President-Elect Obama Holds First Press Conference

Barack Obama held his first press conference as president-elect yesterday in Chicago. He did not announce any cabinet appointments, but did give some strong clues who they'd be by surrounding himself with fifteen of his economic advisers, a heavyweight cast of former Treasury secretaries, business leaders and financial experts as well as Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

He immediately reminded everyone that we only have one president at a time, and that until January 20, that president is George Bush. After that, he underscored the "sobering news" that the nation lost 240,000 jobs in October and then he went into his immediate economic agenda.

Obama said that he wanted to extend unemployment benefits and put an emphasis on job growth. He also says that he supports Congress's plan to give billions to help the ailing auto industry, which has reported record losses this past quarter.

When he was asked how he would spend his first days as president, Obama responded by saying that passing a stimulus package would be the first thing he gets done, if one does not get passed by the lame duck Congress before his inauguration.

Regarding cabinet appointments, the president-elect said that he would "move with all deliberate haste, emphasis on deliberate as well as haste."

Obama also reminded reporters that he would be meeting with President Bush on Monday. He said that he did not expect any problems and thought it would be a substantive discussion and they would meet with "a spirit of bipartisanship."

When asked about the all-important issue of the Obama family's new dog, he responded, "Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypoallergenic," he said. "On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog, but obviously a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me. So whether we're going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household."

Asked whether he had spoken to past presidents, Obama said he had talked to "all of them that are living." As an aside, he joked: "I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances." He is referring to how, as first lady, Nancy Reagan spoke to an astrologer in setting former President Reagan's schedule. He later called and apologized to Mrs. Reagan, but it was pretty funny.

Overall, he did very well. He was charming, fairly substantive, and more at ease than he was on the campaign trail. His humor came through well and he was very assertive. However, he did not offer any real specific proposals, stayed fairly vague, and just repeated many of his campaign promises.

But he seems to have a rapport with the press, which is a real change from the current president, who rarely holds news conferences and has little regard for the press corps.