SNAP ANALYSIS: Obama moves quickly to pick staff leader
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama's choice of Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his White House chief of staff brought a Washington insider into the deliberations over the makeup of Obama's team.
Below are some of the possible consequences of the move:
* After campaigning on a theme of bringing change to Washington, Obama's first public move was to hire a veteran from the Bill Clinton White House for his inner circle. A tough-talking Democrat, Emanuel has a take-no-prisoners style and is familiar with all the levers of power in Washington.
* Emanuel would be expected to try to rein in the urges of liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill who might be inclined to want to use the opportunity to bring in sweeping liberal changes to the U.S. government now that Obama has been elected and Democrats have added to their majorities in both houses of Congress.
* The danger would be if the hard-charging Emanuel takes his authority too far and alienates some of his former congressional colleagues, who will be responsible for advancing the Obama agenda.
* The selection of the highly partisan Emanuel also raises the question of how serious the Obama White House will be at reaching across the aisle to work with Republicans in the minority.
* Emanuel should be able to impose a measure of discipline in the Obama White House and provide the new president with the kind of insider advice that Obama will need to operate effectively.
(Writing by Steve Holland; editing by David Wiessler)
