Barack Obama received his first classified intelligence briefing from the CIA on Thursday, lesson one in a 75-day crash course in how to be a US president.
Such sessions, which typically last 45 minutes to an hour, are among the most visible parts of the transition from victorious candidate to president, along with an increased secret service detail.
Other aspects of the autumn ritual of presidential transitions, such as the requisite meeting between the president-elect and the outgoing leader, are also under way. George Bush has invited Obama to the White House next Monday. Protocol dictates that Laura Bush and Michelle Obama will retire to the living quarters for a White House tour.
But the biggest challenge in the transition will be deciding how he wants to run his administration, and what items to put at the top of his agenda from his long list of campaign promises.
This is decision time for Obama: does he, like Bill Clinton, want a freewheeling White House with young aides ordering pizza at all hours of the day and night? Or does he want to live life in 15-minute increments like the rigidly scheduled White House of George Bush?
”Presidential decision-making is not a bunch of guys sitting around a table. It’s much more complex than that,” said John P Burke, a politics professor at the University of Vermont, who specialises in presidential transitions. ”There has to be an awareness of the importance of an effective decision-making process that precedes the policy choices that the president himself will have to make.”
Early indications are that Obama wants a more disciplined and buttoned down White House than Clinton. The last Democratic president, overly focused on his Cabinet appointments, did not get around to choosing a White House chief of staff until December.
”They are probably going to be off to a faster start than just about any transition team in memory,” said Roy Neel, who was involved in the Clinton transition and headed Al Gore’s transition team. ”They have done an awful lot of pre-election work.”
Such decisions are more than a matter of style.
Unlike Cabinet appointments, White House staff do not need to undergo Senate confirmation hearings.
Confirmation proceedings for Cabinet posts will get under way in January. The business of confirming about 500 sub-Cabinet posts is far more laborious.
It is probable that Obama will not get all of his people in place until September 2009, and the process is likely to take even longer for political jobs further down the list such as ambassadorships and board appointments.
Meanwhile, there is a huge personnel exercise to get to work on: staffing the 500 or so political posts in the White House and executive office. About 1 000 other people, employed full time at the White House, are professional staff and will stay on after Bush.
The next big task awaiting Obama is to decide which among his many campaign promises will be top of the agenda in his administration. Part of that decision will be made in the next round of meetings he faces.
On the ceremonial side, there will be phone calls and visits with foreign leaders.
Obama will also hold separate meetings with the Democratic and Republican leaderships in the Senate. ”Those are not necessarily courtesies. The meetings with congressional leader will be nuts and bolts — working sessions as well as ceremonial,” said Neel.
”They will talk about how they will work, what president-elect Obama wants to do and what the Democratic leadership in Congress wants to do to establish a productive working relationship so that they can get all these things done very quickly.”
All presidents are under pressure to use the coming 74 days to hit the ground running. For Obama, though, who came to power promising hope and change, establishing his priorities and putting together an effective team are even more critical.
”The bottom line is that presidents need to prioritise, but this president is really going to have to prioritise,” said Burke. – guardian.co.uk