World and Its Problems Won’t Wait for Jan. 20 : Transition: With today’s global instability, allowing the Clinton team to begin learning their jobs early is crucial.

During the 11 weeks between election and inauguration, the lame duck U.S. President is still in charge, while the chosen successor quietly waits his turn. This reflects both law and tradition. This time, however, the old rules aren’t good enough. When Bill Clinton becomes commander in chief on Jan. 20, he will have to deal immediately with several global problems that aren’t observing the U.S. interregnum. To manage this without costly error, he will need an unprecedented head start in foreign policy.

This is a radical development. During the Cold War, the world tended to quiet down every four years while the United States chose new leaders. We were too important to too many other countries, and the stakes were nothing less than stewardship of Western security and custody of awesome nuclear power.

That slackening of the pace of global challenge hasn’t happened this year, even at a time when nuclear risk seems to have disappeared along with the Soviet adversary. War continues to ravage the former Yugoslavia; the Russian transition is at a critical stage; the Persian Gulf is still a tinderbox; and the European allies, who in times past would have spent the transition in quiet policy reassessment, are locked in a bitter trade struggle with Washington.

The United States’ long hiatus between election and inauguration is unique. In most democracies, the electoral broom sweeps out the old and sweeps in the new in a matter of days, if not hours. Even when the transition involves major shifts in political ideology, new governments tend to begin functioning quite rapidly because only a few officials at the top are changed.

Not so in the United States. The new President can, and will, replace several thousand officials. In foreign affairs, virtually everyone with any responsibility is now turning in his or her resignation. This wholesale change in personnel might not have mattered so much in the past, when at least there was a continuing Cold War framework; today, by contrast, even the most basic assumptions are in flux, and on-the-job training will impose costs.

The United States complicates the problem by the cumbersome process of qualifying new appointees to office. It’s not just background checks by the FBI. Over the years, Congress has progressively tightened the rules on possible conflicts-of-interest, which adds more complex forms that must be filled out and examined. By the time the Senate finally passes judgment on a newcomer’s fitness to serve, many months may have passed since the President made his choice.

President Bush’s concession statement last week was unusually gracious, as was his pledge to promote a smooth transfer of power. In response, Clinton went beyond the traditional statement about Bush being the country’s only President until Jan. 20 to make an untraditional offer of support for Bush’s efforts in five areas: trade, Arab-Israeli peacemaking, arms talks, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. This pledge was made possible in part because old ideological fault lines between the parties on foreign policy have eroded, allowing for at least a temporary bipartisan effort.

Adopting a European-style system, ceding a large measure of authority in foreign affairs to a permanent bureaucracy, is out of the question. But the need for a new administration to establish its legitimacy argues against retaining outgoing policy-shapers for weeks or months until their replacements are up to speed.

To accelerate the process, appointees awaiting confirmation should be put to work as understudies as fast as possible, even before the new Senate is sworn in January and begins its constitutional duty of advice and consent. Instead of waiting patiently on the sidelines, these potential new foreign-policy officials would become privy to all that is being done by the outgoing Administration. They would gain a clear sense of the practical realities of the challenges imposed upon the United States from abroad. And they would get a feel for shaping decisions to suit the new President. This is not the same as governing, and there would be some risks. But in critical areas, such as Arab-Israeli peacemaking, there is no other obvious way to keep U.S. policy from missing a beat between administrations when that could prove fatal.

There are arguments against this break with precedent. Both the Constitution and traditions of political responsibility draw a sharp line between the Bush and Clinton administrations.

But this is an extraordinary time; we have entered an era in which America’s lessened preeminence as arbiter of the global future robs us of the luxury of a leisurely transition. Of course, Gov. Clinton cannot take the initiative on this; only President Bush can make it happen. It could be his last, best contribution to the good of the country.