ABSTRACT
By the time George W. Bush became President in January 2001 he had assembled one of the most experienced cabinets in recent US history. In particular his foreign policy team had an almost unprecedented level of experience. Due to the dispute about the outcome of the presidential election results in Florida, however, the new President did not have the customary two and a half months but just a few weeks to focus on the transition. It was not until early December 2000 that the controversial decision of the US Supreme Court not to allow the re-count of the ballot in Florida handed a narrow electoral victory to Bush over his Democratic rival, President Clinton's sitting Vice-President Al Gore. 1 Still, by the end of the year most of the main players of Bush's foreign policy team had largely been selected.
