The Transition: What Change Will Look Like

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Obama seems determined to avoid the mistakes of Bill Clinton's chaotic transition in 1992, which helped set the stage for what turned out to be a rocky first year in office. Whereas Clinton put most of his early efforts into picking a diverse Cabinet that he said would look like America — and required three attempts to come up with a female Attorney General — Obama will initially focus on building his White House operation, much as Ronald Reagan did in 1980. Cabinet appointments are likely to begin coming by the end of the month, which is still early by recent historical standards. But Podesta says Obama intends to make the White House the locus of policy formulation and decision-making.

The strongest signal of how that White House will operate has been Obama's pick of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel to be its chief of staff. Emanuel is a win-at-any-cost partisan but not an ideologue; in his earlier White House stint as a top aide to Clinton, he was a key figure in shepherding through the North American Free Trade Agreement, a crime bill and welfare reform — none of them popular with the Democratic Party's liberal base. The appointment of someone who has been a savvy operator at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue also shows that, for all Obama's talk of change, he does not intend to make the mistake of earlier Presidents who ran as outsiders and brought in top advisers who did not understand the folkways of Washington. (See pictures of the world reacting to Obama's win.)

But there are those who worry that Emanuel's hard-edged style — he's famously profane and once sent an enemy a dead fish — will stifle dissent and debate in a White House that, Jarrett says, Obama wants to function using a "team-of-rivals approach, with differences of opinion." Comparing Emanuel with Richard Nixon's ruthless chief of staff, New York University government expert Paul Light predicts, "He's going to make Bob Haldeman look like a cupcake."

The Agenda Dilemma
Beyond personnel, the transition period is likely to yield insights into Obama's executive abilities and his agenda. Obama, following a model set by F.D.R. during his transition, has signaled that he does not intend to get deeply involved in the wrangling between Bush and Congress over an economic-stimulus package. Nor does he intend to return to Washington from Chicago to vote on one if it should come to the Senate chamber, where he technically still serves.

But given the urgency of the challenges — guarding against another terrorist attack and dealing with an economic crisis — Obama knows he doesn't have time on his side. His top priority will be stabilizing the financial system, he said in an interview with CNN shortly before the election, followed by investing in renewable energy, universal health care, middle-class tax cuts and education reform. Then there are the other things he talked about at various points in the campaign: closing Guantánamo, withdrawing from Iraq, renegotiating trade deals, reforming immigration. How quickly those now secondary goals will follow is a major question and source of debate among Obama's advisers. Publicly, they insist that he can do it all, and there is plenty of talk about putting these issues on parallel tracks. But it is hard to see how he can afford such expensive undertakings alongside a $700 billion federal bailout of the financial system (which Obama now wants to extend to the collapsing auto industry) and a new economic-stimulus package.

One relatively easy way that he can put early points on the change board once in office is by issuing a series of Executive Orders — for instance, reversing Bush policies on stem-cell research, offshore drilling and the prohibition against using foreign-aid money for abortion counseling. Congress, with its stronger Democratic majorities in both houses, is likely to quickly pass legislation that previously died under a Bush veto, beginning with expanded funding for the children's health-insurance program that is administered by the states. And lawmakers may also begin passing parts of Obama's economic and energy plans piecemeal.

The question is whether that will build Obama's momentum for bigger change or merely squander his honeymoon. Here too, Clinton's history is telling. In his first year, he put so much energy and capital into his deficit-reduction package and NAFTA that, in the view of some who served with him, he had little left for health care in his second.

The greatest challenge of all for President Obama will be the one set for him by candidate Obama. A Diageo/Hotline poll conducted after his election showed that two-thirds of those surveyed are now confident that "real change" is coming to Washington. How long are they willing to wait for it? Hope can fuel a campaign, but Presidents are measured by results.

— With reporting by Jay Newton-Small / Washington

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