Barack Obama Frontpage

American President Frontpage

Since 1933, when the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution moved up the date of the President's inauguration from March 4 to January 20, new Presidents-elect have had about eleven weeks to make the transition from candidate to President. Several important tasks must be accomplished in this period if the transition is to be successful. None is politically more important than appointing the White House staff and the cabinet. None is personally more important than preparing the new President's family for life in the White House.

During the summer of 2008, Obama appointed John Podesta, the president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and former chief of staff in the Clinton White House to begin preparing for the transition that would occur if Obama won the election. In October, President George W. Bush appointed a transition team to work cooperatively with whichever candidate was elected. As a result, Obama was able to hit the deck running as soon as the results were in on November 4. Just two days later, Obama announced that Representatives Rahm Emanuel of Chicago would be his chief of staff.

The Obama transition team announced further high-ranking White House staff appointments in short order, with most of them going to friends and personal loyalists of the new President. As senior advisers to the President, Obama appointed David Axelrod, his chief campaign adviser, Pete Rouse, his Senate chief of staff, and Valerie Jarrett, his longtime Chicago friend and supporter. Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary during his Senate and presidential campaigns, was chosen as White House press secretary, and Chris Liu, Obama's legislative assistant in the Senate, became cabinet secretary. Other important staff appointments went to: Jim Messina and Mona Sutphen (deputy chiefs of staff), Greg Craig (White House counsel), Ellen Moran (communications director), and Phil Schiliro (legislative liaison). Obama also named former Marine general James L. Jones as his national security adviser, former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers as director of the National Economic Council, and veteran congressional staffer Melody Barnes as his domestic policy adviser. Former Congressional Budget Office director Peter Orszag was appointed head of the Office of Management and Budget and Leon Panetta, a former member of Congress who had served in several administrations, was chosen as director of the Central Intelligence Agency director and retired Admiral Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence.

In appointing the cabinet—that is, the heads of the fifteen executive departments—Obama relied in part on the "team-of-rivals" approach that presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin attributed to Abraham Lincoln in her 2005 book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Obama first appointed Hillary Rodham Clinton, his chief opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, as secretary of state. Obama's nomination of another election rival, Bill Richardson, as secretary of commerce, foundered when Richardson subsequently withdrew because of a potentially embarrassing grand jury investigation into a state contract in New Mexico. Obama also included two Republicans in the cabinet, inviting Bush's secretary of defense, Robert Gates, to remain in that position, and appointing Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois as secretary of transportation. Other cabinet appointments went to: Timothy Geithner (treasury), Eric Holder (attorney general), Janet Napolitano (homeland security), Hilda Solis (labor), Shaun Donovan (housing and urban development), Steven Chu (energy), Arne Duncan (education), Ken Salazar (interior), Tom Vilsack (agriculture), Eric Shinseki (veterans affairs) and Tom Dashcle (health and human services). Daschle also received a staff appointment as director of the White House Office of Health Reform.