Who's Who.

What will life outside the White House be like for Bill Clinton's former staffers, the John Podestas, the Gene Sperlings, and the Bruce Reeds? A hint is supplied by Tony Snow, who remembers that during his last year as a speech writer for George Bush the elder, he received more than 400 Christmas cards. The following year, he received 25.

If there is, as some internal observers suspect, already a bureaucratic struggle over control of national security policies between Secretary of State Colin Powell on one side, and Vice President Dick Cheney on the other, the first two rounds go to Cheney. Powell wanted Tom Ridge for Secretary of Defense, Cheney preferred Donald Rumsfeld. Powell favored Richard Armitage for Deputy Secretary of Defense. Cheney wanted Paul Wolfowitz. President George W. Bush, of course, picked Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

In March 1979, Norman Mineta, the new Secretary of Transportation, was a member of Congress, the first Japanese-American ever elected from the continental United States, so he seemed like a natural for the guest list when Jimmy Carter's White House held a state dinner for the Japanese prime minister. But he wasn't invited. Why? The White House staff thought he was Italian.

Liberals already worried about conservative domination of the federal judiciary had their anxieties exacerbated by two recent reports. One, by Paul Bedard of U.S. News and World Report, says that the Bush team considers John Ashcroft to be the top choice to replace U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The other, by USA Today's loan Biskupic, says Lee Liberman Otis, a protege of Antonin Scalia and a founder of the right-wing Federalist Society, perhaps best known for its dedicated effort to destroy Bill Clinton, "is taking a leading role in the judicial selection process" for the new administration.

It has long been rumored that the big shots at our major dailies treasure their weekends and thus tend to leave the second team in charge of putting the final touches on the Sunday paper. The result has been that sometimes the Sunday news sections, in particular, don't reflect the best editorial decisions. This may be why, even though their staff had most of Saturday to contemplate Bill Clinton's pardon list, neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post deemed Marc Rich significant enough to include in the half-dozen photographs each ran with its account of the president's indulgences. This omission prompted a Sunday phone call to this office by a member of our staff saying, "The Post and the Times really blew it. They didn't realize that Marc Rich was the big pardon story" Similar calls must have been made to the Times and Post. On Monday, they had the Marc Rich story on the front page.

Democratic lobbyists were busy making peace with Republicans during the festivities of the Inaugural weekend. Conspicuous, among the partygoers were Jack Valenti and Vernon and Ann Jordan. Among the party-givers was long-time Democratic lawyer-lobbyist (and Cokie Roberts' brother) Tommy Boggs, whose 1,000-guest shindig honored lawyers Ted Olson and Ben Ginsberg, who had played major roles in persuading the courts that George W. Bush should be president.

The Bush transition teams were laden with business types. Eighteen of the 38 people advising the Interior Department, 17 of the 48 advising Energy, and 14 of the 31 advising Agriculture are either lobbyists or corporate executives, according to the Environmental Working Group, a nonpartisan research organization. The Interiorteam, for example, includes Henson Moore, chairman of the American Forest & Paper Association, and Association lobbyist Steven Quarles, according to The Washington Post's John Mintz.

The credibility of George W. Bush's self-portrait as a "uniter not a divider" has not been heightened by his appointment to the White House staff of not one, not two, but three former aides to Rep. Dick Armey, whose virtues have never been thought to include a gift for conciliation.

A fox who is not just advising but is himself in the chicken coop is Mitchell E. Daniels, the new head of the Office of Management and Budget, where one of his major responsibilities will be monitoring the administration's prescription drug plan and Medicare overhaul. For the last 13 years, he has been corporate vice-president at Eli Lilly.

Robert Kennedy Jr., who heads an environmental group, had a tough time on ABC's This Week. When he attacked Interior Secretary Gale Nortows defense of Colorado's self-auditing laws (which encourage companies to report pollution problems without fear of prosecution), Colorado governor Bill Owens replied: "Democratic Governor Roy Romer signed that law. Current U.S. Congresswoman Diana DeGette of Denver, a Democratic environmentalist, authored that law. Thirty states have self-audit laws. [Then Colorado Attorney General Norton] was defending that law in court, which, if she thinks the law is constitutional, is her duty. For Robert Kennedy to attack the self-audit law is to attack Diana DeGette and Roy Romer, not Gale Norton."

Another potential turf battle could come in the White House where Karen Hughes may find herself defending her advice on media relations against such savvy Washington insiders as Mary Matalin and Margaret Tutwiler. Matalin is the better known of the two but some veteran Washingtonians think Tutwiler was the schmoozer behind James Baker's mastery of the press as White House Chief of Staff and as Secretary of the Treasury and of State.

The suspicion expressed in these pages (see January/February's "Tilting at Windmills") that Judge Charles Burton, despite his judicial demeanor, was actually dragging his feet for George W. Bush during the crucial Palm Beach recount has been confirmed in a long series on the Florida elections aftermath by The Washington Post's David von Drehle, Ellen Nakashima, Susan Schmidt and Ceci Connolly, which points out that Burton was a Jeb Bush appointee whose future prospects would be enhanced by the governor's continued regard.

Fifteen years ago, Steven Waldman wrote a memorable article in this magazine crowning Norman Ornstein as the king of quotes. The most recent contender for Ornstein's rifle, according to The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, is Marshall Wittman. Wittman's explanation for his sudden ubiquity: "I probably have an unusual market niche as a Texan who is an ex-Trotskyite, former Chrisdan Coalition McCainiac. I'm like the Zelig of punditry."