Some longtime hands, however, complain that CNN has sacrificed substance for style.
But his strategy now reflects a calculation advisers made this summer -- over the strenuous objections of some longtime hands who helped him build his "Straight Talk" image -- to shift the campaign more toward disqualifying Mr. Obama in the eyes of voters.
"It's a political circus," said Bert Ely, a banking consultant and longtime Washington hand.
Gianandrea Noseda, Valery Gergiev's longtime Italian hand at the Mariinsky Theatre, conducts.
The search will be guided by Jim Johnson, a longtime Democratic hand in Washington.
The most likely choice, officials said, is former Representative Lee H. Hamilton, a longtime China hand who now runs the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
J. Cofer Black, the longtime C.I.A. hand who is now Blackwater's vice chairman, has signed on as a Mitt Romney adviser.
"Hitting, hitting, hitting," Greg Harden, an associate athletic director and longtime Michigan hand, said when asked the difference between Rodriguez and Hoke.
The present ambassador, Andrey Avetisyan, is a longtime Afghan hand; he was here in the early 1980s, and again when the embassy was evacuated in the '90s.
The search is in its earliest phases, officials said, and Mr. Obama has asked Jim Johnson, a longtime Democratic hand, to lead the process.
