptive secretary of State. And key domestic cabinet jobs would go to W’s governor buddies. Dick Cheney would help set the agenda. Bush’s job? To woo Congress, make the key decisions and use his celebrated skills as a “uniter” to keep his different sets of friends from throttling each other.
Of course, the Bushmen don’t have the keys to Clinton’s castle yet. But after eight years in exile, they’ve assembled outside, waiting for the drawbridge to drop. The Clinton administration denied them the federal office space set aside for the transition; stacks of house-hunting guides and neighborhood maps were sitting untouched in the waiting room. So while Al Gore plotted his own transition from his White House office and his residence, Cheney used private donations to rent a drab Soviet-style brick building across the river in Virginia for the GOP’s government-in-waiting. He pointedly faced reporters from behind a lectern labeled BUSH-CHENEY transition. Gone was the Candidate Cheney who often seemed tentative or ornery on the stump. This was Cheney in his element, forthright and commanding as he put his troops on the ground, despite having suffered a minor heart attack the week before.
It helped that Cheney served in three previous administrations, and Card has overseen two transitions himself. They won’t need those maps. Still, the delay in starting a formal transition means that the Bush team would be way behind in tackling the mountains of antiquated paperwork necessary to fill some 3,000 federal jobs. Both campaigns spent months clandestinely planning transitions, from hiring staff to choosing a long-distance company. But handing over the White House isn’t like a real-estate closing, where the two sides sign a paper and walk away. Mark Gearan, one of Clinton’s transition leaders in 1992, recalls standing outside the White House, stunned, after his first day of endless and confusing briefings from the Bush team. “We’ve reconsidered,” he joked to Bush’s counsel, C. Boyden Gray. “You can have it.”
Now Bush’s crowd can’t wait to take it back. Bush himself was trying not to seem presumptuous last week, holding low-key meetings with Powell and the GOP’s congressional leaders at his Crawford ranch. Behind the scenes, Card started briefing him on the ways of the federal government. Less well known than Cheney, Card started working for the elder Bush in his 1980 campaign, driving the candidate around New England in his rusted-out Chevette. (Frugality is one of his hallmarks.) During the 1988 campaign, Card was the one who urged the Bush campaign to go after its opponent, Dukakis, on the pollution in Boston Harbor–a blow that badly damaged Dukakis on his own turf. Card is mild, but not weak. As Bush’s deputy chief of staff (and later Transportation secretary), it fell to Card–and not his snarling boss, John Sununu–to fire most of Reagan’s appointees. He did it with customary steeliness, confiscating their pass cards on the spot. Card sometimes drew sharp rebukes from Bush for speaking his mind, but the boss would later thank him for the honesty.
To his credit, George W, who met Card during those years, seems to want the same kind of independent thought in his own White House. He tapped Card to choreograph the GOP convention last August. Thrilled with the seamlessness of it all, Bush told Card, in his Texas way, to “keep your dance card open.” Now he and Card are sorting through some of the tough choices Bush will have to make if he wins. Bush would almost certainly surround himself in the West Wing with his administrative aide in Austin, Clay Johnson, and at least a few of the campaign advisers who make up his “Iron Triangle”: Karl Rove, Joe Allbaugh and Karen Hughes. His tutor Condi Rice is considered the likely national-security adviser. That means the two top foreign-policy jobs could be held by African-Americans–remarkable for a Republican who drew roughly 9 percent of the black vote.
Among the names being floated for attorney general are two fellow governors: Oklahoma’s Frank Keating and Montana’s Marc Racicot, who has emerged as Bush’s point man on the Florida recount. Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith is the odds-on favorite for HUD. Bush has strongly hinted that he wants some Democrats around, too, but as of last week he hadn’t offered any jobs. By bringing in friends from his different orbits, Bush seems to be signaling that he will mix his father’s approach with some of his own, more Clintonian experience in Austin. He’ll retain the best of the old Bushies–the foreign-policy team–while tapping his fellow governors to work on domestic problems like law enforcement and housing.
Bush wasn’t the only one planning a kind of ghost transition. Gore met with longtime aide Roy Neel and a group of other advisers several times last week, at his residence and in the White House, to begin knocking around names. “Gore’s got a lot of it in his head and his Palm Pilot,” says his spokesman, Mark Fabiani. Should they overturn the Florida vote, Gore’s team is planning a subdued Inaugural, in part because of the nation’s divided mood. Gore can afford some delay. Bush, on the other hand, has problems that a sitting vice president doesn’t. Virtually every political job in Washington is filled by a Democrat, and here’s the irony: because of a new law enacted by Republicans to keep Clinton from circumventing Congress, Bush can’t appoint anyone to serve as an acting director if he wants to keep that person on permanently. That means that if he does win, he’ll have to leave Clinton appointees in place until his own people are ready to serve. Andy Card and the Bushmen were on hand to usher in the Clinton era eight years ago. Victorious or not, it’ll take longer than they thought to end it.
