I had a bird’s eye view because the Treasury secretary, Nicholas Brady, was a close friend of Bush who was appointed to his position by Reagan in 1988. It was widely assumed that he had been appointed at Bush’s behest. In any case, Brady was asked to stay on by Bush and remained secretary of the Treasury for the next four years.

As a consequence, Treasury was spared the transition that occurred in every other department. Typically, when there is a change in party the incoming administration has task forces of experts who go into the departments to meet with senior officials and career staff to get a head’s up on what is going on, find out how the place operates on a day-to-day basis, who does what, what issues are in the pipeline and so on. It is common for those serving on transition teams to scout out jobs for themselves in the process.

Bush seldom had people ready to go to fill the vacancies he created by kicking the Reagan people out all at once on the first day of his administration—there were 3,000 to 4,000 slots to fill. It made it harder to hit the ground running and get traction on his own agenda. Another problem is that many of the people Bush wanted took a long time to get their nominations sent to the Senate and get confirmed. Although cabinet secretaries were confirmed quickly, many sub-cabinet officials waited months for confirmation, during which time career bureaucrats ran the show. Also, it was my observation that many positions remained vacant for far longer, with no evidence that anyone was poised to fill them.

And the outgoing Reagan people who were being forced out had no incentive to do any favors for their replacements, like advising them about who among the career staff were worth paying attention to and which should be avoided. Having an inexperienced new appointee made it easier for the career staff to pursue their own agenda, sometimes at the expense of the president.

Another problem is that many of the Bush appointees weren’t very good. Their principal claim to a job often seemed to have been some personal connection to Bush, perhaps dating back to his 1980 run for the GOP nomination against Reagan. Their technical qualifications for the job were sometimes tenuous. I remember looking into one of the Bush people who came to Treasury. As far as I could tell, her only qualification for the job was that her mother had gone to college with Barbara Bush.

As it turned out, almost all of the political appointees at Treasury moved on within a few months after the Bush administration took office and their positions were filled with Bush appointees. I was one of the few who stayed. I always suspected that every once in a while the Bush people needed to know what the Reagan people were thinking and that was my job.

I have no doubt that the same thing would have happened throughout the government had Bush simply kept on all of the Reagan people. He could have let it be known that it would be appreciated if they moved on sooner rather than later or as soon as their replacement was confirmed. In the meantime, he would have had people in place who were eager to please their new bosses in hopes of staying on or moving up.