A presidential spokesman said he would express his condolences to relatives.

The meeting comes as BP shares in the UK fell to their lowest level since 1997 amid fears the US will impose huge penalties on the firm.

Mr Obama has come under mounting political pressure over his handling of the crisis.

Oil has been leaking into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April and sank off the coast of the US state of Louisiana, killing the 11 workers.

‘Anti-British rhetoric’

President Obama will express his “heartfelt condolences” to their families during the private meeting at the White House, his spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

“And I think he’s eager to discuss with them what their family was telling them about safety conditions and what type of changes can and must be made in the regulatory framework to ensure that deepwater drilling that goes forward is done in a way that is safe and not life-threatening,” Mr Gibbs added.

Amid growing public anger in the US, President Barack Obama is keen to show he is on top of the situation and will make his fourth visit to the region on Monday.

His administration has been steadily applying more pressure on BP, and the US justice department is considering legal action to make sure BP has enough funds to cover the damage and compensate those affected by the slick.

BP says a containment cap system placed on the blown-out well last week collected 15,800 barrels of oil on Wednesday – slightly up on the 15,010 barrels collected in the previous 24-hour period.

The company has come under increasingly sharp attack by some US politicians for its handling of the spill, described as the worst environmental disaster the US has faced.

Shares in the British oil giant have nearly halved over the last couple of months.

The UK government on Thursday sought to play down fears expressed by some senior figures of “anti-British rhetoric” in the US.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who will discuss BP with President Obama this week, said he understood the US government’s “frustration”.

“We have re-engaged the United Nations,” Mr. Obama said, to cheers from world leaders and delegates in the cavernous hall of the General Assembly. “We have paid our bills” — a direct reference to the former administration, which often tied paying its United Nations dues to demands for reforms of the institution.

President Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday.

An array of world leaders sat in the hall for Mr. Obama’s speech, which was often interrupted by applause and the flashbulbs of cameras going off, including some from delegates in the room.

But even as Mr. Obama sought to signal a changed tone in America’s dealings with the world, much of his speech centered on old and intractable issues, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions and a Middle East peace process. And while his choice of words was different and more conciliatory, the backbone of American policy he expressed remained similar to the Bush administration’s in many areas.

Just as Mr. Bush once did, Mr. Obama singled out Iran and North Korea for their pursuit of nuclear weapons. “In their actions to date, the governments of North Korea and Iran threaten to take us down this dangerous slope,” Mr. Obama said. “We respect their rights as members of the community of nations. I am committed to diplomacy that opens a path to greater prosperity and a more secure peace for both nations if they live up to their obligations.”

But, he added, “if the governments of Iran and North Korea choose to ignore international standards; if they put the pursuit of nuclear weapons ahead of regional stability and the security and opportunity of their own people; if they are oblivious to the dangers of escalating nuclear arms races in both East Asia and the Middle East — then they must be held accountable. The world must stand together to demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced. We must insist that the future not belong to fear.”

As he spoke, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sat in the fifth row, displaying no visible reaction. Iran maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Mr. Obama’s address to the General Assembly is the headline event in a day of many headlines. Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, listened to Mr. Obama from the hall and then took the podium for a diatribe notable as much for its length — about 90 minutes — as for its range of topics, from the functioning of the United Nations to the H1N1 virus. Later this afternoon, Mr. Ahmadinejad is to speak.

Mr. Obama said he planned to work toward a comprehensive peace deal between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and indicated again that he was impatient with the slow pace of work on interim measures like a settlement freeze and was now swinging for the harder, more entrenched final status issues that have bedeviled peace negotiators since 1979.

“The time has come to relaunch negotiations — without preconditions — that address the permanent-status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians; borders, refugees and Jerusalem,” Mr. Obama said. “The goal is clear: two states living side by side in peace and security — a Jewish state of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people.

“As we pursue this goal, we will also pursue peace between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Syria, and a broader peace between Israel and its many neighbors. In pursuit of that goal, we will develop regional initiatives with multilateral participation, alongside bilateral negotiations.”

At the end of his speech, much of the hall — but not the Iranian delegation — applauded.

Mr. Obama left the hall shortly before Colonel Qaddafi began speaking.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, with Jedi Scott, 10 months, of Brooklyn on Monday in Washington.

Cara Fuller, a shelter worker, asked if he was sweating.

“Nah, I don’t sweat,” he told her. “You ever see me sweat?”

Not yet. But then again, it is still early.

Mr. Obama arrives at the presidency Tuesday after a transition that betrayed little if any perspiration and no hint of nervousness. Throughout the 77 days since his election, he has been a font of cool confidence, never too hot, never too cold, seemingly undaunted by the magnitude of troubles awaiting him and unbothered by the few setbacks that have tripped him up.

He remains hard to read or label — centrist in his appointments and bipartisan in his style, yet also pushing the broadest expansion of government in generations. He has reached across old boundaries to build the foundation of an administration that will be charged with hauling the country out of crisis, but for all the outreach he has made it clear he is centralizing policy making in the White House.

He will eventually have to choose between competing advice and priorities, risking the disappointment or anger of constituencies that for the moment can still see in him what they hope to see.

What the country has seen of his leadership style so far evokes the discipline of George W. Bush and the curiosity of Bill Clinton. Mr. Obama is not shy about making decisions and making them expeditiously — he assembled his team in record time — but he has also sought to tap into the nation’s intellectual dialogue at a time of great ferment.

He has set out ideas for governance even before taking office, but he has also adapted the details as conditions changed.

More than any president since he was an infant, Mr. Obama has taken a place in society that extends beyond political leadership. He is as much symbol as substance, an icon for the young and a sign of deliverance for an older generation that never believed a man with his skin color would ascend those steps to vow to preserve, protect and defend a Constitution that originally counted a black man as three-fifths of a person.

He is a celebrity president in a celebrity culture, cooed over for his shirtless physique on the beach and splashed on the cover of every magazine from Foreign Policy to People. What his political opponents sought to portray in the campaign as arrogance is now presented by his aides as comfort with power and the responsibilities that go along with it.

“He sort of lives in a grudge-free zone,” said John D. Podesta, a co-chairman of his transition team. “He’s capable of taking on board a lot of information and making good decisions. He knows he’s going to make mistakes. But he also knows that you’ve got to do the best you can, make tough decisions and move on.”

Some of those mistakes may owe in part to that signature confidence. Mr. Obama knew and liked Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, initially overlooking an investigation into state contracts that later sank his nomination for commerce secretary. Likewise, Mr. Obama forged a personal connection with Timothy F. Geithner and picked him for Treasury secretary, choosing to disregard Mr. Geithner’s past failure to pay some of his taxes.

Little has emerged about the process behind those episodes, but aides described Mr. Obama’s decision making as crisp and efficient. When he sits down for meetings, they said, he starts by framing questions he wants answered, then gives each person a chance to talk, while also engaging them. At the end, he typically sums up what he has learned and where he is leaning. A late-night person, he often follows up with calls to aides at 10 p.m. or later, after he has put his daughters to bed.

Mr. Podesta would not describe how the decision had been made to pull Mr. Richardson’s nomination but said it had played out over just nine hours rather than days, which limited the damage. “We saw the problem, understood it, Bill understood it wasn’t viable, and we stopped it,” Mr. Podesta said.

That contrasts with Mr. Clinton, who liked free-ranging discussion and took time making decisions. Mr. Podesta, Mr. Clinton’s last White House chief of staff, described the former president as brilliant at “thinking laterally” across subject areas. “One thing that seemed not to have taken on Bill Clinton is law school,” he said. “I tend to think of the president-elect as approaching a problem in a more logical, more drill-down sort of way.” Mr. Obama opted not to play it safe during the transition. He brought his Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, into the cabinet, and angered gay and liberal supporters by inviting the Rev. Rick Warren, an opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage, to give the inaugural invocation. Although Mr. Obama deferred foreign affairs with his “one president at a time” rule, that did not apply to domestic policy, where he lobbied Congress to release $350 billion in financial bailout money and set about negotiating roughly $800 billion in spending programs and tax breaks.

“He’s got the political courage to look at things and be bold,” said Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s who has spent time with Mr. Obama since the election. “The political wisdom is go slow, take the easy way first and build up some victories.”

Mr. Rendell said Mr. Obama did not mind taking risks. “He’s goal-oriented, not process-oriented,” he said. “If he does some things that are unorthodox or tick off his friends to achieve a goal, he’ll do that.”

But Mr. Obama made a point of engaging adversaries, dining with conservative columnists and talking with Republican congressmen. “He and his transition team have reached out to the Hill more than any transition team I’ve seen,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader. “So far, so good. But running a campaign and running a transition are going to be different than governing, because governing is about making choices.”

Mr. Boehner noted that Mr. Obama had originally reserved 40 percent of his economic package for tax cuts but now seemed to be heeding Democrats pushing for more spending. “At some point he’s going to have to tell people what he’s for,” Mr. Boehner said, “and then we’ll see whether he really wants to govern from the middle or cave into the liberals in his party.”

Mr. Obama’s outreach to Republicans has paid dividends. He wooed enough Republican senators to release the bailout money. Even some he did not convince muted their opposition. For instance, he called Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, who opposed more bailout money without a commitment that it be used only for the financial sector, not other industries.

“They didn’t want to shut the door, and if I were them maybe I wouldn’t either,” Mr. Coburn said. “But I wanted the door shut.” After Mr. Obama’s call, he said, “I was quiet as I voted against it.”

Mr. Obama has built a broader base of public support than many incoming presidents. Representative Artur Davis, Democrat of Alabama, said 53 percent of white voters in his conservative state now had favorable views of Mr. Obama, compared with 17 percent before the election. “He has been pragmatic,” Mr. Davis said, “and even many voters who voted against him see him as prepared to govern in a pragmatic, nonideological way.”

But Mr. Obama has been harder to peg than that, and the next few months should flesh out his governing philosophy.

“I don’t think it maps into traditional right-left, but nor is it Bill Clinton-like triangulation,” said Robert B. Reich, Mr. Clinton’s labor secretary and an economic adviser to Mr. Obama. “My sense is he genuinely believes that people can come to a rough consensus about big problems and work together effectively. I don’t really get a sense of ideological position. He’s obviously a man of strong convictions, but they don’t fall into the standard boxes.”

President-elect Barack Obama and John McCain at a dinner honoring the Arizona senator.

In an unusual effort to create political opportunity out of what is usually a dead period in the days leading up to an inauguration, Mr. Obama reached across the aisle and across the battle lines of the last election, calling his former opponent a man who sought common ground and attaching superlatives to Mr. Powell.

He did not mention that Mr. McCain evinced little of his bipartisan side during the presidential campaign. 

“There are few Americans who understand this need for common purpose and common effort better than John McCain,” Mr. Obama said at the dinner he held for Mr. McCain at the Washington Hilton. “It is what he has strived for and achieved throughout his life. It is built into the very content of his character.”

Mr. Obama then hurried by motorcade to the National Building Museum to honor Mr. Powell, who backed Mr. Obama in October in one of the most effusive, full-throated endorsements he received from a member of the opposing party.

“It’s easy to slip into superlatives when you talk about Colin Powell,” Mr. Obama said, going on to speak of Mr. Powell’s “quiet, remarkably consistent loyalty to a set of principles: truth, loyalty and determination.” He added: “The lesson he’s learned from his own rise is not his own greatness but his nation’s greatness.” The speech was over in seven minutes.

Mr. Obama also held a third dinner Monday night, for his vice presidential running mate, Joseph R. Biden Jr. But it was the fetes for Republicans that set Washington abuzz.

At the McCain dinner, Mr. Obama praised his former opponent, a Republican senator from Arizona, for working with Democrats on issues like campaign finance and immigration, which Mr. Obama said Mr. McCain did for “the good of his country.”

Mr. McCain’s motivation, Mr. Obama said, was “a pure and deeply felt love of his country that comes from the painful knowledge of what life is like without it.”

Mr. McCain was introduced at the dinner by a fellow Republican, his close friend and wingman during the campaign, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. And his other wingman, Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who earned much enmity from Democrats by appearing at the Republican convention, also attended.

Not invited was Mr. McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

President-elect Barack Obama on Friday in Washington. Mr. Obama’s stimulus package is being shaped by political as well as economic imperatives.

With the Federal Reserve having just about reached the limit of how much it can help the economy with cuts in the interest rate, Washington’s ability to end or at least limit the recession depends in large part on the effectiveness of the big package of additional spending and tax cuts that Mr. Obama has made the centerpiece of his agenda.

And with the economy facing what now seems sure to be the sharpest downturn since the 1930s, the financial system balky and the government facing towering budget deficits, economists and policy makers acknowledge that there is no playbook.

“We have very few good examples to guide us,” said William G. Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the liberal-leaning research organization. “I don’t know of any convincing evidence that what has been proposed is going to be enough.”

In part because Mr. Obama wants and needs bipartisan support, the package is being shaped by political as well as economic imperatives, complicating the process by putting competing ideological approaches into the mix.

It includes $300 billion in temporary tax cuts for individuals and businesses, in part to attract Republican support. It includes a big expansion of safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which Democrats say makes both economic and social sense. It includes more money for highways, schools and other public infrastructure; more money for “green” energy projects; and more money to help state governments pay for health care and education.

Republicans, as always, are advocating for more and broader tax cuts. But the evidence is ambiguous about whether tax cuts will really spur economic activity at a time when consumers and businesses alike are frozen in fear and reluctant to let go of their money.

The risk is that Mr. Obama and the Congress will weigh down their effort with measures that cost many billions of dollars but may not have much impact on economic activity.

Tax breaks, for example, usually produce less than $1 of stimulus for every dollar they cost, economists say. Spending on public construction projects, like highways and bridges, produces the most economic activity — but there is a limit to how many projects are “shovel-ready,” and even those take time to generate jobs and ripple through the economy.

Christina Romer, whom Mr. Obama has designated to be his chief economist, concluded in research she helped write in 1994 that interest-rate policy is the most powerful force in economic recoveries and that fiscal stimulus generally acts too slowly to be of much help in pulling the economy out of recessions, though associates said she now supports a big stimulus package if policy makers roll it out early enough in the recession.

The goal behind all those ideas is to jump-start economic activity by getting as much money as possible as quickly as possible into the hands of consumers and businesses, trying to make up for the falling demand in the private sector that is leading to higher unemployment. And although the package includes a big dose of tax cuts, it represents a big departure from President Bush’s playbook by relying heavily on direct government spending.

“This is not an intellectual exercise, and there’s no pride of authorship,” Mr. Obama told a news conference in Washington on Friday. “If members of Congress have good ideas, if they can identify a project for me that will create jobs in an efficient way — that does not hamper our ability to, over the long term, get control of our deficit; that is good for the economy — then I’m going to accept it.”

Mr. Obama’s aides said he did not intend to unveil a detailed formal proposal but rather to allow Congress to fill in the outline that he has proposed.

Given the recent scale of the downturn — the nation lost 1.5 million jobs in the last three months of 2008, and economic output during those months shrank by 6 percent compared with same period in 2007 — economists were highly uncertain about whether the economic plan would provide enough firepower. Adam Posen, the deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said Mr. Obama’s plan could provide just the right boost — if it was carried out properly.

But as the Federal Reserve has been learning for months now, the biggest obstacle to economic activity right now is not a shortage of money. The real obstacle is pervasive fear, which has made banks reluctant to lend and companies reluctant to invest in expansion.

Alan J. Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said the overall scale of the program looked “reasonable” at $800 billion over two years.

“It’s much bigger than anything that’s been tried in my lifetime, but this is scarier than anything we’ve seen in my lifetime,” Professor Auerbach said.

Left to their own devices, many Congressional Democrats would prefer to focus almost entirely on spending projects and avoid tax incentives.

“One thing we learned from the Depression is marginal, incentive changes don’t work very well when the economy is falling away from you very rapidly,” said Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “And that’s what’s occurring here.”

But Republicans have been adamant about the need for tax breaks, and Mr. Obama has made it clear he would like to bring as many members on board as possible.

Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, said in an interview, “I really do believe that if you combine the evidence of history along with the psychological concerns about making investments in the economy today, the better bang for your buck is lower taxes that are certain and permanent and lasting.”

The Democratic plan would direct much of the stimulus money to low-income and middle-income families. That reflects both traditional Democratic concerns about helping lower-income households, as well as the view of economists who say that people with lower incomes are more likely to spend rather than save any money they receive from the government.

Mark M. Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, a forecasting firm, told a forum of House Democrats this week that the “bang for the buck” — the additional economic activity generated by each dollar of fiscal stimulus — was highest for increases in food and unemployment benefits. Each dollar of additional money for food stamps yields $1.73 in additional economic activity, Mr. Zandi estimated, and each extra dollar in unemployment benefits yields about $1.63.

By contrast, Mr. Zandi estimated, most tax cuts produce less than a dollar for each dollar of stimulus, especially if the tax cuts are temporary, because people save at least some of their extra money.

One of the few tax cuts that economists say can generate a positive bang for the buck is a reduction in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare.

Mr. Obama wants to offer a tax credit of $500 for individuals, and up to $1,000 for families, which they would receive through a temporary reduction in payroll tax withholdings. The idea, known as the Making Work Pay credit, was part of Mr. Obama’s economic platform during the presidential campaign. As originally envisioned, it would have been available to households with annual incomes as high as $200,000.

But economists said the tax credit could have drawbacks as an economic stimulus measure, mainly because people usually save part of the money or use it to pay down debt. That makes good sense from an individual’s standpoint but does nothing to increase economic activity.

Joel Slemrod, a professor of tax policy at the University of Michigan, said, “The research I’ve done on the 2001 and 2008 tax rebates suggests that the proportion of the rebates that went to spending was rather small, about one-third.”

After Congress approved Mr. Bush’s tax rebate to individuals and families last spring, economic activity jumped fleetingly during the summer, and then stalled out again in the fall.

Some Democratic officials were also skeptical.

“It’s not that rebates don’t work under normal conditions,” said one senior Democratic aide in the Senate. “It’s that current conditions are not normal and are not favorable to rebates or broad tax relief.”

President-elect Barack Obama, top, at George Mason University and his financial advisers, above from the left, Christina D. Romer, Timothy F. Geithner and Lawrence H. Summers.

Senate Democrats complained that major components of his plan were not bold enough and urged more focus on creating jobs and rebuilding the nation’s energy infrastructure rather than cutting taxes.

Just hours earlier, Mr. Obama called for speedy passage of the stimulus measure, warning that the recession “could linger for years” if Congress did not pass his plan within weeks.

Further complicating the picture, Democratic senators said Thursday that they would try to attach legislation to the package that would allow bankruptcy courts to modify home loans, a move Republicans have opposed.

Parallel to its work on the stimulus plan, the Obama team has also been considering how to use the second $350 billion of the bailout program approved by Congress. A transition team official said Thursday night that the new approach would give government officials broader range to provide relief on consumer loans for homes, automobiles and education, while also doing more to address foreclosures and the problems of municipalities and small businesses.

For his recovery plan, meanwhile, Mr. Obama has been assembling a package worth as much as $775 billion over two years to revive the sagging economy, using the plan to define his presidency even before it begins and to foreshadow his broader approach to governing.

While relying on traditionally liberal notions of using government spending to spur growth, he has also tried to adapt it for a new era with investment in clean energy and technology. And he is trying to balance all of that with tax breaks that appeal to Republicans.

But the broad support he has enjoyed so far for the basic concept is now being tested as the specifics become clearer. While conservatives criticize the high spending, and moderate Democrats express concern about the swelling deficit, liberals are pushing for even more money devoted to social programs, alternative-energy development and road, bridge and school construction.

David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, said the president-elect’s team was not concerned by the emerging pockets of criticism of his plan.

“Obviously, it’s a big answer to a big problem and there are a lot of component parts to it,” Mr. Axelrod said in an interview after meeting with balky Senate Democrats. “These folks are not potted plants. They’re elected officials, and they’re doing their jobs.”

He added, “It’s a collective process, and we’re willing to listen to people’s ideas.”

Asked if they were willing to adopt people’s ideas, Mr. Axelrod said: “We’ll see. It depends on the idea.”

Mr. Axelrod’s comments came after a spirited meeting at the Capitol where he and two other Obama aides, Lawrence H. Summers, the incoming national economic adviser, and Philip Schiliro, tapped to be the chief White House lobbyist, heard lots of frustration from Democratic senators.

“There is only one thing we have got to do in the stimulus, and that is how can we create jobs,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, as he left the meeting. “I am a little concerned by the way that Mr. Summers and others are going at this in that, to me, it still looks like a little more of this trickle-down, if we just put it in at the top, it’s going to trickle down. A number of people in there said, ‘Look, we have got to have programs that actually create jobs and put people to work.’ ”

Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, said lawmakers and the incoming administration had differences over how to focus the huge federal spending in a recovery bill. “Investment, investment, investment has got to be the central focus: energy, roads, bridges, waterways, housing,” he said. “Job creation is Job One.”

Mr. Conrad, who described the meeting as extremely positive, said Mr. Summers ended it by telling the senators, “Message received, loud and clear.”

Several Democrats on the Finance Committee earlier in the day questioned the proposal to give tax credits worth $500 to individuals and $1,000 to married couples. Several senators said that initiative would provide a token sum of money, which taxpayers were likely to save, not spend.

Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and others also criticized a proposal to give businesses a $3,000 tax credit for each new employee they hire, saying it was unlikely to influence business decisions. After meeting with Mr. Summers, Mr. Kerry said he expected adjustments to be made. “We are in a good dialogue,” he said. “I am very confident about some adjustments being made.”

The Democratic demands clash with those of Republicans who want more tax cuts and express doubts that heavy infrastructure spending would be the best way to stimulate the economy. “It’s very important as we go ahead that we find the right balance,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader. “Yes, our economy needs help. But at the end of the day, how much debt are we going to pile on future generations?”

With the cascade of conflicting opinions, Mr. Obama’s allies pushed for quick passage. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House speaker, said she would cancel the President’s Day recess in mid-February if lawmakers had not passed an economic plan by then. “If we don’t have a bill before the president’s recess, there will be no president’s recess,” she told reporters.

Mr. Obama reinforced that urgency in a speech at George Mason University in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. “For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet,” he said, “more Americans will lose their jobs, more families will lose their savings, more dreams will be deferred, and our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”

The speech was his first since the election and indicated how fully he is stepping into the role of president when it comes to domestic issues even before his inauguration. His advisers have calculated that he cannot wait to begin a campaign to build public support and have mapped out a series of events to explain his economic approach, including booking him on the ABC program “This Week” on Sunday.

For the moment, the public remains strongly in Mr. Obama’s corner. The latest Gallup tracking poll this week showed that 65 percent express confidence in his leadership.

But Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic political strategist, said the Obama plan’s price tag is “an awfully big number that follows a financial bailout that’s strikingly unpopular with the public. Both of these things create a challenge to overcome, some nervousness on the Hill and among the public.”

Mr. Obama addressed that nervousness in his speech. “I understand that some might be skeptical of this plan,” he said. “Our government has already spent a good deal of money but we haven’t yet seen that translate into more jobs or higher incomes or renewed confidence in our economy.” But he said his plan “won’t just throw money at our problems. We’ll invest in what works.”

Known on the campaign trail for inspirational addresses, Mr. Obama on Thursday was sober and ominous, summoning the nation to meet a daunting task.

“Now, I don’t believe it’s too late to change course,” he said, “but it will be if we don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years.”

Some Democrats said they were not sure that Congress and the Obama administration would ultimately see eye to eye. Mr. Harkin pointed to Mr. Obama’s speech earlier in the day to promote the economic recovery package and said the rhetoric did not match the dollars in the plan.

“Obama said today that he wanted to double renewable energy in three years, well we can do it,” Mr. Harkin said, but he added that spending to jump-start that initiative would have to be included in the stimulus.

“I just want to thank the president for hosting us,” the president-elect said, flanked by former President George H.W. Bush on one side and his son on the other.

Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, both smiling broadly, stood with them. “All the gentlemen here understand both the pressures and possibilities of this office,” Obama said. “For me to have the opportunity to get advice, good counsel and fellowship with these individuals is extraordinary.”

In a swift photo opportunity, the current president wished Obama well before all five men headed to a private lunch that lasted about 90 minutes.

“I want to thank the president-elect for joining the ex-presidents for lunch,” Bush said, even though he’s not quite a member of that club yet.

“One message that I have and I think we all share is that we want you to succeed. Whether we’re Democrat or Republican we care deeply about this country,” Bush said. “All of us who have served in this office understand that the office itself transcends the individual.”

He added: “We wish you all the very best, and so does the country.”

Bush and Obama also met privately for roughly 30 minutes. That one-on-one meeting, coming just 13 days before Obama’s inauguration, likely focused on grim current events, with war in the Gaza Strip and the economy in a recession.

It had been an entire generation since the nation last saw the tableau of every U.S. president together at the White House. The presidents have gathered at other locations over the years, most recently for the funeral of President Gerald Ford in Washington.

Obama suggested holding the gathering when he met Bush at the White House in November.

All parties seemed determined to keep details of what was discussed confidential.

Describing the lunch only in broad terms after it ended, Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs said: “The president and the former presidents had helpful advice on managing the office, as well as thoughts on the critical issues facing the country right now. The president-elect is anxious to stay in touch with all of them in the coming years.”

Obama has sought to strike a balance as the power curve bends his way. Before taking office, he is publicly rallying Congress behind a massive economic stimulus plan. But he remains deferential to Bush on foreign affairs and will not comment on Israel’s deadly conflict with Hamas on grounds that doing so would be dangerous for the United States.

“You can’t have two administrations running foreign policy at the same time,” Obama said at a news conference earlier in the day.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden also held a private meeting with former President Bush at the White House on Wednesday.

‘We’ll just share war stories’
Considering the bond they hold in history, U.S. presidents get together infrequently, particularly at the White House. And when they are in the same room, it is usually for a milestone or somber moment — a funeral of a world leader, an opening of a presidential library, a commemoration of history.

Not this time.

“It’s going to be an interesting lunch,” Bush told an interviewer recently. When asked what the five men would talk about, Bush said: “I don’t know. I’m sure (Obama’s) going to ask us all questions, I would guess. If not, we’ll just share war stories.”

They have plenty of those, political and otherwise. Their paths to power have long been entwined.

Carter lost the presidency to Ronald Reagan, whose running mate was George H.W. Bush. Bush later won election but lost after one term to Clinton. Then Bush’s son, the current president, defeated Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore. And this year Obama won after long linking his opponent, John McCain, to Bush.

Campaign rivalries
Those campaign rivalries tend to soften over time as presidents leave the White House and try to adopt the role of statesmen — although Carter, even as an ex-president, has had some critical public words for the current president’s foreign policy.

All five men were to pose for a group photo in the Rose Garden, but a January rainstorm scrapped that plan. So the noontime photo opportunity — the media’s only glimpse of them — was moved indoors to the Oval Office.

The presidents and Obama were having lunch in a private dining room off the Oval Office, where no one else was expected to join them.

“All of us would love to be flies on the wall and listening to that conversation,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said.  The rare presidential joint appearance also offered Bush, who ends his two terms deeply unpopular, to again show he is rising above the fray.

The last White House event to draw the former presidents was a November 2000 celebration in honor of the White House’s 200th anniversary. But one of the former presidents, Ronald Reagan, who was afflicted with Alzheimer’s, was unable to attend.

All the presidents were last at the White House in 1981: Richard Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan, who was president then. The three former presidents were there before leaving as part of the U.S. delegation to the funeral of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, who had been assassinated.

President-elect Barack Obama met with his top economic advisers for a second straight day in Washington.

Mr. Obama sought to distinguish between the need to run what is likely to be record-setting deficits for several years and the necessity to begin bringing them down markedly in subsequent years. Even as he prepares a stimulus plan that is expected to total nearly $800 billion in new spending and tax cuts over the next two years, he said he would make sure the money was wisely spent, and he pledged to work with Congress to enact spending controls and efficiency measures throughout the federal budget.

“We’re not going to be able to expect the American people to support this critical effort unless we take extraordinary steps to ensure that the investments are made wisely and managed well,” Mr. Obama said, speaking about the dire fiscal outlook after meeting with his economic team for a second straight day.

In his most explicit language on the subject since winning the election, Mr. Obama sought to reassure lawmakers and the financial markets that he was aware of the long-term dangers of running huge deficits and would take steps to limit and eventually reduce them.

Big deficits force the government to borrow more money, saddling future generations with large financial burdens and leaving the nation reliant on foreign governments and other big investors to lend cash. The problem is even more acute now because credit markets, which in recent months have made it much harder and more expensive for businesses and individuals to borrow, could be further strained by financing a huge government deficit.

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama plans to name a chief performance officer with the task of finding government efficiencies. He has chosen Nancy Killefer, who is director of McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, and was an assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration. The Congressional Budget Office will also release its latest budget estimates, providing the first official predictions of the shortfalls tied to the economic slowdown and the fallen financial markets.

Mr. Obama has made the economy virtually the sole public focus of his first full week in Washington since winning the election. He called on Tuesday for the creation of an economic recovery oversight board that would include outside advisers to monitor spending — and find abuses — of the economic stimulus plan. He also said earmarks for lawmakers’ special projects would be banned from the bill.

“When the American people spoke last November, they were demanding change — change in policies that helped deliver the worst economic crisis that we’ve see since the Great Depression,” Mr. Obama told reporters at his transition offices. He added, “They were demanding that we restore a sense of responsibility and prudence to how we run our government.”

But Republicans and some fiscally conservative Democrats have expressed concern that the need for a substantial economic stimulus plan could sweep away for years any serious effort to bring government spending into line with its revenues.

While economists almost universally support running large deficits to combat the kind of steep recession the country is grappling with now, they are increasingly expressing alarm at the prospect of sustained fiscal imbalances heading into a period in which the aging of the population will create huge budgetary strains because of the growing costs of the Medicare and Social Security programs.

Still, the deficit now seems likely to be so large that it will inevitably constrain Mr. Obama’s administration to some degree. At a minimum, it seems sure to force him to walk a line between maintaining the confidence of the financial markets, which could drive interest rates up sharply if they doubt his will or ability to improve the government’s financial condition in the long run, and various constituencies that will be pressing him to make good on his campaign promises.

Mr. Obama has so far not backed away from any of the big initiatives he ran on, including his plan to expand health insurance. On that issue, as on others, he has begun making a case that the economically prudent course is to invest now in addressing the nation’s big challenges rather than avoiding them in the name of saving money in the short run.

Mr. Obama was not specific about the size of the deficit he expects, beyond his reference to “a trillion-dollar deficit or close to a trillion-dollar deficit” for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. Aides said later that the estimate — in line with what economists have been anticipating given the economy’s rapid deterioration — did not include the costs of the proposed stimulus package, which could add hundreds of billions of dollars more to the red ink.

At $1 trillion, the deficit would not only shatter the largest previous shortfall in dollar terms — $455 billion last year — but it could also exceed the post-World War II-era record by the measure more meaningful in economic terms, the deficit as a percentage of total economic activity.

Diane Rogers, chief economist at the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan organization that supports fiscal discipline, estimated that the deficit this year would hit 7 percent of the gross domestic product. The largest previous record in those terms was in 1983, when it hit 6 percent. Mr. Obama declined to say on Tuesday whether the budget that his administration submits to Congress in February would be larger than the $3.1 trillion budget that President Bush submitted for the current fiscal year. He also did not offer any specific examples of how spending could be controlled, saying only that his advisers had been scouring the budget looking for programs that could be eliminated.

“I’m going to be willing to make some very difficult choices in how we get a handle on his deficit,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s what the American people are looking for and, you know, what we intended to do this year.”

But the short-term budget shortfalls are big enough to pose serious headaches in themselves, especially if bond investors start demanding higher interest rates.

In just the first three months of the 2009 fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, the government spent $408 billion more than it took in. About one-third of that shortfall stemmed from the Treasury Department’s rescue program of injecting capital into banks, which the government will book as an “investment” rather than “spending.”

The recession itself will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit. Even before Congress adds any new stimulus measures, higher outlays will climb for existing unemployment benefits, food stamps and other social programs. Tax revenues will fall because of rising unemployment, falling corporate profits and huge investment losses in the stock and bond markets. Mr. Obama’s stimulus program could add another $400 billion in each of the next two years.

“One thing investors have to be thinking is, what’s the exit strategy? How do we unwind this stuff?” said Robert Bixby, director of the Concord Coalition. “I would analogize it to what the government is doing with the auto companies. Congress said, we’ll give you the money but you have to show us a plan for sustainability.”

Mr. Bixby added, “Now the government is in the same position of the auto companies, but they haven’t come up with any plan for sustainability.”

As the latest budget estimates are released on Wednesday, the good news, at least for the moment, is that the Treasury’s borrowing costs are as almost as low as they have ever been. Short-term Treasury rates are hovering just above zero, but the rates on 10-year Treasury bonds are about 2.5 percent.

The new administration’s brief, which is due Feb. 20, has the potential to hearten or infuriate Mr. Obama’s supporters, many of whom are looking to him for stark disavowals of the Bush administration’s legal positions on the detention and interrogation of so-called enemy combatants held at Navy facilities on the American mainland or at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama made broad statements criticizing the Bush administration’s assertions of executive power. But now he must address a specific case, that of Ali al-Marri, a Qatari student who was arrested in Peoria, Ill., in December 2001. The Bush administration says Mr. Marri is a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda, and it is holding him without charges at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. He is the only person currently held as an enemy combatant on the mainland, but the legal principles established in his case are likely to affect the roughly 250 prisoners at Guantánamo.

Many legal experts say that all of the new administration’s options in Mr. Marri’s case are perilous. Intelligence officials say he is exceptionally dangerous, making deportation problematic.

Trying him on criminal charges could be difficult, too, in part because some of the evidence against him may have been obtained through torture and would not be admissible.

And staying the course in the Marri case would outrage civil libertarians.

“If they adopt the Bush administration position, or some version of it,” said Brandt Goldstein, a professor at New York Law School, “it is going to be a moment of profound disappointment for everyone in the legal community and Americans generally who believe that the Bush administration has tried to turn the presidency into a monarchy.”

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Mr. Obama, Brooke Anderson, said he “will make decisions about how to handle detainees as president when his full national security and legal teams are in place.”

There are other significant cases on the Supreme Court’s docket — including ones concerning indecency on the airwaves, religious displays, voting rights and the possible pre-emption of state injury suits by federal law — but specialists say a midcourse correction is most likely in the enemy combatant case, Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli, No. 08-368.

Charles Fried, who was solicitor general in the Reagan administration, said such changes should be undertaken “reluctantly and rarely” and only “for sufficient reason in a sufficiently urgent case.”

From the new administration’s perspective, Mr. Marri’s case may meet that standard.

A year ago, Mr. Obama answered a detailed questionnaire concerning his views on presidential power from The Boston Globe. “I reject the Bush administration’s claim,” Mr. Obama said, “that the president has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.”

That sounds vigorous and categorical. But applying this view to Mr. Marri’s case is not that simple. Although he was in the United States legally, he was not an American citizen. In addition, a 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force arguably gave the president the authority that Mr. Obama has said is not conferred by the Constitution alone.

Still, Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who has generally supported the Bush administration’s approach to fighting terrorism, said Mr. Obama’s hands are tied. He cannot, Mr. McCarthy said, continue to maintain that Mr. Marri’s detention is lawful.

“I don’t think politically for him that’s a viable option,” Mr. McCarthy said. “Legally, it’s perfectly viable.”

There is precedent for reversing course between campaign and courthouse. When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992, he was vehement in his opposition to the first Bush administration’s policy of intercepting Haitian refugees at sea and returning them without asylum hearings.

By the time he took office, though, Mr. Clinton had changed his mind, instructing the Justice Department to defend the policy in the Supreme Court, which upheld it in 1993.

Mr. Obama’s supporters are hoping for a different approach, one that will ensure that the precedents set during the Bush administration do not take root.

“The agenda for the Obama administration in dealing with the Bush administration’s assault on the rule of law,” said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University and a member of the Marri legal team, “should be to plow the site with both intellectual and political salt.”

In 1993, Mr. Clinton said that practical reality trumped legal theory. In the Marri case, too, the practical alternatives to military detention may strike the Obama administration as unpalatable.

One possibility is to deport Mr. Marri to Qatar, but Bush administration officials say that would be an enormous mistake.

“Al-Marri must be detained,” Jeffrey N. Rapp, a defense intelligence official wrote in a court filing in 2004, “to prevent him from aiding Al Qaeda in its efforts to attack the United States, its armed forces, other governmental personnel, or citizens.”

Mr. Marri’s lawyers would be delighted to see their client freed, but they are also eager to vacate a decision of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., in July upholding the president’s authority to detain Mr. Marri subject to a court hearing on whether he was properly designated an enemy combatant.

Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents Mr. Marri, emphasized both points.

“If, as President-elect Obama has pledged, the rule of law in America is to be restored,” Mr. Hafetz said, “then Mr. al-Marri’s military detention must cease and the lower court’s ruling upholding the president’s power to order the military to seize legal residents and American citizens from their homes and imprison them without charge, must be overturned.”

Another alternative for the new administration is to prosecute Mr. Marri as a criminal. But it is not clear that there is admissible evidence against him.

When Mr. Marri was arrested, in December 2001, he was charged with garden-variety crimes: credit card fraud and, later, lying to federal agents and financial institutions, and identity theft. But when Mr. Bush moved Mr. Marri from the criminal system to military detention in June 2003, the government agreed to dismiss those charges with prejudice, meaning they cannot be refiled.

The more serious accusations recounted in Mr. Rapp’s statement are attributed partly to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is believed to be the chief architect of the Sept. 11 attacks and who was captured in early 2003. The Central Intelligence Agency has said Mr. Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding, and information obtained from him may therefore not be admissible in court. Mr. McCarthy, the former prosecutor, said he hoped the new administration is sifting through its options with exceptional care.

“If they can’t try him in federal court and assuming he poses the severe risk the Bush administration suggests he poses, is there some room to detain him under the immigration system?” Mr. McCarthy asked. “If there is not a Plan B, we have a disaster that transcends al-Marri,” he added, referring to the larger question of what to do with the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

A second case concerning detainees is moving even faster than Mr. Marri’s. Last month, the Supreme Court ordered a federal appeals court to take a fresh look at a case brought by four former prisoners at Guantánamo Bay who say they were tortured. Acting fast, the appeals court initially ordered briefing to be completed by the Friday before Inauguration Day.

Depending on how you look at it, the appeals court was being exceptionally efficient, uninterested in the new administration’s views or doing it a favor by not forcing it to take an immediate position on whether provisions of the Bill of Rights and a federal law guaranteeing religious freedom apply to detainees held at Guantánamo Bay.

Eric L. Lewis, a lawyer for the former prisoners, asked the court to slow things down, a request the Bush Justice Department opposed. But the appeals court granted Mr. Lewis’s request on Friday, and the first filings are now due on Jan. 26 — the Monday after Inauguration Day.

Jim Manley, chief aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, pointed out that the Senate confirmed seven Cabinet choices of George W. Bush by his first-term inauguration on Jan. 20, 2001. This time around, given the crush of crises on the economic and foreign fronts, the Senate leadership will focus on trying to confirm national security and financial Cabinet members by the inauguration, Mr. Manley said.

Few of the nominations have sparked wide controversy, and it’s extremely rare for the Senate to reject presidential Cabinet nominees outright. It would be especially unusual this session, given that the incoming administration is Democratic as is the majority in the Senate, and considering the fact that Mr. Obama has invited several senators (and representatives) to join his Cabinet.

This week, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, set dates beginning next Thursday, Jan. 8, for three nominees. First up will be former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who has been nominated to be secretary of Health and Human Services.

Although Senator Kennedy has been battling a brain malignancy, he is expected to return to the Senate next week to preside at Mr. Daschle’s hearing, which will add poignancy to the proceeding. Mr. Kennedy has been a staunch proponent of health care reform, and has vowed to lead efforts on that front during this next session. As for Mr. Daschle, he’s already begun charting a course on health care policy, soliciting input over the Web from communities around the country and even attending a session on Monday in a small town in Indiana where citizens offered their own heartrending tales about insurance problems and illnesses.

The Senate Finance Committee, headed by Senator Max Baucus, also must consider Mr. Daschle’s nomination.

Next Friday, on Jan. 9, Mr. Kennedy’s committee will hold a confirmation hearing for Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis, the Labor secretary nominee. And on the following Tuesday, Arne Duncan, the Education secretary nominee, will appear before the HELP panel.

Other Senate committees have also penciled in hearing dates. Dr. Steven Chu’s confirmation hearing to be Energy Secretary will be held by the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Jan. 13; Gen. Eric Shinseki will appear before the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on Jan. 14; and Senator Ken Salazar will also appear for consideration as the Secretary of the Interior before the Energy and Natural Resources panel on Jan. 15.

One of the most closely watched hearings will be that for Eric Holder Jr., who has been nominated to the post of attorney general. The Judiciary Committee has set Jan. 15 as the date for Mr. Holder’s hearing to begin. That hearing had been delayed a bit by the committee chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy, after Republicans sought more time to review Mr. Holder’s record. One of the issues that might be exhumed again was his role, while deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in the controversial pardon process for financier Marc Rich, as well as other matters that fell within his purview.

No date has been set yet for the spotlight moment when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to answer questions rather than ask them. But it looks as if it could be as early as the second week of January. Aides to Senator John Kerry, chairman of the committee, indicated that details should be released within a few days.

And while a spokesman for Senator Dick Lugar, the ranking Republican on the committee, already indicated earlier that Republicans were not planning on insisting that former President Bill Clinton testify at her hearing, his name and affiliations — through his foundation work and speaking engagements — are bound to come up.

Along with Afghanistan and Iraq, the eruption of another crisis in the Mideast ensures hefty themes for senators to pursue as they explore what policy directions Senator Clinton might take as a member of the Obama administration. (It will be interesting to see how she draws on her husband’s dogged pursuit of peace in the region from his days as president.)

Another heavyweight hearing — in the forefront because of the economic stimulus package under consideration and the mega-bailouts already approved — will be that of Timothy Geithner, for Treasury secretary. While a date hasn’t been firmed up, his confirmation hearing will probably be held the week of Jan. 12.

The confirmation calendar, at this juncture, promises to be manna for policy wonks as everyone gets a glimpse of the incoming administration’s plans and its collective (or not so) thinking. (And if the Holder-Clinton-Geithner hearings all commence the second week of January, get ready for a lot of C-Span split-screening. Or perhaps we’ll feel a need for multi-TiVo’ing.)

But let’s not forget that the Senate is also likely to be incredibly distracted by the controversy over the appointment of Roland Burris to replace Mr. Obama as one of Illinois’ senators. The Democratic leadership, and Mr. Obama himself, are balking at seating Mr. Burris, a former state attorney general, because of the scandal surrounding Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, who named Mr. Burris on Tuesday.

Then again, there’s still the protracted struggle over filling Minnesota’s Senate seat. Will the Senate leadership insist on seating Al Franken if the incumbent, Norm Coleman, pursues a court battle?

Apart from those matters, still outstanding are other Senate Democratic seats not filled yet — to wit, Senator Clinton’s of New York and Senator Salazar’s of Colorado.

President-elect Barack Obama greeted well-wishers after working out at a Marine base in Honolulu on Tuesday.

Rahm Emanuel, the new White House chief of staff, had two conversations with Mr. Blagojevich and four calls with John Harris, the governor’s chief of staff, about the Senate seat. He provided a list of six names of Illinois Democrats whom Mr. Obama favored to fill his Senate seat.

“At no time in the discussion of the Senate seat or of possible replacements did the president-elect hear of a suggestion that the governor expected a personal benefit in return for making this appointment to the Senate,” said the report, which was written by Gregory Craig, the new White House counsel.

In a question-answer session just after the report’s release, Mr. Craig described the contacts between Mr. Emanuel and the governor’s chief of staff as “totally appropriate and acceptable” as well as “predictable.” In his conversations with the governor in the days immediately after the election, the report said, Mr. Emanuel was pushing Valerie Jarrett for the Senate seat. Mr. Emanuel said he made the recommendation before he knew that Mr. Obama “had ruled out communicating a preference for any one candidate.”

Ms. Jarrett, a close friend of the Obama family and a senior adviser to the campaign, removed her name from consideration for the Senate seat so she could work in the White House as a senior adviser to Mr. Obama.

Ms. Jarrett had a conversation with a union official, who told her that Mr. Blagojevich had expressed interest in becoming health and human services secretary in the Obama cabinet, Mr. Craig said. At the time of the conversation, on Nov. 7, Ms. Jarrett was still being mentioned as a candidate for Mr. Obama’s Senate seat.

However, Mr. Craig said, the union official was not acting as an emissary for the governor, and Ms. Jarrett told the union official it was “ridiculous” for the governor to even think of getting such a post, given the investigations swirling around him long before the latest controversy erupted.

The report, which was made public on Tuesday afternoon in the form of a five-page memorandum to the president-elect from Mr. Craig, showed more involvement from Mr. Emanuel in filling the Senate seat than had previously been known.

But Mr. Craig said there was no evidence of wrongdoing or suggestions that Mr. Emanuel was asked to provide favors to the governor in exchange for the Senate seat.

The report said that Mr. Emanuel “discussed the merits of potential candidates and the strategic benefit that each candidate would bring to the Senate seat.”

Mr. Emanuel gave the names of four Democrats from Illinois whom Mr. Obama “considered to be highly qualified,” including Dan Hynes, Tammy Duckworth, Representative Jan Schakowsky and Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. In later telephone calls, Mr. Emanuel also mentioned the names of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Ms. Cheryle Jackson.

“Mr. Harris did not make any effort to extract a personal benefit for the Governor in any of these conversations,” Mr. Craig wrote in the report. “There was no discussion of a cabinet position, of 501c(4), of a private sector position or of any other personal benefit to the governor in exchange for the Senate appointment.”

Mr. Obama, who is on vacation with his family here in Hawaii, is not planning to answer questions or speak publicly about the report.

The report, and the timing of its release, was a product of cooperation from the office of Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who is leading the federal investigation into Mr. Blagojevich. But according to people familiar with the report, lawyers who compiled the Obama review did not have access to wiretapped telephone conversations between Obama aides and the governor’s office.

Last week, Mr. Fitzgerald asked the Obama transition team to delay the release of its report so prosecutors could interview witnesses in the Blagojevich investigation. The office had yet to complete its interviews late last week, people familiar with the case said, and asked the Obama team not to release its report on Monday.

At a news conference three days after the election, Mr. Obama said he was staying out of the matter. “There are going to be a lot of good choices out there,” he said, “but it is the governor’s decision to make, not mine.”

Mr. Craig has worked with the United States attorney’s office, which has repeatedly suggested that Mr. Obama’s staff is not suspected of any wrongdoing.

The Obama report may not be the final word on the case. The review was compiled from memory by Mr. Obama’s aides, rather than from recordings of any phone calls.

The taped conversations, which were picked up through the court-approved wiretapping of Mr. Blagojevich and his chief of staff, Mr. Harris, will not become public until the case moves through the courts or goes to trial.

Asked whether he thought the prosecutor should release the tapes, Mr. Craig declined to answer, declaring that the matter was the prosecutor’s business. As for whether any new guidelines might be necessary for Obama staff members regarding whom they talk to, Mr. Craig dismissed the idea, saying no new rules were needed because the few conversations that occurred with the governor’s people were “completely innocent, completely appropriate.”

President-elect Barack Obama met with Senator John McCain, his Republican rival, after the election in November.

Two months after Barack Obama’s election, Republicans are struggling to figure out how — or even whether — to challenge or criticize him as he prepares to assume the presidency.

The president-elect is proving to be an elusive and frustrating target. He has defied attempts to be framed ideologically. His cabinet picks have won wide praise. An effort by the Republican National Committee to link Mr. Obama to the unfolding scandal involving Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois and the accusations that he tried to sell Mr. Obama’s Senate seat was dismissed by no less a figure than Senator John McCain, the Republican whom Mr. Obama beat for the presidency.

The toughest criticism of Mr. Obama during this period — in fact, the real only criticism of Mr. Obama during this period — has come not from the right but from the left, primarily over his selection of Rick Warren, a leading opponent of gay marriage, to deliver the invocation on Inauguration Day.

There are plenty of battles ahead that may provide Republicans an opportunity to find their footing. They will no doubt find arguments to use against Mr. Obama when he starts to lay out the details of his economic stimulus plans, or signals how aggressively he wants to fulfill a pledge to labor to back a bill that would take away employers’ right to demand a secret ballot-election to determine if workers wanted to unionize. And Mr. Obama is the beneficiary of the kind of post-election honeymoon Washington hasn’t seen in 16 years. (Bill Clinton, considering his own rocky introduction to Washington in 1992, might argue it has in fact been even longer than that).

Still, this image of Republican uncertainty is a testimony to the political skills of the incoming president, and a reminder of just how difficult a situation the Republican Party is in. More than that, though, Republicans and Democrats say, it is evidence of the unusual place the country is in now: buoyed by prospect of an inauguration while at the same time deeply worried about the country’s future. It is going to be complicated making a case against Mr. Obama, many Republicans said, in an environment where people simply want him to succeed and may not have much of an appetite for partisan politics.

“I think at a time like this, at a time of crisis, a lot of people would like to see people try to work together, especially with Obama not even being sworn in yet,” said Saul Anuzis, the Michigan Republican chairman and a leading candidate in the fight to be the next Republican National Committee leader. “What you don’t want to be is the party that’s always attacking or being negative with no alternatives.”

And in his blog, Mr. Anuzis wrote: “Where necessary, we should stand for what is right and forcefully be the loyal opposition. But partisan politics in times like these for the sake of politics is not healthy. ”

The situation Republican leaders find themselves in is reminiscent of the frustration displayed by Senator McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the presidential contest. First as a candidate and now as president-elect, Mr. Obama has proved deft at skirting ideological definitions; that has become even more clear as he has put together his cabinet and left open his options on issues like repealing tax cuts for the wealthy. The campaign clearly taught him how to avoid political mistakes and how to clean them up quickly; when at his first news conference he made an unkind remark about Nancy Reagan — a joke about her holding séances in the White House — he called her and apologized before the evening news.

Beyond that, the historic nature of his presidency — of being the first African-American president, and all the interest that has generated here and abroad — has complicated things even more for the opposition party.

The Republican National Committee, which is in the midst of an internal battle over who will be its next chairman, appears to be having particular trouble in finding the right tone. Since Election Day, it has continued with the daily patter of attacks on Mr. Obama that it offered right through the general election campaign, a strategy pushed by the chairman, Mike Duncan, but one that clearly does not have universal support.

Its attempt to link Mr. Obama to the ongoing corruption scandal in Illinois drew criticism not only from Mr. McCain but also Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker.

“I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles,” Mr. Gingrich wrote in a letter to Mr. Duncan.

For his part, Mr. Duncan, who is seeking re-election as chairman when Republicans gather here in January — a fight that is providing a backdrop to the party’s ongoing debate — said he thought there was a role for his party to act as “the loyal opposition: to ask questions, agree where you can, but ask questions all the time.”

Mr. Duncan acknowledged that this was not an easy task, particularly now, however, though he suggested it will get easier after Mr. Obama takes office and has to deal with the problems and fulfill his campaign promises.

“We’re in a honeymoon stage right now and everybody wants to se him succeed,” he said, though he quickly added that he was not frustrated.

“It’s too early,” Mr. Duncan said .”We’re still in this honeymoon phase and we will hold him accountable. We will work with him and try to make sure he keeps his promises.”

Katon Dawson, the South Carolina Republican chairman who is another candidate to lead the party, said that the task for Republicans was clear. “If I were the national chairman, I would hold the administration accountable for doing what it said it was going to do,” Mr. Dawson said.

How and when to do that, he said, was another matter. “It matters in the tenor and the tone and the substance,” Mr. Dawson said. “Right now there isn’t a public policy yet. So it’s probably premature.”

President-elect Barack Obama spoke about Illinois Gov. Rod R.Blagojevich during a news conference on Thursday in Chicago.

President-elect Barack Obama sought on Thursday to separate himself from the political scandal swirling around Governor Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, saying he never talked to the governor about who would replace Mr. Obama in the United States Senate.

Mr. Obama added that he was “absolutely certain” his staff was not involved in any deal-making regarding his successor.

“That would be a violation of everything that this campaign has been about,” he said at a news conference in Chicago.

Nonetheless, Mr. Obama said he was gathering an account of any contacts between his staff and the Blagojevich administration, and promised to release those details in the next few days. But he said his staff had acted appropriately.

“Our office had no involvement in any deal-making around my Senate seat — that, I’m absolutely certain of,” he said.

In his first extended remarks about the unfolding scandal, Mr. Obama said he was “appalled and disappointed” by accusations that Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat, tried to profit from his power to fill the Senate seat vacated by Mr. Obama after he won the presidency. He again called for the governor to resign.

“I think the public trust has been violated,” Mr. Obama said. “I do not think that the governor at this point can effectively serve the people of Illinois. I hope that the governor comes to the conclusion that he can no longer effectively serve, and that he does resign.”

His remarks, which came after two days of terse comments about Mr. Blagojevich, showed that Mr. Obama’s team recognizes it could face political peril if it does not address the scandal head-on.

Although prosecutors said Mr. Obama was not implicated in their investigation, the accusations of naked greed and brazen influence-peddling have raised uncomfortable questions about the political culture in which the President-elect began his career. And his transition team has been forced to shift its public focus away from Cabinet appointments and stimulus plans to address the scandal.

Republican leaders, sensing an opening, have raised questions about Mr. Obama’s relationship with various players in the Illinois political drama, and criticized Mr. Obama’s first remarks on Mr. Blagojevich as vague. They have urged Mr. Obama to divulge any contacts between his staff and the governor’s administration.

On Tuesday, Mr. Blagojevich was arrested on federal charges of conspiracy and soliciting bribes in an audacious series of pay-for-play schemes. Prosecutors say Mr. Blagojevich was eager to sell Mr. Obama’s Senate seat in order to secure an ambassadorship, a Cabinet position, a high-paying nonprofit job for himself or a lucrative spot on a corporate board for his wife.

According to conversations recorded by federal prosecutors, Mr. Blagojevich also tried to rescind funding for a Chicago children’s hospital when executives refused to give him a campaign contribution. Prosecutors say Mr. Blagojevich also to withhold state assistance from the financially ailing Tribune Company, which publishes the Chicago Tribune, unless it fired editorial writers who had criticized him.

The governor’s lawyer denied the charges. Mr. Blagojevich went to work on Wednesday and Thursday, a spokeswoman said, to address the state’s $2 billion budget gap.

At Thursday’s news conference, Mr. Obama took pains to divide himself and his promise for a new brand of politics from a political culture in Illinois that had been tainted by the drive for personal gain. While the two men may have lived in Chicago and served in Springfield, the state capital, Mr. Obama drew a bright line between himself and Mr. Blagojevich.

“We have to reclaim a tradition of public service that is about people and their lives, and their hopes, and their dreams,” he said, explaining why he became a politician. “And it isn’t about “What’s in it for me?’ ”

Mr. Obama even cited the criminal complaint in his defense, where prosecutors quote Mr. Blagojevich angrily cursing Mr. Obama and his staff because “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation.”

“I won’t quote back some of the things that were said about me,” he said. “This is a family program, I know.”

A near-unanimous chorus of politicians, including 50 Democratic senators and a host of Illinois leaders, has called for Mr. Blagojevich to resign immediately. The state’s General Assembly, which is out of session, is set to reconvene on Monday to draft legislation that would set up a special election to choose Mr. Obama’s replacement — overriding state law that now gives the governor the power to fill the seat — or investigate impeaching Mr. Blagojevich.

From his days leading The Harvard Law Review to his victorious presidential campaign, Barack Obama has always run meetings by a particular set of rules.

Everyone contributes; silent lurkers will be interrogated. (He wants to “suck the room of every idea,” said Valerie Jarrett, a close adviser.) Mention a theory and Mr. Obama asks how it translates on the ground. He orchestrates debate, playing participants off each other — and then highlights their areas of agreement. He constantly restates others’ contributions in his own invariably more eloquent words. But when the session ends, his view can remain a mystery, and his ultimate call is sometimes a surprise to everyone who was present.

Those meetings, along with the career they span, provide hints about what sort of president Mr. Obama might be. They suggest a cool deliberator, a fluent communicator, a professor with a hunger for academic expertise but little interest in abstraction. He may be uncomfortable making decisions quickly or abandoning a careful plan. A President Obama would prize consensus, except when he would disregard it. And his lifelong penchant for control would likely translate into a disciplined White House.

Winning the presidency is the latest in a lifetime of dramatic, self-induced transformations: from a child reared in Indonesia and Hawaii to a member of Chicago’s African-American community; from an atheist to a Christian; from a wonkish academic to the smoothest of politicians; and now, from an upstart who eight years ago was crushed in a Congressional race to the first black commander in chief of the only superpower on earth.

Turning deficits into assets — a skill Mr. Obama learned in his 20s as a community organizer — could well be called the motto of his rise. With his literary gifts, he transformed a fatherless childhood into a stirring coming-of-age tale. He used a glamourless state senator’s post as the foundation of his political career. He mobilized young people — never an ideal base, because of thin wallets and historically poor turnout — into an energetic army who in turn enlisted parents and grandparents. And even though his exotic name, Barack Hussein Obama, has spurred false rumors and insinuations about his background and beliefs, he has made it a symbol of his singularity and of America’s possibility.

But in the Oval Office, Mr. Obama would have a new set of deficits. Just 47 years old and only four years into a national political career, he has never run anything larger than his campaign. He began his run for president while he was still getting lost in Washington, a city he does not yet know well. His promises are as vast as his résumé is short, and some of his pledges are competing ones: progressive rule and centrist red-blue fusion; wholesale transformation and down-to-earth pragmatism.

Mr. Obama’s ambition and confidence have long confounded critics and annoyed rivals. In 2006, the still-new United States senator appeared before Washington’s elite at the spring dinner of the storied Gridiron Club, and as tradition dictated, roasted himself. He ticked off the evidence of his popularity: the Democratic convention speech that had won him national celebrity, the best-selling books, the magazine covers.

“Really, what else is there to do?” he said in mock innocence. “Well, I guess I could pass a law or something.”

He passed a few. By the end of the year, he was running for president.

A Disciplined Life

Barack Obama’s lowest moment as a community organizer in the 1980s came when he brought the executive director of the Chicago Housing Authority to Altgeld Gardens, a decrepit housing project, to hear complaints about asbestos. Seven-hundred residents grew restless waiting for the tardy director. When he finally appeared, the meeting grew so raucous that the director fled after 15 minutes, to chants of “No more rent!”

The young organizer was humiliated and angry, at himself. “It was embarrassing to him to have the residents out of control,” said Johnnie Owens, whom Mr. Obama would hire as a community organizer.

Mr. Obama has always prized order. Even at Occidental College, during what he has called his dissolute phase, students remember him as a model of moderation: not the pot-smoking, booze-swilling Barry of “Dreams From My Father,” his first book, but a morning jogger who studied hard and might allow himself a puff of a joint here, an extra beer there. “He was not even close to being a party animal,” said Vinai Thummalapally, a friend from those years.

When he applied for jobs, prospective employers often found that they were the ones being interviewed. In fact, when Michelle Obama was interviewing for a position in the Chicago mayor’s office, her new husband accompanied her to dinner with her prospective boss to make sure the job would not compromise Michelle’s values.

There is little Mr. Obama has controlled more tightly than his own story and message. Just as he was planning his entry into politics, he used “Dreams From My Father” to cast his peripatetic, confusing childhood into a lyrical journey. When he was elected to the United States Senate in 2004, Mr. Obama wrote his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” laying out his political philosophy. It meant getting only three or four hours of sleep at night, his editor said, but he insisted on writing the entire thing himself’. (He not only read policy books to prepare, but also some of the articles cited in their footnotes.) For his presidential campaign speechwriter, he chose a 26-year-old who describes his job as channeling the thoughts of a boss who already knows what he wants to say.

The senator has the discipline to avoid flaunting his oratorical gifts. Periodically during the campaign, rivals accused him of offering more style than substance; Mr. Obama responded with such sober speeches that supporters started to worry he was dull.

When it comes to making decisions, Mr. Obama’s impulse for control translates into a kind of deliberative restraint. He has always required time to mull: As a community organizer, he spent his evenings filling journals, trying to sort out the day’s confusion. During his seven years as a state senator, he used the time driving between Springfield and Chicago for contemplation; when staffers suggested that a candidate for the United States Senate should have a driver, Mr. Obama resisted, saying the driver might intrude. Hence Mr. Obama’s fluster when he misses his daily gym time. “That’s when he can get his mind straight,” said Jim Cauley, his campaign manager in the United States Senate race.

Mr. Obama resists making quick judgments or responding to day-to-day fluctuations, aides say. Instead he follows a familiar set of steps: Perform copious research. Solicit expertise. (What delighted Mr. Obama most about becoming a United States senator, he told an old boss, was his access to top scholars: he was a kid in the Princeton and Stanford candy shops.) Project all likely scenarios. Devise a plan. Anticipate objections. Adjust the plan, and once it’s in place, stick with it. In part, this approach explains how Mr. Obama won in the primaries: he exploited the electoral calendar and arcane differences in voting methods, and while Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton continually tried out new messages, Mr. Obama modified his only slightly, even when some supporters urged more dramatic change.

Like all other campaigns, Mr. Obama’s is imbued with its leader’s personality: it is a tight, centralized structure, run by a tiny group that permits no leaks. On the trail, Mr. Obama has struggled with the unpredictable questions and irritating time limits of presidential debates. He does not always react swiftly to unexpected shifts. This summer, Mr. Obama had just finished a perfectly planned tour of Europe when Russia blitzed into neighboring Georgia; he took several days to settle on a position. After Mr. McCain’s surprise selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, the Obama campaign seemed to struggle to react.

The only time Mr. Obama slips from “his normal cool self,” said Marty Nesbitt, a close friend, is “when something surprises him.”

In 2004, Mr. Obama gained sudden fame and fortune: his convention speech drew a nationwide standing ovation, he won a Senate seat, and he signed a multimillion-dollar book contract. Flush with cash for the first time, he made two financial decisions that cast doubt on his reputation as an anti-corruption crusader. He set up a blind trust for his investments, but sloppily so, managing to put thousands of dollars into a biotech company that was developing a drug to treat avian flu just as he pushed for federal financing to battle the disease.

And he allowed Antoin Rezko, a developer and longtime donor, to acquire and sell him land next to the dream house Mr. Obama was buying in Chicago, even though Mr. Rezko’s name was already cropping up in newspaper articles about corruption.

Wielding a Scalpel

Mr. Obama’s message of change can be hard to pin down, and he has spent his entire career searching for the right way to fulfill his desire for broad social renewal. First he became a community organizer, thinking change would flow from citizens upward; then he tried the law, which, as he learned from teaching legal history, was a highly imperfect instrument. Since then he has set his sights on changing government institutions, one higher than the next. Even in the Senate, he told a reporter, it was possible to have a career that was “not particularly useful.”

Critics have used the Rezko incident to question Mr. Obama’s reputation as a reformer, to argue he has few core beliefs. They cite a proposal he made in the Senate for stringent reporting requirements concerning nuclear plant leaks, which he then softened after Republican colleagues and energy executives complained. The bill died in committee. Or the time he joined a bipartisan coalition on immigration reform but backed away when labor groups protested. That legislation collapsed, too.

“He folded like a cheap suit,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and a close ally of Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival.

Most of all, his critics point to his “present” votes in the Illinois Legislature, in which he did not choose sides, avoiding difficult matters like trying juveniles as adults. At least 36 times (out of thousands of votes) Mr. Obama was the only senator to vote “present,” or one of just a few.

Even some of Mr. Obama’s friends call him unusually opaque. After hashing out a question with him, “you may come away thinking, ‘Wow, he agrees with me,’ ” said Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Columbia and a former adviser to Palestinian diplomatic delegations. “But later, when you get home and think about it, you are not sure.”

But defenders say that Mr. Obama’s reticence is as intellectual as it is tactical. He is a contextualist by nature, they say, suspicious of generalizations. He lived in enough places, at an early enough age, to realize that the same solutions do not work everywhere. Unlike his mother, an idealistic dreamer who moved to Indonesia without realizing a brutal coup had just taken place there, Mr. Obama seems more wary of venturing too far than not far enough. And his years teaching law — particularly chronicling the failure of broad, court-led efforts at social change — gave him a distrust of one-size-fits-all policies.

Countless times on the campaign trail, Mr. Obama cited the forceful speech he delivered in 2002 against the impending Iraq invasion. It had an unusual mantra for an antiwar rally: “I’m not opposed to all wars,” Mr. Obama repeated again and again, making his point as narrowly as possible.

Similarly, in the recent presidential debates, the candidates twice wrangled over the same question: how should the government cut spending? Mr. McCain called for an across-the-board freeze, but Mr. Obama resisted. “That’s using a hatchet,” he said. “I want to use a scalpel,” he continued, once again bypassing broad principle for a case-by-case approach.

A Commitment to Dialogue

As a law professor at the University of Chicago, Mr. Obama taught a young woman named Uzma Sattar, who was unpopular in class, students said, because of comments she made that others frequently found abrasive. But in a recent interview Ms. Sattar said that Mr. Obama, whom she visited during office hours, was kinder to her than any other faculty member — the only one, she said, who seemed to understand the loneliness of being the sole woman to wear a headscarf.

Barack Obama prides himself on trying to see the world through others’ eyes. In his books, he slips into the heads of his Kenyan relatives, teenage mothers in Chicago, Reagan Democrats, bean farmers in Southern Illinois, and evangelical Christian voters.

He won the presidency of the Harvard Law Review in part because, weeks before voting, he made a speech in favor of affirmative action that so eloquently summarized the objections to it that the Review’s conservatives decided he felt their concerns deeply.

That very first presidential election, carried out in the law school’s stately, leaf-strewn quadrangle, would prove typical of Mr. Obama’s lifelong quest to mediate conflict, and of the way that goal has merged with his own quest for advancement. He wants those on each side of the most toxic conflicts in American life — over race, faith, abortion — to resolve their differences, and in resolving them, to join his cause as well. He has a deep philosophical commitment to dialogue, suggesting that more of it will heal America’s bruised standing in the world, and he expressed far more willingness to meet with enemies than his primary or general election opponents.

But Mr. Obama’s efforts to relate to everyone can get him in trouble. He initially placed the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his pastor and an incendiary speaker, at the center of his candidacy, titling a book after one of his sermons and originally asking him to speak at the announcement that he would run for president. (Mr. Obama eventually canceled.) “Reverend Wright is a child of the ’60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through,” he explained in an interview. It took another year and a potentially mortal threat to his campaign for him to sever ties with the minister.

Mr. Obama’s tendency to see things from the perspectives of others, aides say, meant that during the primaries, he could not work up much antipathy for his rivals.

“He’s not consumed by hatred for his opponents,” said David Axelrod, his chief strategist.

In fact, Mr. Obama can be overly familiar with them. When Mr. Obama draped a hand across Cindy McCain’s back after the second presidential debate, she stiffened visibly. He has done the same to President Bush and Mrs. Clinton. In 2004, he approached Alan Keyes, his opponent in the Senate race, at a parade and the situation grew so tense that aides had to diffuse it.

“It’s an uninvited embrace,” said Stanley Renshon, a psychologist who studies presidents, of a habit that Mr. Obama has called unconscious. “Bridging has to be an invitation, not a hand in the back pushing you towards something.”

Bridging the Divide

As a teenager, Mr. Obama, son of a white woman from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, wanted little more than to feel like an African-American. Training his eyes on a grainy television in his grandparents’ Hawaii apartment, he imitated the dance steps on “Soul Train” and Richard Pryor’s outrageous jokes. He locked himself in his bedroom to read James Baldwin and Malcolm X.

Decades later, Mr. Obama is a proud son of the African-American community, and at campaign events with black voters, the connection was visceral. He could seem both more relaxed and more animated than usual, stretching out his stump speech into something more like a sermon, luxuriating in the call-and-response with the crowd.

Most of the time, Mr. Obama spoke lightly of the historic nature of his candidacy, and he is something of a postracial figure, with too many varied influences and constituencies to count. But a few times during the campaign — on the night of his Iowa caucus victory; in Philadelphia when he spoke of America’s failure to grapple with the original sin of slavery — Mr. Obama allowed voters to see just how heavily the country’s divided past sits on his slender shoulders. That weight seems like part of the answer to a central Obama mystery: where all of that burning ambition comes from, what possesses him to push so hard and so fast.

Nearly two decades ago at Harvard, Mr. Obama had his first taste of a barrier-smashing presidential victory, one that made other students weep with jubilation.

Gordon Whitman, one of the classmates who decided that long-ago election, recalled: “We all understood there was a chance to make history.”