While Bush's team is one big step closer to the White House, the ruling did little to resolve the state of suspended animation between campaign and transition. Worried about their futures in the administration, they're keeping their heads down. Uncertainty permeates the nascent Bush administration. Publicly, the Bush campaign says it is proceeding with a transition, but this is easier said than done. Thirty more are distracted in Florida, while nearly 250 others sit and wait.
Nobody knows what the future holds, so everybody's reluctant to show initiative.
Even those crucial to a transition have been distracted by the Florida mess. Monday, Bush policy director Josh Bolten, who has a law degree, hopped on a plane to Tallahassee to lend a hand in the legal dispute. Three other policy aides have also become ad-hoc legal advisers. At Bush's makeshift transition headquarters in the Washington suburb of McLean, Va., staffers continued to trickle in Monday, finding rented furniture and still-unoccupied offices. Gerson can collect resumes, but he can't yet offer jobs.