Trump’s Transition in a ‘Long History’ of Rocky Presidential Handovers

... Mr. Trump is hardly the first president-elect to preside over a disorderly takeover.

The 1988 transition from Ronald Reagan to George Bush was particularly nasty, because many Reagan administration aides assumed — wrongly, as it turned out — that they would be in line to keep their jobs in a government that remained in Republican hands.

Bill Clinton’s transition in 1992 was marred by a staff shake-up that upended a carefully planned process: Mr. Clinton replaced his transition chief, Mickey Kantor, who had been Mr. Clinton’s campaign chairman, with Warren Christopher, who would become secretary of state. It was also hobbled by Mr. Clinton’s campaign promise to slash White House staff by 25 percent, which made it more difficult to manage the government.

And even in the 2008-9 transition from George W. Bush to Mr. Obama that members of both parties consider a model of efficiency, Mr. Obama had to replace his head of personnel several times.

“There is a long history of unfortunate transition activity,” said Max Stier, the president and chief executive of the Center for Presidential Transition, a project run by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.