Barack Obama, The New Team

OBAMA FOR USA. Throughout November, the financial tsunami was gaining such ferocity that virtually every large institution, from investment banks to insurers to companies like Citigroup, was approaching Washington for federal funds. Help couldn't wait.

Although Barack Obama kept reminding people that the United States only had one president at a time, he knew the world expected him to get to work to help stabilize the teetering economy. That meant the quick announcement of an economic team and a fiscal stimulus plan, perhaps one as large as $700 billion, equivalent to the financial bailout plan approved by Congress before the election.

For his first staff announcements, the president-elect turned to two old Clinton hands, Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois and John Podesta. Neither was considered a practitioner of the "new" politics, but both were respected for their effectiveness and Washington-savvy.

The captains of his economic team, similarly, were both disciples of Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. The new Treasury secretary was Timothy F. Geithner, the young president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers was to be the director of the National Economic Council in the White House, the president's principal economic adviser and policy coordinator. Both men believed in the pillars of Rubinomics, including free trade, deregulation and fiscal discipline.

The severity of the economic crisis created an opportunity to act on many of the issues Obama had emphasized in his campaign, including cutting taxes for lower- and middle-class workers, addressing neglected public infrastructure projects like roads and schools, and creating "green jobs" through business incentives for energy alternatives and environmentally friendly technologies.

For his national security team, Obama also went long on experience. The biggest surprise was Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of state. Although they had disagreed about the Iraq war and during the primaries Clinton had portrayed herself as more hawkish than Obama, she opted to accept the chance to play on the world stage once again. Although his campaign nickname was "No Drama Obama," the choices meant an Obama White House that would brim with big personalities and far more spirited debate than occurred among the largely like-minded advisers who populated President George W. Bush's first term.

Obama asked Bush's defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to stay on; and picked Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander and Marine Corps commandant, to be national security adviser. Another former rival for the Democratic nomination, Bill Richardson of New Mexico, was chosen for Commerce secretary, although he withdrew because of an investigation into his political donors. Another Western governor, Arizona's Janet Napolitano, was selected as secretary of Homeland Security.

By the end of the process, the 20 members of the Obama cabinet included two Republicans and four African-Americans, two Asian-Americans, three Latinos and two white women. The nine white men in the Obama cabinet were to be, as they were in the Clinton administration, a minority.

Critics of the Iraq war particularly rejoiced over the choice of Gen. Eric K. Shinseki to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, seeing the appointment as a second chance for a brave truth-teller. Shinseki had been denounced by senior Bush administration officials for prewar testimony in which the general said hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to stabilize Iraq, predictions that proved accurate.

The mainly centrist cabinet choices angered some liberals, who worried that the team might not deliver the change Obama had promised. But some predicted that the locus of real power would not be cabinet meetings but the meetings of the senior White House staff, working under the leadership of Emanuel, renowned for his tough tactics and language. The staff also included campaign hands like David Axelrod, who would keep the new president's portfolio on message and Robert Gibbs, who was chosen for press secretary, and Chicago loyalists like Valerie Jarrett.

The president-elect finished his cabinet appointments by announcing his intelligence team, led by another veteran of both Congress and the Clinton White House, Leon Panetta, the nominee for director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Although a few Democrats complained about not being informed beforehand of the choice, and others worried that Panetta, a vocal critic of the C.I.A.'s interrogation methods, did not come from inside the intelligence community, it seemed that he and the rest of Obama's nominees were likely to be confirmed, even the disclosure that Mr. Geithner, the Treasury nominee, had failed to pay some personal taxes in earlier years, appeared to be more of an embarrassment than a stumbling block.

The only real controversy was the continued ethical mess swirling around Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor, who was arrested in December 2008 and charged with trying to sell the right to be appointed to take Mr. Obama's seat in the Senate. The Obama camp responded with an internal review that showed that Mr. Emmanuel had held discussions with the Mr. Blagojevich, but that there had been no sign of any favors being traded to secure the choice of a nominee.

Mr. Blagojevich then tied the Senate in knots by filling the seat with a former Illinois state official, Roland W. Burris. Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at first said Burris should not be seated because Blagojevich was not fit to make the appointment. But they changed their minds, in part because Senate Democrats needed Burris's vote. Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus also supported Burris, who would be the Senate's only African-American. In the meantime, in early January, Blagojevich was impeached by a vote of the State House of Representatives and removed from office. Federal prosecutors charged the former governor with 16 felonies involving corruption.

Still, these matters appeared as mere distractions, considering the deteriorating state of the economy. In January, as the Obamas returned from their holiday in Hawaii, the nation's jobless rate rose to a 16-year high of 7.2 percent. Obama enlarged his stimulus proposal to $775 billion over two years, saying it would save between three and four million jobs. Some Democrats criticized the plan for not being bold enough and others worried that Obama should not have proposed tax cuts to offset opposition from Republicans, some of whom railed about the government going into so much debt. But with the country rallying behind him, Obama had the upper hand. National polls showed that 65 percent of the country supported his leadership, a much higher approval rate than other president-elects enjoyed. Congressional leaders promised to act on the stimulus package in February.

On foreign policy, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas raged in the Middle East, Obama continued to stress that there was only one president at a time and left diplomacy to the Bush administration. But on the economy, he stepped fully into the role of president before his inauguration. He met with congressional leaders and, in a somber but commanding tone, gave a major economic address at George Mason University in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. "For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet," he warned, "more Americans will lose their jobs, more families will lose their savings, more dreams will be deferred and denied, and our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."

The idea was not to wait but to build public support by mapping out a series of events to explain his economic approach, including long, televised interviews.

The Obamas had moved into a suite at the nearby Hay-Adams Hotel, so that Malia and Sasha could begin school after the holiday break. There was one more announcement before the family move into the White House: Marian Robinson, Ms. Obama's mother and a mainstay for the girls all through the campaign, said she would move in with the First Family after all, putting aside, for now, her worries about losing touch with her friends and beloved Chicago. And the closely followed saga of which breed of man's best friend would share the Obama White House narrowed to two, Labradoodle and Portuguese water dog.