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WASHINGTON, D.C.: Barack Obama holds his first
post-election meeting with President George W. Bush today, promising
a civil handover of power even as aides said he seeks to reverse
current White House policy on oil drilling and stem-cell research.
Bush, who invited the
president-elect to the White House to discuss the transition, in his
weekend radio address applauded Obama’s election victory as a
“triumph.”
“He can count on my complete
cooperation as he makes his transition to the White House House,”
said the outgoing leader, who announced that he and his successor
also would discuss Iraq and the global economic crisis in their
first post-election face-to-face talks on Monday afternoon (today in
Manila).
Bush told about 1,000 aides
during an emotional thank-you speech on Thursday that they needed to
bring Obama’s team up to speed on critical matters like the war
and the meltdown.
“I look forward to discussing
those issues with the president-elect early next week,” said Bush,
who would hand the keys to the White House to the first black US
president on January 20.
Obama responded in a statement
that he and his wife Michelle Obama “look forward to meeting with
President Bush and the First Lady on Monday to begin the process of
a smooth, effective transition.”
“I thank him for reaching out
in the spirit of bipartisanship that will be required to meet the
many challenges we face as a nation,” Obama said.
The meeting would be Obama’s
first at the White House since his decisive November 4 victory.
Reversing Bush
But as both incoming Democrats
and outgoing Republicans struck a tone of civility, Obama’s
transition chief signaled that the president-elect could wipe away
some hallmarks of the Bush years, including a ban on embyronic stem
cell research and moves to open new lands to oil drilling.
The move could signal a swift
change of course after eight years under the Bush administration,
even as top aides stressed Obama’s bipartisan aims and predicted
the new cabinet could contain familiar faces, particularly at the
Pentagon.
“On stem cell research, on a
number of areas, you see the Bush administration, even today, moving
aggressively to do things that I think are probably not in the
interest of the country,” transition chief John Podesta told Fox.
He said the incoming
administration is reviewing “virtually every agency to see where
we can move forward, whether that’s on energy transformation, on
improving health care, on stem cell research.”
Podesta, who also served as White
House chief of staff under president Bill Clinton, said he would not
“preview decisions that he [Obama] has yet to make.”
But he pointed out that “as a
candidate, Senator Obama said he wanted all the Bush executive
orders reviewed, and decide which ones should be kept, and which
ones should be repealed, and which ones should be amended.”
Among the measures that Podesta
raised were the Bush administration’s move to authorize oil and
gas drilling in the western state of Utah, and embryonic stem cell
research, which Bush has limited because he views it as destruction
of human life.
Forming a Cabinet
Meanwhile, the Democrat, who has
already appointed a chief of staff and is mulling options for key
posts in treasury and defense, is busily crafting a diverse Cabinet,
his transition team co-Chairman Valerie Jarrett said.
“Throughout the campaign,
president-elect Obama has talked about the importance of
bipartisanship,” she told NBC.
“I’m confident his
administration will include people from all perspectives,” said
Jarrett, a close aide to Obama who served as his Senate campaign
finance director in 2004.
With the US military engaged on
two fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan, a key question has been whether
Obama would keep on Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
“I think everything is a
possibility right now,” Jarrett said when asked if the new
administration would consider keeping Gates in his post.
Obama’s new chief of staff,
Rahm Emanuel, said the federal government should provide aid to the
struggling automobile industry to help it survive the financial
crisis.
Emanuel told the CBS News program
Face the Nation that the industry was “an essential part of the
economy.”
--AFP
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