ASHINGTON - The Bush campaign publicly began preparing for a transition to power yesterday, a tricky enterprise under any circumstances and one imperiled now by the question of who can lay legitimate claim to the White House.
In Austin, Texas, Bush aides said Dick Cheney, the GOP vice presidential candidate, would head Governor George W. Bush's transition team, and Andrew Card, the former US secretary of transportation and Massachusetts state representative who met with Bush yesterday, probably would be chosen as his chief of staff.
''The process ought to move forward,'' said Karl Rove, Bush's top strategist. ''We cannot stop and wait until the last ballot struggles in.''
But because the election was so close, many are speculating that the only way Bush or Al Gore can breach the partisan divide and unify the nation would be to offer Cabinet posts to members of the other party.
''George W. Bush has a proven track record of bipartisanship, unlike Gore,'' said Richard Bond, who headed the Republican Party during Bush's father's presidency. ''I could easily see him being bipartisan in every way, including having a Democrat in his Cabinet.''
Bond said he would not be surprised, for example, if Bush made an offer of a Cabinet position to Senator John Breaux, the Louisiana Democrat who headed a bipartisan commission on Medicare.
Top campaign aides to Gore said they had privately discussed the possibility of including a number of Republicans in a Gore Cabinet in the event that Gore did not win both the popular and Electoral College vote.
The proposal was not formally presented to Gore, according to a senior staffer.
There is precedent: After John F. Kennedy won a narrow victory over Richard Nixon in 1960, he named Douglas Dillon, a Republican who had served in the Eisenhower administration, as his treasury secretary. In 1968, President-elect Nixon wanted to bring a Democrat into his Cabinet, but Washington Senator Henry ''Scoop'' Jackson refused to join the GOP administration.
President Clinton, more as a gesture of political diversity than in the spirit of national unity, appointed Senator William Cohen, a Maine Republican, as his secretary of defense at the start of his second term.
Richard Neustadt, a Harvard University historian and former White House adviser, said the extraordinary circumstances of a delayed transition, a deeply divided electorate, and a new House and Senate split almost down the middle should propel the president-elect to make bipartisan appointments. The problem, Neustadt said, is that it is easier said than done.
''It's a toughy - what Democrat can a Republican appoint at Treasury and make Wall Street happy? Without a dangerous foreign situation demanding bipartisanship, would a Democratic president even consider giving State or Defense to a Republican?'' Neustadt asked.
In 1974, after Nixon resigned, the first piece of advice that House Speaker Thomas ''Tip'' O'Neill offered the new president, Gerald Ford, was to not choose a Democrat as his vice president.
''It's a nice sentiment,'' O'Neill said, ''But we both know the country doesn't work that way.''
Neustadt said it will be essential for the president-elect to project to the country the image of a unifier and assume ''the posture of a president of all the people.'' That could be easier for Bush, Neustadt said, because he campaigned on his skills at bipartisanship.
''Still, it will be delicate, and if either side loses its temper or really starts politicizing this thing in the next few days, it's going to be harder for the president to take office and take the stance that the circumstances require,'' Neustadt said.
Because Tuesday's results are so unsettled and unsettling to the nation, said political scientist Charles O. Jones, it is crucial for both candidates to set a tone that is conciliatory and publicly pledge to sit down with congressional leaders to set a bipartisan agenda.
''Failing that, the space will be filled up with very dire predictions about deadlocks and gridlock,'' said Jones, a retired University of Wisconsin professor. ''If they can't change the mood now, tensions will escalate, and the air will be poisoned and have a terrible effect on the country.''
Chase Untermeyer, a friend of the Bush family and a transition adviser to both President Bush and George W. Bush, said he would expect Bush to work harder at friendly relations with a divided Congress than at forming a unity government.
''America doesn't much go for appointing people of the other party,'' Untermeyer said, ''and when it does, it is a very extreme exception to the rule.''
Untermeyer said that given the short duration of most presidential transitions, about 10 weeks, he would advise Bush, in case he wins, to begin working on senior staff appointments and then his Cabinet. ''As a veteran of transitions, I can say that every day is precious,'' Untermeyer said.
Still, until the final tallies are in and one of the candidates becomes the president-elect, launching any transition seems premature.
''I believe [the Bush campaign's] actions to try to presumptively crown themselves the victors, to try to put in place a transition, run the risk of dividing the American people and creating a sense of confusion,'' William Daley, the chairman of Gore's campaign, said at a Nashville news conference yesterday.
Former president Jimmy Carter said yesterday that he began planning his White House transition in 1976 during what he knew would be a closely fought race against President Ford. ''The transition can be prepared by both candidates, not yet knowing who might be successful,'' Carter said at a news conference. ''I don't think there is anything wrong with that.''
The fact that President Clinton and former presidents Carter, Bush, and Ford and their wives, and Lady Bird Johnson, were about to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the White House together, two nights after the election, demonstrated a spirit of unity, Carter said.
''It shows that our system works, and beyond partisanship, that the laws and the Constitution of our country will be honored,'' Carter said.
