http://i.abcnews.com/Politics/Vote20...6188783&page=1
Obama's Priority: Chief of Staff, Treasury Secretary
Obama Starts Shaping His Team, Offers Rahm Emanuel Top Spot
By MARK MOONEY
Nov. 5, 2008
The jubilant crowd of an estimated quarter-million people had barely cleared out of the victory party in Chicago when
President-elect Barack Obama began shaping his administration.
President-elect Barack Obama has asked Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., seen here conferring with Obama in 2006, to serve as White House chief of staff.
(Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Photo)
Obama offered the job of chief of staff to
Rep. Rahm Emanuel, ABC News' Jake Tapper reported today.
Emanuel, a veteran of President Clinton's administration and a close political ally of Obama's from Chicago, hasn't immediately given his answer.
Obama likes that Emanuel knows policy, knows politics and knows Capitol Hill and has told associates that he knows Emanuel will "have his back," ABC News' chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos said of the offer.
Pausing to Celebrate, Obama Looks Ahead
Obama didn't have time to savor his
history-making victory over
Republican John McCain that made him America's first black person to win the White House.
The Illinois senator amassed 338 electoral votes to McCain's 162, although three states -- Missouri, Indiana and North Carolina -- remain too close to project.
In a Rose Garden statement today, President Bush congratulated Obama on his "impressive" victory and noted the historic significance of electing the country's first black president.
"No matter how they cast their votes, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made," Bush said.
"It will be a stirring sight to watch Barack Obama; his wife, Michelle; and their two beautiful daughters step over the threshold of the White House," he said.
The president acknowledged "we are embarking on a period of change in Washington" and promised his "complete cooperation" in the transition in the next two months.
The
sweeping triumph, which included winning six states that had voted Republican in 2004, triggered euphoric crowds to turn out in Chicago, where Obama claimed his victory, as well as in New York City's Times Square and Harlem, and on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
By the time the
dancing in the streets had ended, names were being bandied over the airwaves about whom Obama would name to his Cabinet.
The president-elect has signaled that he will rely heavily on former members of Clinton's administration and that he intends to include several Republicans on his team.
Obama intends to quickly settle on a
secretary of treasury to help bring stability to the country's
shaky economy.
"If people think there is a direction, a vision, a plan that we're moving forward, you can change the psychology, help the markets to settle down," Clinton's former chief of staff Mack McLarty told "Good Morning America."
Timothy Geithner, president of New York's Federal Reserve Bank, and Larry Summers, the former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, are believed to be the leading contenders.
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