KEY POINTS:
WASHINGTON - The fizz had barely gone from the champagne flutes when President-elect Barack Obama received his first official national security briefing.
There is urgency all around.
With two wars raging and an economic crisis on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, Mr Obama needs to
assemble an administration that will start delivering on his promise to transform Washington.
The President-elect is expected to operate from his Chicago headquarters for the next two months, but a vast suite of offices has already been set aside in Washington.
Strict protocol means that Mr Obama has no formal power until the moment of the hand-over, at lunchtime on Tuesday 20 January.
For foreign policy, for example, the most the President-elect is expected to do is to accept a few congratulatory phone calls from overseas.
As a sitting senator and President-elect, Mr Obama is in a unique position however.
With Congress convening in two weeks time for its final "lame duck" session, he must now decide whether to keep his distance, as his allies are advising.
The process of assembling a cabinet began before the election, with his staff hinting at the potential for "outside the box" picks for top jobs.
One of his first appointments is expected to be the chief of staff and there is speculation that he will pick the political street brawler and Chicago congressman Rahm Emanuel, a former Clinton aide.
Mr Obama helped deliver a Democratic majority in Congress but needs an accomplished insider to drive his agenda.
Mr Emanuel has coveted the job of House speaker, but may defer that ambition.
Mr Obama also needs to find roles for the political aides who delivered his victory, including his campaign manager David Plouffe, chief strategist David Axelrod, and his communications team, headed by Robert Gibbs and Dan Pfeiffer.
Interim appointments will be announced at any time, in the hope that when Mr Obama formally takes power he will hit the ground running.
But while he may quickly select his staff, the appointments only become effective when he has formal Congressional approval.
That will happen after he has taken office.
The most vulnerable time will be the first days after 20 January 2008, when he has to rely on his gut instincts and will not have high level counsellors in place to guide him.
Instead there will be a cacophony of those who have been advising his campaign.
There are 300 advisers on foreign policy alone.
Many of the names being bandied about for top positions will quickly pass the vetting process.
John Kerry is a hot favourite for Secretary of State.
Other names include Richard Holbrooke and Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico.
For Secretary of Defence, Mr Obama has hinted that he would like to keep on Robert Gates.
Another name in the mix is Chuck Hagel, the outgoing Republican Senator from Nebraska much loved by Democrats for opposing the war in Iraq.
For national security adviser it would be a shock if he does not chose Susan Rice, the public face of his foreign policy throughout the campaign, and another holdover from the Clinton administration.
Senator Clinton may be offered the post of health reform supremo, but it is unclear whether she would accept.
The challenges Mr Obama faces taking over from the ideologically hostile Bush administration cannot be underestimated.
Although Mr Bush offered a hand while congratulating him on his election, behind the scenes he has been ramming through measures to secure his legacy as a friend of big business.
Once these executive orders are published in the Federal register they will be hard to repeal.
Commentators compare the situation to the inauguration of Franklin D.
Roosevelt in the depths of the economic misery of 1933.
In those days an incoming President simply named his cabinet and got on with the job.
Not any more.
Now it can take weeks or months to get a cabinet in place and bedded down.
That is why Mr Obama appointed the former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta as head of his transition team some months ago.
Many names have already been submitted to the FBI to get security clearance.
But it is a slow process.
The word is that Mr Obama will move "quickly, but not hastily" in putting together his senior team.
What he will want to avoid is making the mistakes that surrounded President-elect Clinton in 1992 and cast a shadow over his first four years.
He took six weeks to pick cabinet and White House positions, and five days before his inauguration named his White House staff, far too late for a smooth transition.
- INDEPENDENT
