Transitioning.(The Talk of the Town)(Barack Obama's presidential transition)

Barack Obama's campaign for President, which was as much about old-fashioned grassroots politicking as it was about high-tech dazzle, was big on paraphernalia--lawn signs, T-shirts, baseball caps, bumper stickers, and, of course, buttons. It may have set some sort of record for campaign buttons, including at least one meta-button: tiny pictures of old buttons--"I Like Ike" and the like--with the legend "BUTTON COLLECTORS FOR OBAMA." But where Obama enthusiasts have truly broken new ground is in the emerging field of post-campaign buttons. The polls had barely closed when the first "YES WE DID" buttons hit the streets, and since then there has been a profusion of pins--one shows the Obamas with their daughters under the words "AMERICA'S FIRST FAMILY"--that likewise seem designed to reassure their wearers that, yes, Obama's victory really happened and, yes, his Presidency is really going to happen, too. It's as if people haven't wanted to let go of their amazement.

At the moment, hard-core Obamaphiles are clicking on video clips from "Check, Please!," a Chicago public-television show that, each week, features three different local citizens sitting around a table with the host and talking about their favorite restaurants. The clips are from an early episode, taped in August of 2001, in which one local, a skinny state senator from Hyde Park, praises the comfort cuisine of the Dixie Kitchen, a neighborhood favorite. "I'm not looking for some fancy presentation or extraordinarily subtle flavors," Barack Obama explains. "What I'm looking for is food that tastes good for a good price." The episode will be broadcast for the first time a few days before the Inauguration; it wasn't aired at the time, the Chicago Tribune reports, because Obama "was too good--too thoughtful, too articulate, not enough of an amateur." For the Obama-besotted, the message is clear: This guy can do anything. He even reviews restaurants.

It has been widely said that never has so much been expected of an incoming President, but that's only half right. The public clearly expects quick action, but the outlook for the near future is so grim that few expect quick results. Obama himself has been stressing the urgency of the first and the need for patience with regard to the second. Speaking on the economy last Thursday at George Mason University, he called for "dramatic action as soon as possible" to deal with "a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime, a crisis that has only deepened over the last few weeks." Resolving that crisis, he added, "will take time--perhaps many years." What the public does anticipate is not miracles but competence, and its confidence in Obama's abilities has grown. In the most recent survey--a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released on December 24th--eighty-two per cent of those questioned said they approved of Obama's performance during the transition. Of course, the esteem in which Presidents-elect are held always increases as the rancor of the campaign begins to fade, and feelings of good will are always plentiful at Christmastime. Still, Obama's ratings are unusually high--fifteen points higher than either of his two predecessors' at the corresponding moment in their transitions, and arguably higher than anyone's since the modern era of polling began. "Obama walks in with nearly twice the support on the economy that President-elect Clinton had in January, 1993, and he beats Ronald Reagan as well," Keating Holland, CNN's polling director, said.

Obama's transition has unspooled in much the same way his campaign did: smoothly, calmly, and on time. His choices for Cabinet and White House staff positions have been impressive overall, some of them--that of Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for example--inspired. With his appointments, Obama has ...