Must be his drab-looking office.

Weekly messages and more of the transition at Change.gov: Office of the President Elect

Those books behind him? The papers of John F Kennedy.

Most of this is actually taken right out of his October stump speeches, verbatim. It isn't new writing, except for the mention of what he's going to ask Congress next week. They're busy anyway - I'd rather see them working on the transition than wordsmithing brief addresses.

He is in very tricky constraints right now. He can't speak with the freedom of a President because that's still Dubya's prerogative. He can't back specific policy proposals without appearing to be interfering and that could backfire on him. I agree that this was committee-vetted.

He isn't really all that great an extemporaneous orator or debater, if you watched enough of C-SPAN (or heck, YouTube) during the campaign.

And as his Nancy Reagan quip last week showed, he can have an odd and off-putting sense of humor sometimes. He is probably under self-imposed doghouse for that one. I have liked some of his anecdotes, but some of the on-the-spot improvisations he comes up with ("green behind the ears") are not destined for posterity.

Yeah, this last one was just puffery, kind of a "I gotta do this because this is how you do this" thing.

Gotta love that both me and Miko were all like, "oh that's just stump speech stuff". I think we were both living off of his phonemes for food during the last six months.

he can have an odd and off-putting sense of humor sometimes

I kind of like it - I mean, that Nancy Reagan quip was funny to me, I snorted when I heard him say it - it's just that it's not politically smooth humor and he won't be able to get away with some of those comments so easily. It's not appropriate to the office, and that sort of thinking might take a bit of time to get used to.

Obama has always sounded speech-by-committee to me, and when he deviated was obvious. I'm happy to see he is working this hard so early. He has a lot of big messes to clean up before he can even consider new policies. ... but if he grants Bush a blanket pardon ...