In the counting-chickens-before-they-hatch department today, Politico's Mike Allen has the first of what will soon be many comprehensive reports on the early buzz about key cabinet and staff appointments in an Obama Administration.

Get used to ignoring these things, for a while at least. Team Obama's famously leak-proof character means there's unlikely to be any hard information on their staffing plans until they are just about ready to be publicly disclosed. It also means that most "predictions" will be the result of uninformed if rational speculation, or worse yet, of self-promotion by candidates for high office who seek to offset their lack of influence with Obama by stimulating Beltway buzz.

Looking over Allen's list, I see several that just leap off the page as laughably improbable. Within Obama's campaign and transition operations, there are certainly plenty of veterans of the Clinton administration who remember the damage self-inflicted in late 1992 by public jockeying for jobs among Democrats. I seriously doubt we see anything like that if Barack Obama wins the presidency tomorrow.