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Presidential transition of Richard Nixon

Transfer of presidential power from Lyndon B. Johnson to Richard Nixon

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Preparations for a transition were begun by the administration of outgoing president Lyndon B. Johnson many months before the election. Planning for a potential transition into the presidency was also begun by then-candidate Nixon in the months ahead of his election. Nixon's pre-election and post-election transition efforts were headed by Franklin B. Lincoln Jr., and Johnson's were headed by Charles S. Murphy.

At the time of the transition, the United States was engaged in the ongoing Vietnam War, and peace talks with North Vietnam were ongoing.

Pre-election developments

A presidential transition was guaranteed to occur in 1968 after incumbent president Lyndon B. Johnson announced on March 31, 1968 that he had decided against seeking reelection. In November 1968, the Associated Press observed that more advance planning had been taken for the 1968-69 presidential transition than any previous transition.

Johnson made it known early into the presidential campaign series that he would actively make information on national interests available to the candidates, telling the press that he would provide them with intelligence briefings on the state of international affairs. Such intelligence briefings had some precedent, with candidates secretly receiving briefings amid World War II. Additionally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, during the 1960 presidential election had publicly committed to provide some briefings to candidates. On May 15, Johnson had the under secretary of state begin providing State Department, Pentagon, and CIA briefings to all of the major candidates for the presidency.

Johnson began planning for a presidential transition in the summer of 1968. He produced a number of briefing books for the next presidential administration. On July 26, he invited likely Republican Party nominee Nixon and American Independent Party nominee George Wallace to the White House for personal consultations (the Democratic Party nominee was not yet decided). This was the first time that a president had held such meetings with opposition party candidates. During the 1952 presidential election, Democratic president Harry S. Truman had invited Republican nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower to such a meeting with him, but Eisenhower declined his invitation.

Transition planning began at agencies ahead of the election. For instance, the Bureau of the Budget had instructed vision heads in the spring of 1968 to begin collecting material that could be helpful to advise the president-elect during their transition.

In September, after all the major nominees were decided (following Hubert Humphrey winning the Democratic Party nomination at the Democratic National Convention, and Nixon being formally nominated at the Republican National Convention), Johnson appointed Charles S. Murphy as his transition officer, putting him in charge of heading his administration's role in the pending transition. He would be a liaison to representatives of the election's three major presidential candidates (Humphrey, Nixon, and Wallace) in planning for their prospective transitions. Johnson also, at the same time, invited all three major candidates to appoint representatives to consult with his presidential administration in regards to transition planning.

Johnson set aside, furnished, and equipped 50 rooms of office space in two executive office buildings near the White House to be made available after the election to the victor's transition team.

Johnson also directed department and agency heads to assign a senior official to develop transition plans fit to the needs of their department or agency. He also tasked each department and agency with the task of preparing briefing books that would be useful for incoming officials, and to later brief the incoming management of their department of agency during the transition,. During the official transition, as appointees were made, the prepared briefing books would be provided to them by their outgoing counterparts at their first meetings.

Johnson, while wanting his vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, to win the election, expressed to confidants his desire to have a warm relationship and transition with Nixon if he were to win.

Nixon's own transition planning began weeks prior to the election. Franklin B. Lincoln Jr. headed this effort. The Nixon transition planning effort had a component that consisted of task forces that would create new ideas and insights to shape policies and programs of Nixon's administration. This effort had begun as soon as Nixon was nominated for president by the Republican Party. There were 21 task forces, and this whole effort was overseen by Paul McCracken. Lincoln would, during the official transition, confirm that he had begun talking with Charles S. Murphy about coordinating the transition with the Johnson administration three weeks prior to the election. Additionally, in the last weeks before the election, Nixon and his campaign's chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, began looking at White House structures and procedures, with Haldeman reading several books on the operations of White House staffs. During the pre-election planning, businessman Ross Perot made several researchers available to Nixon. Nixon also had a personnel-focused component of his transition preparations. Nixon and Haldeman also consulted with those well-versed on inner workings of White House staffs, such as Andrew Goodpaster and Bryce Harlow. They also consulted with a study group at the Harvard Institute of Politics headed by Franklin Lindsay which was analyzing presidential transitions. In October, the media reported that a Nixon aide had been, since May, conducting interviews with hundreds of businessmen, labor leaders, non-governmental experts, and professors since May for the ostensible purposes of finding policy ideas, but with the implicit purpose of scouting potential administration appointees. Nixon's pre-election transition preparations were made more public than those of Hubert Humphrey.

Johnson, throughout the campaign, continued to provide the three major candidates with briefings, and Johnson personally remained in touch with each of the three candidates. When, in the closing week of the election campaign, Johnson decided to cease the bombing of North Vietnam in order to facilitate serious forthcoming peace negotiations in Paris, he informed all three candidates on a conference call.

Two weeks before the election, Director of the Bureau of the Budget Charles Zwick sent a memorandum to all department heads urging them to be, "considerate of possible needs of the incoming administration, leaving to them decisions on moves, purchases, and other actions that can be delayed, so that such action can be tailored as closely as possible to the new administration's policies and programs."

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