Obama Calls on Team Clinton for Economic Advice

It's a fact of life in Washington presidential politics: No matter how experienced you are when winning the White House, candidates and new presidents have only one source of battle-tested experts to choose from when setting new policy or hiring new cabinet heads. And that's whoever served in the previous administration of their party. So, it should be no surprise that Sen. Barack Obama, who's been working on his economic positions for months, has turned to the old Clinton team that brought the country great economic wealth, until the stock market collapsed when the Internet bubble popped. The Clinton people he has been reaching out to for advice include former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin , former economic advisor Laura Tyson, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former Labor Secretary Bob Reich, and former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley. "These," says Obama's able spokesman Robert Gibbs, are the "core of people he speaks to." And a surprise visitor to his economic team has been former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill dumped in 2002. Any of them could become part of Obama's economic team should he win in November, with a lot of focus on Daley being Treasury secretary.