Before the 1960 election, John F. Kennedy reportedly said, "If I am elected [president], I don’t want to wake up on the morning of November 9 and have to ask myself, 'What in the world do I do now?'" And, before the campaigning ended, he asked Richard Neustadt--the man Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., calls "our most brilliant commentator on the Presidency"--to write a series of memos to plan for the transition into office.

Now, Neustadt’s previously unpublished memos to Kennedy, along with memos for Reagan, Dukakis, Clinton, and future presidents, are collected and presented for the first time in Preparing to Be President: The Memos of Richard E. Neustadt, edited by Charles O. Jones. In this new book, Neustadt--who has been an advisor to presidents, presidents-elect, and presidential candidates for more than fifty years--urges the president who will take office in January 2001 to plan the transition to governing before the campaign ends.

Neustadt’s historically important correspondence provides new information about the workings of several presidential campaigns and how an administration takes shape. Two memos provide advice for Al Gore, Neustadt’s student at Harvard University. Two others discuss the role of Hillary Clinton in the Clinton White House. Other memos include advice on advance planning for a transition, organizing a White House, setting up a national security apparatus, and dealing with emergencies. Neustadt also offers some reflections on how the role of transition adviser has changed over the years and what is relevant for transitions today.

Neustadt reveals how he came to advise presidents-elect and candidates and the thinking behind his recommendations. His first memo was penned to Sen. John F. Kennedy on September 15, 1960. It began a lively correspondence by memo and many conversations with Kennedy over the next four months. Twenty years later, Neustadt was summoned to help a Republican president-elect, Ronald Reagan, prepare for his new responsibility. In a memorandum for the Reagan team, Neustadt recounts White House vignettes from FDR through Jimmy Carter; the interplay of personalities in the Kennedy Cabinet, notably the assertive McNamara and the reticent Rusk; the role of the national security adviser; and the necessary connection between domestic politics and foreign policy.

Richard Neustadt is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government Emeritus at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is the author of Presidential Power, an influential bestseller and required reading for a generation of political scientists and their students. Charles O. Jones, who edited the volume, is the Hawkins Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Preparing to Be President is published by the AEI and the Brookings Institution presses. It is the product of the Transition to Governing Project (www.aei.org/governing), an AEI project in conjunction with the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Norman J. Ornstein of AEI and Thomas Mann of Brookings direct the project.