NJ: Ron Brownstein -- he's the political director of Atlantic Media, including the National Journal. Hi, Ron.

Brownstein: Tammy, hi.

NJ: Please, please assess this first round of appointments of the Obama administration.

Brownstein: Well, I think one of the things that's really striking, whether we're looking at the White House appointments that he's announced or the domestic policy, economic side that he's announced, or for that matter the foreign policy, national security ones that we all expect are coming early next week, is that he is not following any kind of conventional political design here. He is not balancing left and right in some kind of systematic way. He is not even systematically surrounding himself with longtime confidantes and advisers -- a very eclectic mix here of people who have been in the foxhole with him from the beginning with an awful lot of people who were not part of the primary campaign against Hillary Clinton and in some cases, were even neutral during the general election. He has people he has known a long time, people he probably wouldn't have recognized in the elevator a year ago, and the common thread to me here is that this doesn't look as though he is responding to anyone's vision of what his inner circle should look like except his own.

And the significance there, before we talk about the individuals, is that I think this very clearly conveys that he feels a great deal of independence and latitude as he moves into the presidency. He feels, I think, a lot more freedom of action than say, Bill Clinton did in 1992 when he was kind of whip-sawed by interest groups and the congressional leadership. All of that's been very quiet -- we can come back and talk about that as well this time. Obama I think is signaling that he feels he has a lot of leeway to set his course.

Certainly when he won the Moveon.org primary last spring, whenever it was, I'm betting that most of those people did not anticipate a potential national security team of Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and James Jones. And what that says to me is that this is a guy who feels that he can put his imprint on things without having to worry right now that much about whether he can bring his party behind him.

NJ: And that means he's a true politician in a good way, because he knows he has the political clout to do what he thinks is best.

Brownstein: Right. Well, you know, look, he is coming in in a very strong position here in a lot of different ways. First of all, unlike [George] Bush in '04, or for that matter if John Kerry would have won in '04, by flipping one more state, Ohio -- each of them came in with the country divided almost exactly in half and with almost half of the country pretty much dug in against them -- it's very different this time. Obama won almost 53 percent of the vote, he won nine states that voted for Bush last time, including seven that voted for him both times, and just as importantly, both Obama and [John] McCain for that matter came out of this campaign without I think engendering quite as much hostility among the people who voted for the other guy as we saw in these last two elections. I mean, I think in both 2000 and 2004, whether it was [Al] Gore or Kerry or Bush who won, pretty much everybody who voted for the other guy was locked in against them. That is not true this time. They have maintained reasonable favorability among voters who didn't support them.

And secondly, Obama built this unprecedented personal network of supporters. They told the Washington Post this week they ended the campaign with 13 names their e-mail list -- over 3 million donors, over 2 million volunteers. He has a personal network that is more precisely identified and easy to motivate and activate, really than any president ever, and all this gives him a lot of independence -- plus the fact that in most states he is more popular right now among Democrats than any Democratic officeholder.

So he can go in a lot of different directions, and I think you are seeing that in the kind of appointments that he's making -- maybe a segue to talk about them. Both the domestic and the foreign appointments are not really, I think, exactly what you would have expected, especially given what his base of support was throughout this campaign.

NJ: Let's go to the domestic group.

Brownstein: Well, look, on the economic side he has leaned heavily toward I think centrists who in many cases are renowned more for their kind of technical or technocratic abilities than for their links to any particular Democratic constituency. I mean, Larry Summers in the White House, Tim Geithner at the Treasury Department and Peter Orszag at OMB -- at the Office of Management and Budget -- as well as Christina Romer at the Council of Economic Advisors. Here's something fascinating: None of those four were with Obama in the primary. Summers came in and was an adviser during the general election; Geithner as the head of the New York Fed and Orszag as the head of the Congressional Budget Office were neutral even through the general election. Had you ever heard of Christina Romer before last week?

NJ: No.

Brownstein: I talked to some of his press people who had never heard of her. So what this says is that Obama on the economic side is very comfortable reaching out beyond what had been his circle. And I'm sure Jason Furman, who came in in the general as their economic coordinator, will have an NEC -- National Economic Council -- job in the White House and so forth, but the key here is -- he has brought in people, many of them kind of descendents or protégés in various ways of Robert Rubin -- but I think the key here is that he has reached beyond his immediate comfort zone, and he feels confident enough that he can forge into a team people who have not been with him in the foxhole since the beginning. I think that's really significant.

NJ: Well, also, he hasn't picked anyone from Labor yet.

Brownstein: Yep.

NJ: And they're complaining -- who was it, [David] Bonior was complaining today, and he's part of the transition team, that Labor would have been part of this economic group.

Brownstein: Well, look, in general, you know, he has Ellen Moran who worked for Emily's List, a group that notably endorsed Hillary Clinton. They announced Cecilia Munoz from one of the Hispanic civil rights groups for a White House job, but apart from that, there are very few people who you would consider ambassadors from, or champions of the key Democratic constituency groups. I mean, if you were looking at what the kind of organized liberal interest groups the Democratic Party were looking for in their economic advisers, it probably would have been closer to Joe Stiglitz in the White House and Jon Corzine at the Treasury Department, and instead you get Summers and Geithner, you know, each of whom really operate under the wing, historically, of Robert Rubin, who is, you know -- the left is very ambivalent about the Clinton economic legacy and Rubinomics and so forth.

So it's kind of a centrist cast to the economic team in these early appointments. This week he names the kind of Economic Advisory Board, and it's Paul Volcker, you know, who took the hard line against inflation in the early 1980's even at the price of 10 percent unemployment. He is a regulator, yes, in his mindset, but he again is not someone who'll be a conventional champion of the left. So you have Obama I think reaching out to a pretty broad bandwidth here and having the confidence that he can harmonize what are probably going to be some divergent views in his inner circle.

NJ: Let's switch to foreign policy, and of course there's no broader, ballsier move than getting Hillary Clinton in as secretary of State, right?

Brownstein: Right, well, unless -- the other two that are expected early next week really are not far behind. You know, if you have a national security team of Hillary Clinton as secretary of State, keeping Robert Gates on as the Defense secretary and bringing in all likelihood as his national security adviser Retired General James Jones, the former NATO supreme commander, you are talking about figures who, again, I'm betting when Obama won the Moveon primary last spring this was not the national security team many of the people were anticipating. It is a much more centrist-oriented, kind of battle-hardened team than might have been anticipated from a candidate who during the primaries really did draw his advice from the left end of the Bill Clinton-era Democratic foreign policy establishment. By and large the more hawkish and centrist voices aligned with Hillary Clinton; Obama was talking to people -- Anthony Lake, Samantha Power -- who were critics on the left of many of the things that Clinton and certainly critics of Bush on the war, and you end up with a team that is much harder-nosed than you might have anticipated.

And again, the issue of whether you can harmonize the instincts of that team with what Obama has talked about as a candidate remains to be seen, but at first blush, it shows him willing to reach beyond his base and try to incorporate viewpoints and absorb viewpoints that really have leaned not only in the middle but even toward the Republican Party, and I think that is a good instinct to have as a president. I think one of Bush's fatal flaws as a president was he narrowed the circle too much, and this suggests that Obama is going to want to hear from a broad bandwidth of opinion.

I asked one of his advisers this week, I said, well, the fact that you're bringing in a Jim Jones and a Robert Gates -- do you think we'll see an analogue in Congress? Is he going to want to talk to people who might be several clicks to the right of where he is? He said, absolutely, people who would not expect to be included are going to find themselves included. So we'll see. But the early I indication is -- both domestic and foreign -- is a president who wants to be exposed to a broad range of views and is willing to give them a seat at the table. It's not quite Richard Nixon putting Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the White House, but James Jones and Bob Gates is not that far away from that.

NJ: So let's take a look at December and what will happen. We know the big three automakers will come back, that Congress will start looking at the stimulus package. How do you think this is all going to play out in the next four weeks?

Brownstein: Well, I think one of the big challenges for Obama is to separate economic recovery or stimulus politically from this financial bailout. You know, there's kind of a tremendous unease in the country and even in the political system about the process by which we are shoveling money into, you know, x-company but not y-company. Why does Citibank get the deal and someone else doesn't? Why does AIG get the deal and someone else doesn't? And that process is something that I think is going to be very controversial for a long time. Obama I think clearly wants to turn the page to a different element of a recovery package, which is a big stimulus plan that would in many ways accelerate many of the things that he wants to do otherwise.

The need for some kind of economic recovery package gives him an opportunity to move quickly through Congress at least a down payment on some of his other key priorities that might have taken longer to build consensus for. And I am thinking here -- for example, they want to invest in alternative energy, such as building out the grid, the transmission that will allow renewable power like wind and solar to be more easily distributed to big cities. They want to put some down payment in on his health care reform. They could easily incorporate many of the ideas that he talked about with an infrastructure bank to rebuild roads and bridges. And also, they could easily incorporate the proposal he had in the campaign for a tax cut to offset payroll taxes for middle-class families.

These are all things that would have been, you know, x-degree of difficulty to move through Congress in your first six months as president. The difficulty level has gone enormously. It becomes a lot easier if you can package all of these into the recovery plan and basically allow that to become your vehicle for getting started on the things that you wanted to do otherwise, and in fact have a recovery aspect to them: putting people to work, building roads and bridges or building new transmission lines, investing in information technology for medical reform and obviously a tax cut. I think they want to turn the page from financial bailout to broad recovery, from money that is targeted at Wall Street to money that is targeted toward programs that affect more kind of average families in Main Street.

NJ: Ron Brownstein, political director of Atlantic Media. Thank you.

Brownstein: Thank you.