The question of who to appoint to the State Department and the Treasury will be uppermost in President Obama's mind as he plans his Cabinet for a second term.
With Hillary Clinton having signalled her intention to step down as Secretary of State, names in the frame to replace her include 2004 presidential contender John Kerry, chairman of the Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations, and UN ambassador Susan Rice.
Both have experience, but some doubt whether Mr Kerry would adhere to Mr Obama's agenda. His appointment would also prompt a Senatorial election in his state of Massachusetts, which the president may wish to avoid. Ms Rice, meanwhile, was accused by Republicans in September of misleading the public after incorrectly asserting a terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi stemmed from a protest.
Frontrunner to replace the Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner is the president's much-trusted chief of staff Jacob Lew.
With Defence Secretary Leon Panetta on the verge of retirement, Michele Flournoy is tipped to take over.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article