Obama unveils dream team - including Hillary Clinton

Barack Obama today unveiled a much-hyped 'all-star' national security team including Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Robert Gates keeping his job as Defence Secretary, Eric Holder as the first black Attorney General and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security. In the wake of the Mumbai attacks, pundits had an even keener eye on today's unveiling in Chicago.

For Politico, Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin note that Democrats are in favour of the "sheer muscle" Obama has assembled in order to push through a new foreign policy agenda. Obama's 'heavyweights' will be "less a team of rivals than a team of giants" they say. However, Smith and Martin warn that combining such big egos could cause problems: "His [Obama's] best and brightest will inevitably jostle up against one another as some rise and others fall within an administration that has ambitious goals but limited resources."

In the same article, Paul Begala, a veteran of the Clinton administration, is quoted as saying that the new team will be a test for Obama himself. "There's always risk that these giant planets go out on their own," he says, "but if the sun is strong enough, they'll stay in their orbits."

The major nominees have records "more hawkish than that of the new president," says David E Sanger on the New York Times. It is all part of Obama's plan to rebalance America's foreign policy, though Sanger worries that some of the picks are potential loose cannons – including new National Security Advisor and controversial former NATO commander General James Jones, who recently opposed White House claims that coalition forces were winning the war in Afghanistan.

For all the worries about keeping George Bush's chief war strategist, Obama is likely to give Robert Gates a new lease of life, says Fred Kaplan on Slate. "Gates might be able to do many of the things that until now he has managed only to advocate," Kaplan suggests. "Obama has said that, to a point, he'll let Gates be Gates," meaning we should not expect the Defence Secretary just to act like the hangover from the Bush administration.

To help get his wife nominated as Secretary of State, Bill Clinton has had to make some sacrifices. The former president has agreed to disclose the details of more than 200,000 donors to his Bill Clinton Foundation while the Clinton Global Initiative will stop accepting donations from foreign governments. Furthermore the Obama administration will be entitled to review Bill Clinton's lucrative public-speaking schedule and any new sources of income to "avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest".

As for Hillary Clinton and Obama, they are not the arch rivals that many commentators paint them as, says Carol E Lee, another Politico expert. "Those who have observed the pair over the years aren't surprised that the two Ivy-league educated lawyers are taking their relationship to the next political level." Lee is also one of many who notes that Obama looks like a Washington newcomer compared to the wealth of experience he plans to employ.

Following the terrorist attack on Mumbai, Clinton will have her work cut out, says Alex Spillius in the Daily Telegraph. "An early goal for Mrs Clinton could be persuading the Indians to use the attacks to build understanding with Asif Ali Zardari, the new Pakistani president, whom Washington thinks is serious about tackling terrorism," he says. The situation on the subcontinent may be "highly inflamed" by the time Obama is inaugurated on January 20 - at which point Hillary Clinton will be in charge of America's relationships with both India and Pakistan. As Richard Beeston notes in the Times, Obama identified the importance of those relationships long before last week's attacks.

But for Jeremy Scahill on the Huffington Post, the weeks of rumours and anticipation have all got a bit too theatrical: "As Barack Obama's opus, Team of Rivals, continues its rolling debut, the early reviews are in and the 'critics' are full of praise for the cast," he jokes. "Team of Rivals will be playing all day, every day for at least the next four years."

FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 1, 2008