May 11, 2016
WASHINGTON — President Obama has begun preparing for a transition to the next president of the United States — leaving open the possibility that the next president could be a third-party candidate.
May 11, 2016
WASHINGTON — President Obama has begun preparing for a transition to the next president of the United States — leaving open the possibility that the next president could be a third-party candidate.
President Barack Obama walks across the South Lawn before departing the White House on board Marine One on Feb. 26. – Getty Images
In an executive order published in Wednesday's Federal Register, Obama established a White House Transition Coordinating Council. Its job: To help eligible candidates prepare for the presidency even before the November election.
That wording — "eligible candidates" — is a subtle change from the last transition in 2008, when President George W. Bush ordered that the executive branch coordinate their efforts with the "major party" candidates for president.
And it comes as some conservatives are contemplating whether it's possible to mount a third-party campaign to rival the seemingly inevitable Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
But the change is driven less by the state of partisan politics and more by a change in the law. Congress has required the president to get an earlier start on the transition, before it even becomes clear who the candidates will be.
Under the Presidential Transitions Improvement Act, which Obama signed into law in March, the president must establish a transition plan no later than six months before the election and provide services to the transition teams of presidential candidates. Those services are available to both major party candidates and "any other candidate who has been determined by the administrator to be among the principal contenders for the general election to such offices."
The administrator is Denise Turner Roth, the head of the General Services Administration, which coordinates the transition.
Roth has not yet made a decision on whether any third-party candidates would be eligible, and there's little precedent to guide the decision. GSA spokeswoman Ashley Nash-Hahn noted that it's only the second election in which the agency has had to coordinate with candidates before the election.
But Congress did lay out some guidelines for eligibility for transition services, including whether the candidate:
- Meets the constitutional requirements for the office (that is, he or she is at least 35 years old and a natural born citizen),
- Appears on the ballot in enough states to have a chance at receiving a majority of votes in the electoral college,
- Is doing well enough in polls to have "be realistically considered among the principal contenders" for president, and
- Is recognized by other organizations as being among the principal contenders — including whether the Commission on Presidential Debates has included the candidate in debates.
Candidates who meet that threshold — and the nominees of the major parties — are eligible for transition services from the administration. Those include issue briefings, personnel management, and security clearances for top campaign officials who might enter public office after the election. That allows the president-elect's closest advisers to handle top secret information immediately after the election.
"The threshold for a third-party candidate is high," said Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor at Towson University in Maryland and the author of several books and scholarly articles on presidential transitions.
The real reason for the change in the law, she said, was to make the transition planning process more of a permanent part of the executive branch, requiring the administration to plan for a transition regardless of whether the president is running for re-election.
"It’s poor optics to be preparing for your transition out of office, because it leaves the impression that you think your'e going to lose," Kumar said. "So it comes up automatically with each new presidential election."
Courtesy: USA Today
