Crisis leads Obama to pick staff quickly

CHICAGO -- No president-elect in American history has moved as fast to get started as Barack Obama.

No president-elect in modern times has had to.

Monday, Obama is set to announce the leaders of his economic team, nominating as Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve. The president-elect plans to name Larry Summers, a Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, to head the National Economic Council. And Obama is promising to push an expanded economic stimulus package aimed at creating or preserving 2.5 million jobs during the next two years.

"Our hope is that the new Congress begins work on this as soon as they take office in early January, because we don't have time to waste here," David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, said on Fox News Sunday, citing the spiraling economic crisis. "We want to hit the ground running on Jan. 20."

Less than three weeks since a historic election night, Obama has filled most of the top jobs on his White House staff and floated the names of potential picks for much of his Cabinet. He is poised to announce his national security team after Thanksgiving. Discussions with New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton remain "very much on track" about the job of secretary of State, her spokesman Philippe Reines says.

It is an unprecedented pace and a sign of how the economy's dive is accelerating the traditional transfer of power in Washington. Since World War II, only presidents Dwight Eisenhower and the elder George Bush made any Cabinet announcements before December.

"There's certainly a tremendous pressure to name the team and thereby instill some confidence in the markets," says Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and former head of the Congressional Budget Office. "There's an effort to calm jittery nerves and show that this is not going to be Amateur Hour on Jan. 20."

It is a fast start onto foggy terrain. Obama is in the awkward position of being elected but not yet in charge, watching an economy lurch without having the authority to shape the Bush administration's policies being implemented to bolster it.

Not since 1932 has a new president waited to take over amid a time of such serious crisis.

The interregnum has created its own dangers as the stock markets, business leaders and consumers look for leadership in perilous times.

"This crisis is so deep that the markets would like to hear from Obama about what he has in mind," says Greg Valliere, political strategist with the Stanford Financial Group. "The Congress looks dysfunctional and the Bush administration is out of gas."