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Terry Sullivan is the executive director of the White House Transition Project and an associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He recently released a study on the work schedules of the presidents during their first 100 days in office.

Sullivan spoke with NationalJournal.com's Michelle Williams last week about the pitfalls and opportunities of the first 100 days and gave his take on what Barack Obama's first days in office might look like. Edited excerpts follow.

NJ: Why are the first 100 days so important?

Sullivan: Well, I think there are two basic reasons. One is because almost every president since [Franklin D. Roosevelt] has sort of focused on it themselves. It's a standard. It's an easy thing to identify and sit down at the end of the 100 days and say what has this guy accomplished and what have they not accomplished. So it's an easy standard to hold every president against, to compare every president to.

The second thing, which is probably more important, is that the policymaking community is, I want to say, a professional community. It's a group of people who have been doing policymaking for a very long time, and it's a very specialized community.

And so the first 100 days are important for reputational reasons. Members of the president's congressional party often are required to take chances with their own careers in making public policy decisions that often they feel like are forced on them by an administration. They need to know that the new president essentially -- literally -- knows what he's doing. There are many public policy issues which are essentially 50 one way and 50 another way, and they look for guidance and leadership.

So you get some sense of the professional reputation of the president, and the same is true of the executive branch. It's critical for the presidency that it act and speak with one voice, and the hundreds of thousands of federal employees look to the president's early activities to give them some idea of the lead that they're supposed to follow.

NJ: Do you think Obama is on track to do well for his first 100 days in office?

Sullivan: Yeah. One of the things that we keep track of -- the White House Transition Project does -- is how quickly the president-elect puts in place the kind of operation that is necessary for a successful White House to work. There are 12 positions that we think of as being critical to a functioning White House, and the president-elect has already announced the selection of eight of those 12.

NJ: Which are the 12?

Sullivan: Chief of staff, transition director, national security adviser, director of the Office of Management and Budget, director of personnel, director of White House management and administration, congressional relations, White House counsel, press secretary, staff secretary, communications director and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

And right now, of the 12, Obama has set a record for earliest appointment on six of those 12. And there are still four remaining that he hasn't appointed he could still set a record on. I mean, he's going to announce the OMB director today [Nov. 25], and that would be a seventh record-setting appointment. And he's bested the average presidential transition on each one of the eight. So he's either bested the average or bested the fastest appointment on all eight of the 12 positions that he's already appointed.

So that's pretty good. And I think that has a little to do with knowing what those jobs were and knowing how important it is to get the White House appointed, because that's really the core of the presidential decision-making apparatus.

NJ: What might we expect from Obama during his first days in office?

Sullivan: Well, I think obviously there's going to be a huge push for an economic stimulus package. The economy has really taken away from him the opportunity to pursue the sort of campaign promises that he made. So first and foremost will be the economy; first and foremost will be the setting out of the federal budget. You know, I think we can expect those to go quickly.

We can expect the nominations to get approval quickly. Typically when we have presidents and majorities in the Senate of the same party, what happens is that we get lightning advise-and-consent, and I would expect that. So the president-elect will really have a good opportunity to focus on an agenda that he wants to focus on, or that he needs to focus on, and he'll have a team in place to will allow him to focus on them. So I would think there would be quick consideration of the things he thinks will make a difference.

Click here to read the complete interview and check out the new blog Lost in Transition, a joint effort of Government Executive and National Journal.