TRANSITIONS….From the Financial Times:
The best-kept secret in Washington is that Barack Obama has the largest and most disciplined presidential transition team anyone can recall. Headed by John Podesta, former chief of staff in Bill Clinton’s White House, it started work well before the financial meltdown hit in September but has been swamped by its implications ever since.
….The Democratic nominee has already reached an agreement with Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, to speed up the often painstakingly slow Senate confirmation process for the hundreds of appointees who would populate an Obama administration. Many of Mr Clinton’s appointments were still to be confirmed a year after he took office.
….”The level of detail that the Obama transition team is getting into is extraordinary — they are leaving no stone unturned,” said a senior former Clinton administration official who has been consulted. “I have been getting calls that you’d expect in previous transitions to get maybe in December or never at all.”
The article also notes that transition team insiders “are under strict orders from the Obama campaign not to talk to the media to avoid giving the impression Mr Obama thinks he has won already.” Good advice. Apparently not all of them are taking it, though. Here’s more from John Heilemann:
With the help of some 50 old Washington hands, Podesta and his people are drafting a book-length transition blueprint, with agency-by-agency policy agendas, including day-one, day-100, and year-one objectives, too. Résumés are already being collected. Daily conference calls and meetings occur. Of Obama’s pre-transition planning — and, in fact, of McCain’s as well — Clay Johnson has said, “The amount of work being done before the election, formal and informal, is the most ever.”
….Almost certain to come first, perhaps within days, will be his economic and national-security teams. And with those choices, they say, he will want to send a message of centrism and bi-partisanship. It’s conceivable that Obama will ask Bob Gates to stay on as Defense secretary; Chuck Hagel, too, might find a place high in the administration. But although there has been chatter that Obama might also retain Hank Paulson at the Treasury, the inside betting is on a Larry Summers encore. “They’re gonna want somebody who knows the building, knows the economy, has been confirmed before and been advising them on economics,” says the former Clinton aide. “I’d be flabbergasted if they chose somebody else.”
