All Obama had to do in his first press conference since his election to be President so as to establish himself as head and shoulders above the President he will follow in office was to give direct and substantive answers to the questions asked of him and not offer only gratuitous and garbled platitudes that pass in George Bush’s mind for a political philosophy, nor engage in that other Bush practice of offering the reiteration of a declaration as a demonstration of said declaration. Obama clearly passed that test, but he did much more than that.

Obama was nervous. He gave a one word answer to an early question and then went on too long about the choice of a dog. His joke on himself, that he preferred “a mutt, like me” did not get a laugh, perhaps because the press corps still does not know how to handle a half-breed President. He could have done more to acknowledge the existence of the people standing behind him, those heavy weights that deserved something more for standing there, though they would do so all day even if they did not expect a cabinet appointment. He even allowed himself an unnecessary dig at Sarah Palin who, for the moment, seems so hapless. The last question put to him asked when he would appoint a treasury secretary. His answer was that it was very important to take your time to make good choices, which is what he had done when he selected Biden and Emanuel. Take that, Sarah. It is a fair point but one he no longer needs to make.

Obama had good reason to be nervous. The New York Daily News had, on the morning of the press conference, headlined the fact that he had received his first full intelligence briefing the day before. That was trumpeted as the first step in his entry into the inner sanctum, or maybe the second step, given the heightened Secret Service presence, or maybe the third step, after the adulation and historical significance of his election set in the moment he was elected. There were also questions from the reporters about whom he was reading to prepare for this moment, and his answer, Lincoln, seemed both appropriate and probably true, which was probably not the case with the list of books W. was always supposed to be reading. Washington was rife with anticipation. Candy Crowley herself got nervous and asked a stupid question about whether he had heard something startling in the intelligence briefing, a question he obviously could not answer, but rather than deflecting it, he said he could not say if such were the case.

Everybody, therefore, is still focused on the fact that Obama is going to be President. That is still what haunts the occasion, and may do so for a week or so. It is very much like what happened when J. F. K. suddenly became a larger than life figure just after having won his election, and one of the stories sold about him, in those early days, along with his wartime heroism and his charming family, was his campaign for the presidency. Well, every President has been through a successful campaign. It was just too early to get down to business with Kennedy, and yet it is not too early to get back to business with Obama, given the state of the economy and the burden of the advice given to him by all the men and women standing behind him.

Actually, Obama accomplished a lot more with his press conference than just breaking the ice. He moved ahead his agenda by what he chose to say or not say, which is something Bush could never do because all Bush could do was to announce a policy already decided upon and so served only as a rather bad press secretary for himself. Obama was like a John Le Carre character, playing a conversation for what it was worth, for what it would reveal without giving away too much about what one of the interlocutors to the conversation did not want to be known. We are going to have to read his press conferences carefully. Two points stood out.

First, after acknowledging that we had only one President and Administration at a time, and so not wishing to intrude into what happens in the next seventy or so days, he nevertheless listed off the issues that he thought required attention, and gave new emphasis to something he had not previously stressed: help for the auto industry. That puts some pressure on Bush without conceding that Obama was putting pressure on him by announcing support for a policy that a month ago would have been thought dubious. We are obliged, after all, to bail out the financial industries because the support of a sound dollar (in whatever form: credit card debt, mortgages, derivatives, as well as cash) is a federal responsibility as old as Hamilton. We are not obliged to support a particular manufacturing industry. It would be a reasonable policy choice to allow Saturn and Toyota plants in the United States to take up the slack from a Detroit bankrupt because it is shackled with bad union contracts and, more than that, bad decisions about what products to produce. Detroit went for the short term profits of gas guzzlers when the writing was already on the wall that efficient cars were the long term ticket for survival. But no, Obama said. We need those Michigan jobs, he said. The reasons are well known. We want cash for General Motors so it can retool, and pay its pension and health obligations, and buy out Chrysler. What Obama didn’t say was that the Federal Government was going to be an investment banker and therefore might want veto power over corporate policies. There is no need for a seat on the Board of Directors. Sufficient will be a direct wire to the CEO and the presence in Detroit of a host of government overseers skunking the offices to offer their modest advice. Bush may or may not help out General Motors fast, but we know what Obama wants him to do, and Bush will get nothing for doing the right thing other than an acknowledgment of that fact, nothing traded by the Obama people for the favor, and if Obama doesn’t like the package when he gets to the White House, he will change it.

The other bit of news Obama made at his press conference was that he said that if a stimulus package wasn’t passed in the upcoming lame duck session of Congress, he would see to it that it was passed as his first item of business. That is striking news, because it shows a priority long before anyone expected him to show his hand, and second, because, again, he is not going to give an inch to the Bushies. He is not going to negotiate with them, at least not in public, about the nature or size of the stimulus package, whether it will just be unemployment insurance, or tax breaks or rebates or jobs or some combination of these. Any half measures will be regarded as only that rather than as a compromise package he has signed on to or inveigled Nancy Pelosi to accept. Half measures will not tie his hands about what he will ask for come January.

I take it that Rahm Emanuel is responsible for this tough talk. Good to hear it. It is only Republicans who call for bi-partisanship, that the name they use for getting the other guy to roll over. Well, this time, they can crawl away to redefine themselves or maybe some can rehabilitate themselves by signing on to Obama initiatives. There is nothing to compromise about. Obama is not going to give away anything, at least not without extracting a considerable price for it. And that suggests he may indeed be able to get something done in Washington. It was a good press conference.