When the 14th Earl of Derby took office as Prime Minister for the first time in 1852, his Conservative party had been radically diminished by its rancorous split over the Corn Laws and he was forced to form an administration of politicians most people had never heard of.

The list was so unfamiliar that, when it was read out in the House of Lords, the aged Duke of Wellington, his hearing almost gone completely, repeatedly turned to his colleagues after each name and asked “Who? Who?” The administration collapsed in a few months but its anonymity lasted longer and it is known for ever as the Who? Who? Ministry

There's no danger that Barack Obama's Cabinet will be greeted with such unrecognising puzzlement when he takes office as the 44th president of the United States next month.

The young new president, elected with the least national political experience of any US leader in more than half a century, has gone out of his way to appoint a team of seasoned political and policymaking professionals who, in their different ways, have been at the forefront of US government for two decades.

It comprises a remarkable series of interlocking groups from different backgrounds, none of whom is really distinguished by special proximity to Mr Obama himself or by any obvious appearance of political newness.

There is first the Team of Rivals, the much ballyhooed echo of Abraham Lincoln's first Cabinet in 1861. Mr Obama has found a job for almost all the leading Democrats who ran against him this year. Joe Biden, of course, the 35-year Senate veteran, will be vice-president. Hillary Clinton, his nominee for Secretary of State, needs, as they say, no introduction. This week he added Bill Richardson, the New Mexico Governor, sometime UN Ambassador and Energy Secretary in the Clinton Administration, as his Commerce Secretary.

The only thing we can be reasonably sure of is that John Edwards - the other prominent rival from the primary, whose promising career was derailed by his admission of an extramarital affair while his wife was being treated for cancer - won't be getting the call from Chicago any time soon.

Then there is the economic team, charged with navigating a way out of the worst mess in the US in 75 years. This might be called the Robert Rubin Memorial All Stars. Mr Rubin, Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, a former chief of Goldman Sachs, dominated Democratic Party economic thinking in the 1990s - pro-market, pro-deregulation, and sensitive to the interests and concerns of Wall Street. You might have thought that was not the recipe a new administration would want to follow, but Mr Obama seems to have opted for it.

Larry Summers, who succeeded Mr Rubin at Treasury in 1999, will be his chief economic counsellor at the White House (and chairman-in- waiting of the Federal Reserve, if the rumours are to be believed). The Treasury Secretary will be Tim Geithner, Mr Rubin's protégé in the 1990s, and one of the three men (the others are Ben Bernanke, the present Fed chairman, and Henry Paulson, the present Treasury chief) who have been driving the US Government's response to the financial crisis.

The third group of prominent policymakers is the Political Opponents - or those with no known connection to the Democratic Party who have distinguished themselves as non-ideological, technocratic centrists. Robert Gates, George Bush's choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld two years ago, stays on as Defence Secretary. James Jones, the genial, 6ft 4in Marine general and former Nato commander, whose closest known political relationship is with John McCain, will be his national security adviser. He might have got the job if Mr McCain had won the election.

If tomorrow the President-elect were to announce that he had, after careful deliberation, decided to keep Dick Cheney on as a special adviser on how to deal with Iran and as an occasional guest at Obama White House shooting parties, no one would be surprised.

There is, as yet, no place in the top ranks for the true Obama-ites, the political newbies who have been with the Illinois Senator since he started his long-shot campaign two years ago. Susan Rice, named as UN Ambassador this week, got closest. But hers is not a policymaking job and in any tussles with Mrs Clinton there's not much doubt who will be wearing the pantsuit.

It doesn't sound much like the change that America was promised, and in Obama circles there is a faint fear that the co-optation process, so familiar when new, exciting outsiders enter government, is more or less complete even before the President takes office.

What does it all mean? One possibility is, that, far from demonstrating an unexpected timidity on the new President's part, his choices demonstrate how supremely self-confident he is, a man with no need of like-minded yes men and women around him. He is, as he carefully reminded everyone this week - in earshot of Mrs Clinton - the person who will set the course for policy. Having all those familiar faces in place might actually make it easier to shift the country in a sharply different direction from the Bush years or the Clinton years.

I find that half-convincing.

On national security, the signals suggest otherwise. As some of us have argued over the past year, the world might be surprised in the next year by the amount of continuity in US foreign policy. It's quite possible that the really big change occurred four years ago, when George Bush began his second term and began steadily undoing most of the things he had done in his first term.

But it would be wrong to assume that the Obama years won't mark real change - especially in the economic field.

New leaders often arrive with an agenda and a team that offers change with reassuring continuity. Franklin Roosevelt came to office in 1933 pledging to rein in government spending. Margaret Thatcher's first Cabinet in 1979 was stacked with “Wets” - moderate Tories who openly disdained her radicalism.

What matters is a combination of leadership and circumstances. There is a profound sense now that, just as it was in 1933, or Britain was in 1979, the US is at an historical pivot.

The economic crisis that threatens its long-term prosperity and even its security will surely call forth a change in its political economy - how government leads and interacts with the people.

This kind of force is much more powerful than the personalities in a Cabinet. Only a true leader can harness it and drive it successfully. Mr Obama may or may not be that leader. But he is surely going to get the chance to prove it - and no member of his team can or will do it for him.

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