Editorial: The Obama team

Barack Obama has given substantial shape to his top team, and every indication that he is a hard-headed realist, not a clueless liberal who will fumble while learning on the job about how a country can be run. His economic team is experienced and impressive-though that does not mean its members have career records that are free of blemish. Lawrence Summers, who will head the National Economic Council and be the next president's right-hand man for all economic issues, has held cabinet-level office before, is a respected economist and has the right instincts when it comes to marrying markets and public policy, though critics will remind him that it is his deregulation of financial markets in 2000 that has led to the current financial crisis. Timothy Geithner, who has been named head of the Treasury, also has a strong career record, but he too will have critics who will want to ask him about his role in the decision to allow Lehman Brothers to go bankrupt in September, which made the financial crisis much worse than it was until then. Paul Volcker as a former chairman of the Federal Reserve System is best known for having licked inflation in the 1980s, and he will bring his understanding of markets to Washington. Mr Obama has also announced a budget director and given him the mandate to achieve efficiency in fiscal spending.

This is not a team of Obama groupies; some are a hangover from the Clinton administration, and Mr Volcker goes back even further. What the president-elect has shown is a willingness to seek out competence. This is reflected most clearly in his decision to ask President Bush's defence secretary to continue in office for a year. Given that Mr Obama fought his election campaign on ending the Iraq war, which has not been Mr Gates' priority so far, it is clear that Mr Obama seeks to use accumulated experience to deal with a very difficult situation. There is also a strong sense of realism in his choice of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff; Mr Emanuel is known for a "take-no-prisoners" kind of hard-ball style that is quite removed from the feel-good liberalism that marked the Obama campaign speeches. Clearly, Americans have elected someone who can empathise with voters but also has the toughness to administer difficult policies.

But most of all, Mr Obama has shown statesmanship in choosing his Democratic rival for the nomination, Hillary Clinton, as his secretary of state. Not only does this show an ability to reach out to people, it also shows confidence in himself that he can run foreign policy even with a strong secretary of state who is no one's puppet. If the rest of his cabinet has as much competence as these key appointments, Mr Obama's initial moves have been the right ones.