Tim Fernholz breaks down how to make it happen:
Whoever wins on Tuesday --- based on today's polls Barack Obama, but anything is possible in politics -- will face a tough set of challenges come inauguration day. But the winner has a few months, barring any 2000-style post-election shenanigans, to assemble his team of top advisers and officials. With two wars ongoing and a recession to manage, it is probable that the president-elect's top national security and economic officials will be announced quickly, perhaps by the second week of November. Even now, transition teams for both candidates are toiling away to determine who will head various executive agencies, and the White House has launched a Transition Coordinating Council to ease the hand-off, a more comprehensive approach that came out of the 2000 transition. But what if you don't have ties to one of those teams? How do you wage a Cabinet campaign? "It's a very, very delicate balance, in my judgment," Mack McLarty, Bill Clinton's first chief of staff and one of his transition team leaders, told the Prospect. "It's not so much making it known that you're available or desirous for a Cabinet position, but being active in the policy and or political discussion, where it is logical for you to be considered for a position. Most of the candidates have a pretty good notion, in many, many cases [already know] who they want to appoint."
--The Editors
