Washington: The first meeting of incoming and outgoing presidents has been a rite of passage fraught with emotion, surprises and the rare exchange of secrets between leaders of opposite political parties.

On Monday, President George W Bush will welcome President-elect Barack Obama to the White House, and the 43rd and 44th presidents will make nice. This, after a hard-fought campaign in which one of Obama's most effective strategies was to rail against the "failed policies" of the current president.

It's often an emotional moment for both the incoming and outgoing presidents. Although the formal transfer of power is still more than two months away, the "psychological transfer occurs then," former vice president Walter Mondale once said.

As significant as the first meeting can be, it isn t even mentioned in the Constitution or federal law, so there are no rules governing how to do it.

Putting Campaign 08 in the rearview mirror, "Bush will turn on his boyish charm, and I think he's enough of a political pro not to take the campaign criticism seriously," said presidential historian Leo Ribuffo of George Washington University.

As for past meetings between once and future presidents, Ribuffo said, "they've been bad, and they've been good and they've been in the middle."

One of the most analogous transfers of power to the Bush-Obama transition occurred when 70-year-old Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, made way after two terms for 43-year-old John F Kennedy, a Democrat whom the president had derided as a "young whippersnapper" and "this young genius."

Source : PTI