BBC BBC.

BBC.

Hello and thank you for downloading witness from the BBC World Service with me,

Rebecca Keesby, and as the United States prepares to inaugurate its 45th

president Donald Trump I've been speaking to the man who rewrote the rules on the

delicate transition period between Presidencies, Senator Ted Kaufman of the Democratic Party.

Going into the West Wing, walking up to the front of it, he just get goose bumps. The history of the place and what the

responsibilities are, it's an incredible feeling having an opportunity to help shape

the United States.

When Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, Ted Kaufman was chief political advisor to his vice president Joe Biden.

Being at the beginning of a new administration is an incredible experience.

In 2008 I was on the transition and like three days after President Obama was elected and Vice President

Biden I got to sit in a room with less than a dozen people and start

to talk about who's going to be Secretary of State, who's going to be Attorney General,

what are the issues that we want to deal with? It was really, I must say, one of the high points of my life was sitting with President Obama and Vice President Biden and a few other people and begin to plan their term.

The peaceful transferral of power is the cornerstone of American democracy,

constitutionally obliged to hold elections on the first Tuesday in November and to swear in the new president on January the 20th

until recently an incoming administration typically had only 70-odd days to prepare to govern and unlike many other countries

it's not just the top jobs that change with a new presidency. We have a gigantic

standing civil service but but the top 2,000 positions in the federal government of the United States are usually replaced by the new president.

It's a little like you're coming into, let's just say a major corporation, General Motors as an example.

You walk in the front door to General Motors as a new CEO.

...