WASHINGTON — Even as they plot their paths to victory, Barack Obama and John McCain are thinking past election day, enlisting advisors to quietly vet potential Cabinet secretaries, devise a governing strategy and assemble the rudiments of a new White House.
Preparing for the presidency is something the two campaigns are loath to talk about. Neither wants to appear presumptuous to voters who won't pick a winner for two weeks. But with the economy teetering and the nation at war, both sides are planning for a transition that students of the presidency say is the most consequential since 1861, on the eve of the Civil War.
"I don't mean to be hysterical, but this is the toughest transition faced by any president since [Abraham] Lincoln," said Paul Light, a professor at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service. "There is very little wiggle room. There's the fiscal crisis, we are in a couple of wars and there is international tension."
Of the two candidates, Obama's preparations to take over Jan. 20 are further along. People close to him say that a kind of Democratic government-in-exile is laying detailed plans to smoothly take control should he prevail.
McCain aides, echoing the candidate's criticism that Obama is already "measuring the drapes" in the Oval Office, said Obama's transition work is a sign of overconfidence. Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, said the Illinois senator was making a "public splash" by planning for a future administration.
"It's not in the nature of John McCain to tempt fate," he said.
The Arizona senator's effort is headed by John F. Lehman Jr., a Navy secretary under President Reagan. William Timmons Sr., a prominent Washington lobbyist who helped plan Reagan's and President Bush's transitions, sent material about the mechanics of presidential transitions to the McCain campaign a month ago.
In an odd political twist, the Obama operation is dominated by alumni of the Clinton political machine, some of whom worked for Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic primaries.
John Podesta, a chief of staff under President Clinton, has spent much of the election year helping 50 experienced Washington hands -- including a couple of Republicans -- compile a comprehensive transition blueprint, one that most thought would be used by Hillary Clinton.
