“Transitionomal”

Since America has elected a new “Deciderer,” a whole host of elaborate rituals for the “transferification” of power are beginning up in Washington, D.C.

From a custom Oval Office rug to armies of mid-Inaugural movers, the “orderly transfer of power” prescribed by the U.S. Constitution is actually quite chaotic – and at times awkward and contentious.

Tomorrow, President-elect Barack Obama will meet with outgoing President George W. Bush, who will give Obama a tour of the building he basically hand-delivered to him.

Obama will get to see the West Wing, the residence and the Oval Office, where he will learn that even the rug between the two leaders’ feet is steeped in symbolism.

According to White House tradition, in one of his first “important” decisions the incoming president gets to select a design for a new rug – a task Bush “delemagated” to his wife, Laura.

While you ponder the ridiculousness of that tradition, here’s a look at Bill Clinton’s Oval Office rug, and here’s Bush’s rug … which ironically looks a lot like Obama’s daybreak logo.

Hmmm … infer from that what you will.

Anyway, the transition plans ramp up up the night before the Inauguration, when Bush’s White House staffers will be asked to turn in their security cards and badges.

The next day, while Bush and Obama do their thing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, movers will descend on the building to take out what’s left of the Bush administration’s effects.

All that will be left is the furniture and a few helpful binders.

Transitions haven’t always been cordial, by the way.

For example, Dwight Eisenhower irked Harry Truman by refusing to set foot in the White House before he became President, and the Clintonites and Bushies clearly didn’t get along eight years ago.

The most acrimonious transition? Probably one of the nation’s earliest – when John Adams appointed Federalist judges in his final hours in office and then skipped the inauguration of his successor Thomas Jefferson entirely.

A close second would be the 1928 transition of power from Calvin Coolidge to Herbert Hoover, in which the former refused to meet with the latter despite the fact that both were Republicans.

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