Obama's first newspaper interview

LAT has an edited transcript and to answer the question burning on everyone's mind, yes, "he intends to be sworn into office using his given middle name, Hussein," noting that's customary and not intended to send any kind of political message. In other matters of great import, the Obamas will join a church in DC and keep their home in Chicago as a getaway. Shockingly, a month after the election and almost a month and a half before he's sworn in, he didn't present a detailed manifesto for cleaning up the most colossal mess in recent history, that he'll be inheriting from Bush.

You can read the whole thing for yourself at the link. I thought the most interesting question was this one.

Q: What's it been for you to see Chicago in this national spotlight? It has to be sort of surreal for you to drive through the city and see your face painted on the sides of buildings and on lamp posts. What's that like for you?

O: You know, unfortunately, because I'm in this bubble (See Secret Service motorcade photo to left), I don't get to see all this stuff. It's the hardest thing to adjust to about being president-elect.

It was bad, you know, during the campaign and it got progressively worse the further along we got. And now it's very tough. I don't get a chance to wander around neighborhoods, interact the way I would like to interact.

After the last eight years of a inept president that insisted we just trust him, I wince as much as the next guy when Obama essentially asks us to do the same thing. But the difference is Obama recognizes he's in a bubble and unlike Incurious George is actively studying the problems. Additionally, he's not coming into office with an agenda to prove government doesn't work by deliberately sabotaging every function of it. I see no reason to believe he'll be directed by his advisors. Rather the opposite.

As to whether his vision will please us "angry lefties," I expect it won't. But no matter how disappointingly incremental the change he believes in might turn out to be, it will still be light years better than what we just lived through. So there's that. [graphic]

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]