A presidential transition was guaranteed to occur in 1968 after incumbent president Lyndon B. Johnson announced on March 31, 1968 that he had decided against seeking reelection.

[2] Johnson made it known early into the presidential campaign series that he would actively make information on national interests available to the candidates, telling the press that he would provide them with intelligence briefings on the state of international affairs.

Additionally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, during the 1960 presidential election had publicly committed to provide some briefings to candidates.

For instance, the Bureau of the Budget had instructed vision heads in the spring of 1968 to begin collecting material that could be helpful to advise the president-elect during their transition.

[6] In September, after all the major nominees were decided (following Hubert Humphrey winning the Democratic Party nomination at the Democratic National Convention, and Nixon being formally nominated at the Republican National Convention), Johnson appointed Charles S. Murphy as his transition officer, putting him in charge of heading his administration's role in the pending transition.

[1][6][7] He would be a liaison to representatives of the election's three major presidential candidates (Humphrey, Nixon, and Wallace) in planning for their prospective transitions.

[1][8] Johnson also, at the same time, invited all three major candidates to appoint representatives to consult with his presidential administration in regards to transition planning.

[6] During the official transition, as appointees were made, the prepared briefing books would be provided to them by their outgoing counterparts at their first meetings.

[12] Nixon and Haldeman also consulted with those well-versed on inner workings of White House staffs, such as Andrew Goodpaster and Bryce Harlow.

[11] They also consulted with a study group at the Harvard Institute of Politics headed by Franklin Lindsay which was analyzing presidential transitions.

When, in the closing week of the election campaign, Johnson decided to cease the bombing of North Vietnam in order to facilitate serious forthcoming peace negotiations in Paris, he informed all three candidates on a conference call.

[1] Two weeks before the election, Director of the Bureau of the Budget Charles Zwick sent a memorandum to all department heads urging them to be, "considerate of possible needs of the incoming administration, leaving to them decisions on moves, purchases, and other actions that can be delayed, so that such action can be tailored as closely as possible to the new administration's policies and programs.

[1] Nixon had opted to headquarter it in a small suite of offices at the New York hotel over the space in Washington, D.C. that Johnson had previously prepared, before the election, for use by the president-elect.

[1] Top advisors of Nixon during his transition included Robert Finch, H. R. Haldeman, Bryce Harlow, and John N.

[1] On November 7, Franklin B. Lincoln Jr. met with Charles S. Murphy at the White House to discuss plans for the transition.

[6] On December 5, Nixon met with W. Averell Harriman, the chief United States negotiator in the ongoing Vietnamese peace talks.

[22] Early in his transition, Nixon spent time both vacationing and holding meetings with aides at a house he had rented from George Smathers in Biscayne Bay, Florida.

[24] On December 12, Nixon took to national radio and television to announce Cabinet picks, and met with President Johnson to discuss the situation in the Middle East.

[6] On December 22, the president-elect walked his daughter Julie down the aisle as she married David Eisenhower in New York City.

Agnew went to Memphis for the 1968 Liberty Bowl, and to New York to attend the wedding of Nixon's daughter Julie to David Eisenhower.

Agnew was a fan of the Baltimore Colts and, in January, was the guest of team owner Carroll Rosenbloom at Super Bowl III.

[4] Because he had only won a narrow victory in the popular vote, Nixon felt that he needed to make some Cabinet appointments that would signal unity.

this was because Nixon could not fulfill Jackson's demand that Dan Evans, the Republican governor of Washington, appoint a Democrat to fill his U.S. Senate seat if he vacated it to become secretary of defense.

[29] On December 12, in Washington, D.C., Nixon held an event announcement of his selections for all twelve Cabinet secretary positions.

[29] The lack of a Democrat in his Cabinet came despite a campaign promise during the election that he would look to men from both parties and of differing perspectives to unite the country.

[4] Perhaps, partially in consequence, Nixon would spend much of his presidency endeavoring for greater control of the executive branch, and would distrust his own Cabinet and members of the government bureaucracy, leading him to expand the size of the White House staff.

[6][7] Stephen H. Hess of the Brookings Institution wrote in March 2001, that "Richard Nixon's transition was one of the smoothest in recent memory.