Bush's first great push was to be filling his cabinet...that took the first 2 months of his administration. Gore's stalling in Florida over the election 2000 consumed half of the customary transition time new Presidents have before the inauguration.
For crying out loud, you make my point. The Clintons were scouring things down to the TRAVEL OFFICE! They asked every US Attorney to resign their office.
The Clintons hit the ground running. The Bush administration got caught sleeping. Distractions are no excuse.
No one was asleep. As the poster took you point by point to illustrate. And I love the fact you classify a terrorist attack and the 2000 election aftermath as a simple "distraction". It shows your mindset quite clearly.
It is absurd to even compare a peaceful transition of power between 41 and Clinton to what accompanied the transition of Clinton to 43.
"Distractions"?
Did you read my post? The "distractions" faced by the Bush team were unprecedented in scope and urgency. Maybe his urgency to keep a major campaign promise to cut taxes, to revamp the economy and head off recession before Congress went on summer break...was a bit indulgent. Maybe he should have been ordering his newly hired Cabinet to immediately fire every political appointee...and writing SOP for who got to check out the keys to the White House tennis court.
Especially 9-11 ...not 8 months after Bush took office....4 months after many of his cabinet were initially installed. One thing you don't have the luxury of doing when war strikes...is to fire and replace your intelligence and foreign policy experts. I guess most people have forgotten how in additon to other "distractions" faced in the first year in office, the Bush team had to avert a feared nuclear war between Pakistan and India, in addition to gearing up for a preemptive war to head off more terror attack on the US mainland.
Granted Clinton's team was ruthless and focused on rooting out "the opposition" (republicans) from his government.....or at least, the co-President Hillary was.
Remember Clinton's first priority and first major action when he took power? Instituting "dont ask, don't tell" in the Les Aspin military. Now there was manly leadership in personnel matters....