President-elect Barack Obama keeps saying the obvious in observing that "we have only one president at a time." It's a fact, despite the appearance in the departing Bush administration that Dick Cheney also seemed to play the role from time to time.

Presidents-elect historically and constitutionally have waited until their swearing-in on Inaugural Day before taking the reins of the nation, even in times of dire crisis. But Obama's rapid and highly visible steps to organize an economic go-team well in advance of the formal passing of power looks a lot like a de facto transfer.

George W. Bush, to be sure, remains president for almost two more months. Yet Obama, by holding a full-blown news conference to confirm the members of that team led by Tim Geithner as treasury secretary and Larry Summers as head of the National Economic Council, has already created the impression of hitting the ground running on his own.

Obama's announcements, along with the outgoing administration's decision to give a further bailout to banking and investment giant Citicorp, provided at least a temporary boost to investment confidence and stock market prices. Seldom in the past has a president-elect seized the opportunity to show leadership ex officio.

At the same time, Obama has been wise to resist the suggestion of former secretary of state and treasury James A. Baker III that he join Bush in some symbolic joint action to cope with the financial crisis. Obama needs any connection with the discredited lame-duck president like he needs a hole in the head.

Baker, the wily Republican political strategist for both Bush presidents, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, made the suggestion Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." But another guest, former Clinton Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, now part of the Obama transition team, gently brushed it aside. He praised George W's cooperation in the transition but pointedly observed that the president-elect has his own crisis-rescue plans.

In this, Obama is taking a leaf from the Franklin D. Roosevelt playbook in coping with the financial crisis he faced when he assumed the presidency in 1933. According to the late Nathan Miller in his excellent biography, FDR as president-elect flatly rejected President Hoover's pre-inauguration overture to join him in calling for a bank closing.

Miller quoted a conversation between the two men in which Hoover was said to have asked FDR: "Well, will you join me in signing a joint proclamation tonight, closing all the banks?" Roosevelt reportedly replied: "Like hell I will! If you haven't got the guts to do it yourself, I'll wait until I am president to do it!"

According to Miller, Hoover was furious at the refusal, especially because the departing president previously had been warned that a key FDR braintruster, Rexford Tugwell, was saying he and other advisers believed the banking system was on the verge of collapse, "which would place the responsibility in the lap of President Hoover."

To order just such a bank holiday, President-elect FDR had to cool his jets for four months after winning the Oval Office, and to launch his famous 100 Days of feverish activity attempting to lift the country out of the early depths of the Great Depression.

Obama, with an interregnum of only two months before his inauguration, nevertheless clearly judged that, out of both political and practical considerations, he could not wait to demonstrate his willingness and readiness to lead. If his early actions, if only in words, can create an impression of urgency and decisiveness, he will have taken a big first step in rebuilding public confidence well before taking the oath of office.

So far, the stars seem uncommonly aligned in Obama's favor. Well before his Nov. 4 election, he had been talking about a second economic stimulus package on the heels of Bush's own inadequate one to jump-start the economy. Now his notion appears well on its way, with a strengthened Democratic Congress poised to follow Obama's lead on Day 1 of his presidency.

Bush meanwhile is being obliged prematurely to take a back seat in his waning White House days, even as the nation "has only one president at a time."

Jules Witcover's latest book, on the Nixon-Agnew relationship, "Very Strange Bedfellows," has just been published by Public Affairs Press. Reach him at juleswitcover@earthlink.net.