Donald Trump spoke during a campaign rally in Hershey, Pa,. on Nov. 4. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)

Perhaps the most important decision that a president-elect can make is the first one: Whom to name as the first leaders to help manage his or her administration. It sets the tone for the future president's approach to leadership, sends signals about strategy, broadcasts whether olive branches will be extended across the aisle and showcases how loyal a president will be to his or her staunchest defenders.

Those looking for clarity from Donald Trump on many of those signals, however, will be left wanting. The president-elect on Sunday named Reince Priebus as his chief of staff. In selecting the chairman of the Republican National Committee -- a Washington insider generally accepted by the broader Republican Party -- Trump is signaling that the traditionally highest-ranking employee in the White House and gatekeeper to the president will be an establishment figure. That came two days after naming his vice president, Mike Pence, to lead his transition team in favor of loyalists such as  New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Yet Trump has also named as his chief strategist Steve Bannon, the chief executive of his campaign and former head of Breitbart News, the far-right news platform that has published articles that have defended the Confederate flag and have that said birth control makes women "unattractive and crazy." Breitbart has also been embraced by the white nationalist movement -- in a press release, the two were called "equal partners."

The "partnership" sets up a potential battle royale in the White House between the establishment figures Trump will need to help him govern and the controversial outsiders who helped propel his campaign. With these announcements -- the pivotal first ones that set the tone of Trump's presidency -- determining what kind of president Trump will be is no clearer, and no easier. As The Washington Post's Dan Balz wrote Saturday: "Trump always said he liked to be unpredictable, and so it is left to others right now to imagine how all the conflicts, contradictions and questions will be resolved."