Speculation swirls about Obama appointments

Ap, Ians, Cnn, Washington


While President-elect Barack Obama enjoyed a few days with his family after a hard-fought election, speculation swirled in the nation's capital around potential administration appointees.

Obama pivoted quickly to begin filling out his team on Wednesday, selecting hard-charging Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff while aides stepped up the pace of transition work that had been cloaked in pre-election secrecy.

Several Democrats confirmed that Emanuel had been offered the job. While it was not clear he had accepted, a rejection would amount to an unlikely public snub of the new president-elect within hours of an electoral college landslide.

Obama he has promised to hold a news conference later in the week. As president-elect, he begins receiving highly classified briefings from top intelligence officials Thursday.

In offering the post of White House chief of staff to Emanuel, Obama turned to a fellow Chicago politician with a far different style from his own, a man known for his bluntness as well as his single-minded determination.

Emanuel was a political and policy aide in Bill Clinton's White House. Leaving that, he turned to investment banking, then won a Chicago-area House seat six years ago. In Congress, he moved quickly into the leadership. As chairman of the Democratic campaign committee in 2006, he played an instrumental role in restoring his party to power after 12 years in the minority.

Emanuel maintained neutrality during the long primary battle between Obama and Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton, not surprising given his long-standing ties to the former first lady and his Illinois connections with Obama.

The day after the election there already was jockeying for Cabinet appointments.

Filling out his economic team is a top priority for Obama as he begins to implement a strategy to quell the economic crisis.

"This is one of the first times that I can remember that the secretary of the treasury is going to be almost as important as the secretary of state," said David Gergen, a senior political analyst for CNN, who served in the Reagan and Clinton administrations.

Names circulating for the secretary of the treasury position include Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers and Paul Volcker, among others.

Geithner helped deal with Wall Street's financial meltdown earlier this year, overseeing the acquisition of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase and the bailouts of AIG and Lehman Brothers. He was appointed president of the New York Federal Reserve in November 2003.

Summers was appointed treasury secretary in July 1999 and served as the chief economist of the World Bank from 1991 through 1993. Prior to his career in government, he taught economics at Harvard.

Volcker is a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, serving under Presidents Carter and Reagan. He also worked in the private sector as an investment banker and headed the investigation into the United Nations' oil-for-food program for Iraq.

The White House is holding an economic summit on November 15. Obama could delay naming his economic team in order to avoid interfering with the G-20 summit.

Obama's national security team is another priority as the country fights wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It could also be an area where he goes outside his party for an appointee.

Republican Sen Chuck Hagel and current Defence Secretary Robert Gates are among the names floating around for that team.

Hagel, who was elected to the Senate in 1996 and is a Vietnam veteran, has been a fierce critic of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war.

Several Democrats said Sen John Kerry of Massachusetts, who won a new six-year term on Tuesday, was angling for secretary of state. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorised to discuss any private conversations.

Kerry's spokeswoman, Brigid O'Rourke, disputed the reports. "It's not true. It's ridiculous," she said.

Announcement of the transition team came in a written statement from the Obama camp.

The group is headed by John Podesta, who served as chief of staff under former President Clinton; Pete Rouse, who has been Obama's chief of staff in the Senate; and Valerie Jarrett, a friend of the president-elect and campaign adviser.

Several Democrats described a sprawling operation well under way. Officials had kept deliberations under wraps to avoid the appearance of overconfidence in the weeks leading to Tuesday's election.

The "Obama-Biden Transition Project" will be overseen by former White House chief of staff John D Podesta; Obama friend and senior campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett; and Pete Rouse, Obama's former Senate chief of staff and top campaign aide, officials said on Thursday. It will occupy offices in Washington and in a federal building in Chicago.

The transition co-chairs will work with an advisory board stacked with Clinton veterans and Obama and vice-president elect Joe Biden allies and confidants.

On the list: former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner; Obama friend and former Commerce Secretary William Daley, University of California-Berkeley law school dean Christopher Edley; Obama law school friends and advisers Michael Froman and Julius Genachowski; former Gore domestic policy adviser Donald Gips; Governor Janet Napolitano; former transportation secretary Federico Peña; Obama national security adviser Susan Rice and Sonal Shah of Google.org.

Mark Gitenstein and Ted Kaufman, old friends to Vice President-elect Joseph R Biden Jr, will serve as co-chairs of his transition team.

The Obama team is also launching www.change.gov, a transition news Web site.

Obama is expected to continue operating out of Chicago for most of the transition, the Post said citing an Obama source familiar with the transition process. The goal is to move "quickly, but not hastily."

The approach to appointments and other senior hires will be comprehensive, as opposed to ad hoc, which may mean that Obama will not name, say, a treasury secretary right away but will continues to rely in the short term on his current economic advisory team.

A game plan for moving forward will become clear by Friday, Obama sources tied by the Post said, and Cabinet announcements may start to trickle out next week.

The process of vetting and assembling a cabinet began well before Tuesday's election, with staff members hinting at the potential for several "outside the box" picks for top jobs.

Aides will move quickly to begin monitoring the government's various departments and agencies, obtain the necessary security clearances, and keep a close eye on any last-minute attempts by current administration officials to leave a mark on policy after President Georged Bush's term ends, the Post said.