In assembling his Cabinet lineup at a faster pace than any of his predecessors, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has once again proved he is still the "No Drama" guy who prefers stability and pragmatism at a volatile time.
By the day before he started a 12-day Christmas vacation in Hawaii on Dec. 20, seven weeks after his election, Obama had managed to fill almost all of the key posts in his White House.
According to the White House Transition Project, a nonpartisan group that studies presidential hand-overs, the president-elect outpaced every predecessor in forming his cabinet.
What's more impressive to many observers is that Obama named his top advisers and secretaries in a very balanced way that reflects comprehensive deliberations and hints at a practical, way of-the-middle governing style.
A TEAM OF RIVALS
It's no secret that Obama admires the governing style of Abraham Lincoln, another outstanding politician and U.S. president from Illinois.
"Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his Cabinet because whatever, you know, personal feelings there were, the issue was, 'How can we get this country through this time of crisis?," Obama said during his presidential campaign.
Lincoln appointed three former rivals within his party to his cabinet, which was called a "team of rivals" by historians.
Obama followed suit by inviting two former Democratic presidential contenders to join his cabinet, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as nominee for State of Secretary and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as nominee for Secretary of Commerce. Senator Joe Biden, another rival, became vice president-elect.
Moreover, Obama also named two allies of Clinton to cabinet posts.
Tom Vilsack, Obama's choice for agriculture secretary, served as co-chair of Clinton's presidential campaign while Hilda Solis, nominated to be labor secretary, was a Clinton supporter in the House of the Representatives.
Obama's cabinet has a bipartisan feature, too, notably with the decision to retain Robert Gates, the current defense secretary who has close ties to the Bush family, at the Pentagon.
Ray LaHood, Obama's choice for secretary of transportation, is a Republican.
Obama also showed a preference for experienced elected officials for cabinet posts.
Among the nominees for 15 cabinet secretaries and 5 cabinet-level officials, there are six former and current members of Congress, three former and current governors, and one former mayor.
Political analysts such as Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, see the appointments as a good sign.
By choosing "people who have faced and been responsive to voters, but not smacking of hacks," Obama has walked a "fine line", said Cook.

DOMINATED BY MODERATES
In terms of political positions, Obama's cabinet is clearly dominated by moderates.
The only exception may be Solis, who is close to left-wing Democrats.
Three key cabinet posts -- State, Treasury and Defense -- were filled by moderates.
Clinton is a moderate Democrat while Secretary of Treasury nominee Timothy F. Geithner is nonpartisan.
Gates has worked for Republican presidents during most of his career.
Moreover, at least eight of Obama's cabinet choices are close to a moderate Democratic faction known as the Democratic Leadership Council, or DLC.
Vilsack is a former DLC chairman while Ken Salazar, the Secretary of Interior nominee, is a former DLC convention chair.
Richardson and incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel were keynote speakers at the DLC convention.
Obama's choice for U.S. Trade Representative, Ron Kirk, supports free trade, though it upsets some left-wing Democrats.
Another prominent characteristic of Obama's cabinet is ethnic diversification.
Of the 20 cabinet-level posts announced so far, there are nine nonwhites, accounting for 45 percent of the total and making the cabinet the most diversified in U.S. history.
In the cabinets of the past four presidents, namely George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, the ethnic minorities stood for 27 percent, 32 percent, 18 percent and 6 percent of the total cabinet members, respectively.
While diversifying his cabinet, Obama has managed to reach a balance.
"What's struck me about the Obama cabinet is that it is hard to find choices that say, 'He picked her only because she is a woman, or he picked him only because he's black,'" observed Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
"It's tough to get balance and diversity without making it looks like you are trying to get balance and diversity. I think Obama has done pretty damn well," he said.
A BROADER AGENDA
The sequence of Obama's announcement of cabinet members reflects his priorities.
It's no surprise that he first introduced the economic and the national security teams.
That's because, in Obama's own words, the biggest challenges facing the country, are "two wars" and the "worst financial crisis in a century."
As a result, the president-elect will put much of his emphasis on the economy and Iraq.
However, given current conditions and his choices for economic and national security teams, it is hard to predict a drastic change on those issues.
In fact, Democrats and Republicans, the Obama camp and the Bush administration seem to find a lot of common ground on the economy and Iraq.
After all, Clinton once supported the Iraq war and Gates is the defense secretary in the Bush administration.
As head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Geithner works closely with Wall Street and the Republican administration.
Moreover, an economic turnaround and a "happy end" to the Iraq war is not something one can expect in a short while.
However, Obama appears to have a broader agenda than the economy and Iraq.
In health care, new energy, climate change and urban policy, he is expected to follow a much different path from George W. Bush.
By naming former Senate majority leader and long-time health-care reform advocate Tom Daschle as both Secretary of Health and Human Services and White House health-care czar, Obama signaled that he will actively push health-care reform.
With the choice of Steven Chu, who calls for aggressive policies to manage climate change, as Secretary of Energy, the president-elect is expected to lay out an ambitious environmental agenda.
Obama also created new White House offices to coordinate health care, energy and urban policies.
Although facing severe challenges at home and abroad, Obama enjoys wide support among Americans, which provides a sound political base for his agenda.
A new Washington-Post/ABC poll shows 76 percent of the voters approve his transition work and nearly 70 percent are optimistic for his overall policy.