Web Video: Barack Obama’s first week as president

MS. IFILL: Flying high on Tuesday, hitting the ground running Wednesday. President Obama gets to work tonight on "Washington Week."

MS. IFILL: Good evening. Those of us who live here in Washington are so pleased you all came to visit. You crammed into our metro system. You slept in our homes and in general you partied like it was 1999. But now that you've gone home, the Obama girls are back in school, and their dad is back at work. President Obama claimed the main spotlight during his inaugural address, where he signaled a clean break from the Bush administration.
PRES. OBAMA (From videotape.): As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.

MS. IFILL: So, Karen, it's one thing to raise questions about the outgoing administration and to set this high-minded tone -- what about the actual managing of it? What happens when these guys got to the West Wing?
MS. TUMULTY: Well, the really striking thing about, I think, this administration is that they are attempting to do so many things at once. And it's really going to be an incredible management challenge. And I think that is one of the reasons that in this transition, they have built a very, very powerful White House team. They have moved -- big personalities like Larry Summers into the White House as the chief economic advisor. They've created new power centers for health care reform and for environmental policy right there in the White House. And that is both a sign of how much they are trying to do, but also it's going to be a real management challenge.
MS. IFILL: Well, and so who gets to do that managing? It sounds like a lot of people poised to trip all over each other.
MS. TUMULTY: Well, they picked a big personality for White House chief of staff in Rahm Emanuel and I interviewed him earlier this week. And he is a guy who is known for his kind of bare-knuckle style, his bluntness, but he acknowledges that this situation is one where a lot of the things that are his strengths could also be his weaknesses if he doesn't manage it right.
MS. IFILL: Okay let's talk about two of the big things that he did. When you're talking about keeping all these balls in the air and doing them at once, Martha, he met with his military advisors on Wednesday and said, remember that deadline I set about withdrawing America troops from Iraq? Let's get on with that.
MS. RADDATZ: And I think when he did that -- first he said he was going to meet with the Joint Chiefs and I think they were a little confused there at the White House that that's not really who he would meet with right away, the Joint Chiefs, to talk about military advise. But he did get plans laid out for these --
MS. IFILL: I'm sorry, that's not who he would meet with?
MS. RADDATZ: That's not who he would meet with. He would meet with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He would meet with his NSC advisors actually --
MS. IFILL: I didn't know that. Anyway.
MS. RADDATZ: Well, he's president now, okay, but --
MS. IFILL: He's supposed to know these things.
MS. RADDATZ: We'll give him a break on that. We'll give him a break on that. But he met and they laid out plans or started to lay out plans for the 16 month withdrawal, which President Obama says he wants or the three-year withdrawal, which is the Status Of Forces Agreement that the U.S. has gone into with the Iraqis.

MS. IFILL: So Pete, the other big thing he did this week was he decided that it was time to close Guantanamo, keeping one of his big campaign promises. Is that what he's really doing?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, that was the easy part, saying, close Guantanamo. Now, the hard part begins.
MS. IFILL: Signing the piece of paper.
MR. WILLIAMS: Right. Now, what do you do with those guys? And it seems clear there're going to be three categories of people. There will be those that can be released or sent to another country for detention. This is a continuation of a Bush administration policy. The belief is now that they're closing Guantanamo down, maybe other countries will be more willing to take some of the detainees.

MS. IFILL: Now, both Pete and Martha are outlining why this is all so complicated. You guys were talking about -- Karen and Dan -- about how they make this work, how he turns the poetry into action. Do they know this? Did they anticipate this? Did they see signs of the difficulties beginning in the transition?
MR. BALZ: Yes. I think -- look, they have the luxury in the first week to be able to take symbolic acts essentially. What they did with Guantanamo at this point is more symbolic than real. And they know that they are trying to buy themselves some time while they signal, we are making a big departure from George W. Bush. So I think this is built in. I don't think they had any illusions that how you close Guantanamo was going to be very difficult. But everything he has done so far in the first few days is a follow-on from a campaign promise that he made over the last two years. But there have always been questions about these and what he's trying to do is get a combination of the good will by changing and the time to work out some of the knotty problems.

MS. TUMULTY: But I do think that so much of what he has done in this week, at least, goes to his -- the premise of his campaign, which is that he could change the way things get done in Washington --
MS. IFILL: Like freezing salaries, ethics regulations --
MS. TUMULTY: -- absolutely. There's a new openness, for instance, by repealing by executive order some of the security measures that were privacy measures that were brought in after 9/11. For instance, government agencies are not going to find it quite so easy to deny public requests for information. Ex-presidents cannot exert executive authority, executive privilege to keep things from getting released. New lobbying regulations that would say anybody who has lobbied within the last two years cannot be at the agency where they're lobbying, although we've already seen that rule broken a couple of times.
MS. RADDATZ: -- secretary of defense, yes, designated.
MS. TUMULTY: I think that was the signal, though, was that there's a new way of doing things.

MR. BALZ: But the interesting thing is we've talked all about the symbolism and the quick action. There's no symbolism on the economy. There's no symbolism that he's been able to do this week. The one thing he might be able to do as president is convey a greater sense of confidence in American people, but he hasn't really been able to do that.
MS. IFILL: But you know why is possibly -- it's possible because it's really up to Congress. That's where the ball is right now. And he can't do a stroke of a pen with something that Congress has to pass.