"Conference Call: The Deliberative Transition"

Al Giordano:

I just got off the phone listening-in to the "pad and pen only" press conference by Obama-Biden Transition Co-Chair John Podesta. It lasted almost an hour and I'm sure the rest of the media will report it extensively.(I haven't seen that yet, except for the Guardian UK story -Howie).

The first announcement contained some new rules:

• Federal Lobbyists cannot contribute financially to the transition.
• Federal lobbyists are prohibited from any lobbying during their work with the transition.
• If someone has lobbied in the last 12 months, they are prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied.
• If someone becomes a lobbyist after working on the Transition, they are prohibited from lobbying the Administration for 12 months on matters on which they worked.
• A gift ban that is aggressive in reducing the influence of special interests.

These were described as the most stringent rules ever on a transition team to fulfill Obama's campaign pledges to "change the way Washington works and end the influence of lobbyists."

The transition team "will employ 450 people, with a budget of $12 million," with offices in Washington DC and Chicago. More than 100 security clearances have already been granted to team members by federal law enforcement.

Later this week, the transition will announce the members of "agency review teams" that will evaluate "over one hundred departments, agencies and commissions" to provide incoming cabinet and sub-cabinet officials with information on them. Their names will be posted at change.gov. The transition will be "the strictest and most far reaching" and the "most open and transparent in history."

Here are some additional points I gleaned from the question and answer session:

Obama won't attend the G-20 Economic Summit: "We only have one president at a time," said Podesta. "The president-elect will not be meeting with leaders who are coming to Washington. He will be in Chicago." In some cases, top aides will meet with foreign leaders while they are in DC.

Don't Expect Any Cabinet Nominations Until December: "No president other than George Herbert Walker Bush has named a cabinet member before December, going back to the Kennedy administration." Obama himself will make those announcements, mostly from Chicago. Special early attention is being given to "the economic team and the national security team." There is extensive vetting going on (no doubt Podesta remembers how President Clinton's first and second nominations for Attorney General - Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood - crashed upon the discovery that each had hired undocumented workers, which also served to mire that administration in media turmoil at the precise moment when it had wanted to hit the ground running on policy). Obama will meet with each of his cabinet secretaries in person before approving them. Podesta made a joke about the press doing "stakeouts" to try and find out with whom he is meeting.

Expect more than one token Republican: President-elect Obama "wants to see people who are not just Democrats in office, to reach out and have Republicans and Independents not just on a token level," and that will extend to sub-cabinet posts as well.

No Quid Pro Quo on Colombian Trade Deal: Podesta pushed back at press reports that President Bush had suggested exchanging his support for an economic recovery package for the US-Colombia trade agreement, which, Podesta iterated, "should be dealt with on its own merits."

Economic Recovery-Stimulus Package Will Be First Order of Business: If the previous Congress hasn't passed one already.

Every Executive Order by Bush is Under Review: Those that Obama promised during the campaign to rescind, will be eliminated immediately.

"He Intends to Close the Facility at Guantanamo": In those words.

Withdrawing from Iraq: The policy "will be consistent with what he said in the campaign."

In sum, the approach is extremely deliberative and organized to adhere exactly to promises made during the campaign. There won't likely be any "Trojan Horse" attempts to spring unannounced initiatives in the early days of the administration. No real surprise there, to anyone that has been studying Obama carefully for clues as to how he will govern.

Barack Obama