The Obama White House is beginning to take shape.  Let’s take a look at who will be filling key positions come January.

The White House Staff

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White House Chief of Staff:  Rahm Emanuel

Congressman Emanuel has represented Illinois’s 5th Congressional District since 2003.  He chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, where he oversaw the Democratic gains that brought a majority to the party, and following the Democratic gains that year, which gave Democrats the majority in the House, he was elected chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, making him the number four Democrat in the chamber after Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, and whip Clyburn.  Emanuel is 48 years old, and has long been considered a rising star in Democratic circles — a fact evidenced by his extremely rapid rise amongst House Democrats.    Emanuel graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981 and then went on to receive a Master’s Degree in Communication from Northwestern University in 1985.  Emanuel was a prominent advisor in Bill Clinton’s 1992 Presidential campaign, where he was renowned for his fundraising prowess.  He hit the trail with Clinton again in 1996, a cycle which would cement his reputation for being intensely committed to his political work, a ruthlessness which earned him the nickname “Rahm-bo”.  It is said that the night after Clinton’s re-election Emanuel stood up at his table at a victory dinner and began listing people who had criticized the President during the campaign, shouting “Dead!” after each and stabbing his knife into the tabletop.  He has since, according to friends, relaxed his attitude somewhat.

Emanuel served as a Senior Advisor to the President in the Clinton White House from 1993 to 1998, working first in Political Affairs and then as Senior Advisor for Policy and Strategy.  Emanuel was responsible for choreographing the famous handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat after the Oslo Accords.  Emanuel left the White House in 1998 to work as an investment banker, and from 2000-2001 he served on the board of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation before resigning to run for congress, replacing Rod Blagojevich who vacated the seat to run for Governor.

An interesting aside:  Much has been made of the bizarrely accurate parallels between the television series The West Wing and the 2008 election cycle, and Emanuel is one more facet of that eerie semblance.  In the show, a young Hispanic Congressman from Texas takes on a moderate Republican for the Presidency after winning a bruising primary fight against much more prominent members of his own party.  The campaign manager for that fictional Congressman, Josh Lymon, then goes on to become White House Chief of Staff after winning the election.  Lymon’s fictional character was reportedly based on Emanuel.

Deputy Chief of Staff: Mona Sutphen

Mona Sutphen graduated from Mount Holyoke College and the London School of Economics.  She served in the Foreign Service from 1991 to 2000, and spend the last two years of her work at State in the National Security Council under then-National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.  She presently serves on the Obama transition staff, and was previously Managing Director of Stonebridge International, an international strategic consulting firm run by Berger.  It is safe to assume that Sutphen will be advising Obama on international affairs.

Deputy Chief of Staff: Jim Messina

Messina, a graduate of the University of Montana, will likely act as a more political player, in contrast to Sutphen’s policy.  He is currently the Director of Personnel for the transition team, and prior to that acted as Chief of Staff for the campaign.  Before his work on the campaign he was Chief of Staff to Senator Max Baucus, Senator Byron Dorgan, and Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy.  It’s likely that Messina will be interacting frequently with Congress, the Senate in particular, as Obama has been packing his staff with Capitol Hill veterans.  Messina’s selection is indicative of what is looking like an aggressive administration that’s going to be spending a lot of time in Congress peddling its agenda.

White House Counsel: Gregory Craig

Another Clinton White House veteran, Craig, 64, has been a prominent Washington lawyer longer than I’ve been alive.  Most recently, Craig acted as a foreign policy advisor to Obama during the campaign, but prior to that was special counsel in the Clinton years, when he defended the President against impeachment.  A graduate of Harvard, Cambridge, and Yale Law (where he first met the Clintons), he first worked for Williams & Connolly, representing John Hinckley, Jr. who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan.  In 1984 Craig joined Senator Ted Kennedy’s staff as a senior advisor on defense and international relations, a post he held until 1988.  In 1997 he served as a senior advisor to Secretary of State Madeline Albright, acting as Director of Policy Planning from 1997 to 1998, until he was called into the White House to act as special counsel.  He played John McCain in the Obama campaign’s practice debates.

Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs: Philip Schiliro

Schiliro is a long time Congressional veteran, and has spent a very long time as one of Rep. Henry Waxman’s top aides — the same Waxman that just pulled a coup and nabbed the chairmanship of the House Energy Committee.  Coincidence?  Schiliro is presently acting as Congressional liason for the transition team, and previously served as Chief of Staff to Waxman and the House Oversight Committee, as Policy Director for Democratic Leader Sen. Tom Daschle, and as Staff Director for the Democratic Leadership Committee in the Senate.  Schiliro is well-known in Washington for being one of the brightest operatives on the Hill, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that he’s close to Waxman, who now chairs both the Energy and Commerce and the House Oversight and Government Reform committees.

Senior Advisor to the President:  Peter Rouse

Rouse was Obama’s Chief of Staff in the Senate, and was also Chief of Staff to Tom Daschle for nearly twenty years, Dick Durbin for two, and Terry Miller, Lt. Gov. of Alaska, from 1973-1983.  A gradute of Colby College, the London School of Economics, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, Rouse is a savvy political mind who’s long had a foot in both the political and policy sides of government.

Press Secretary: Robert Gibbs

Gibbs served as Communications Director in Obama’s Senate office, and served as Communications Director and later Senior Strategist.  He previously worked on a number of campaigns, most notably for Fritz Hollings in South Carolina, and in the early stages of John Kerry’s presidential race.  Gibbs is much more confrontational that Obama, as evidenced by his interview with Sean Hannity in which he asked Hannity if he was an anti-Semite.  Gibbs has perhaps spent the most time with Obama of any other member of the staff, having barely left his side in four years.  The whole “hope” thing?  That would be, at least in part, Gibbs’ brainchild.  Gibbs graduated from North Carolina State University, where he was the goalkeeper on the soccer team.

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