Sorcerer's Apprentice Transition

Barack Obama's to-do list just keeps growing as aides tell us he is "closely monitoring" the Gaza crisis even as they keep repeating the one-president-at-a-time mantra.

In the weirdest transition in White House history, the question of being ready on Day One, which was the subject of so much debate earlier this year, has morphed into two months of pre-presidential involvement in bailouts and economic stimulus debates--and now a full-blown foreign policy flap.

According to senior adviser David Axelrod, Condoleeza Rice is keeping the President-Elect up to speed "to get a handle on the situation, so that, when he becomes president on January 20, he has the advantage of all the facts and information leading up to that point."

When the training wheels come off that day, Obama may be hurtling downhill steering his way around a Middle East roadblock as he tries to get to the economic mess.

It's all beginning to look like the sorcerer's apprentice in an overflowing presidential workshop.