Obama's early start: Signs of crises

by Mark Silva

Count today, roughly, as the start of the 44th presidency.

President-elect Barack Obama already has announced Cabinet appointments earlier than anyone in modern times, save for former President George H.W. Bush.

And he certainly has announced more than his predecessors at this stage in the transition preparing for a new White House. .

We've seen Treasury - Tim Geithner - and today State --- Hillary Clinton. We're seeing the attorney general, Eric Holder, and Homeland Security, Jane Napolitano. And more.

And it's Dec. 1.

Nearly two months from Inauguration Day.

It's a sign, all these appointments, of the pressing nature of the jobs they all we be assuming - with Geithner standing at the front of the line of a mounting federal deficit that will be the inevitable result of all the intervention that the post-Bush, pre-Obama government is taking in an economic crisis of proportions unseen in nearly a century.

With an unrelenting threat of terrorism confronting the new administration, it will not be - as Clinton suggested in her own primary campaign ads attacking Obama - the president who fields the first call at 3 am in the event of a crisis. That will be Marine Gen. James Jones, the apparent selection for National Security Adviser, also in line.

It's a remarkably early start-up for the next team. A remarkable set of crises confronts them all.