Ticket Replay: Obama, real smart president-elect and workout fiend, still smokes
This week The Ticket is republishing some of our favorite items from the past political season. This one was originally published here on Dec. 7, 2008:
While you were watching football this morning and afternoon President-elect Barack Obama had a busy day, though part of it was pre-recorded on Saturday.
First, the political news: He appointed retired Gen. Eric Shinseki as head of the Veterans Administration. He was the officer who told Congress that hundreds of thousands more U.S. troops would be needed for victory in Iraq before the Bush administration decided it needed more troops in Iraq, though not hundreds of thousands.
Obama talked about his No. 1 job being the economy, and about the Bush tax cuts, the proposed automotive bailouts, terrorism and much more, as you'll see in two videos and the program's full transcript by clicking on the "Read more" line below.
But the shocking news concerned the new president's health. The man who's become a workout fanatic admitted on "Meet the Press" that he has not quit smoking. An amazing reality given his widely-regarded intelligence and demonstrated concern for his personal health or physique.
At first he said he did quit, then when Brokaw pressed him, the president-elect confessed he'd fallen off the wagon.
Tom Brokaw, on his last program as 'Meet's' moderator (as predicted in The Ticket six days ago, David Gregory will take over next Sunday), pointed out the White House is a smoke-free zone. (See the exchange near the end of the transcript; the link is below.)
The 47-year-old father of two who will start living there Jan. 20 as the 44th president said the building would stay smoke-free.
The White House, after all, has several balconies. (The program's full transcript is available here.)
-- Andrew Malcolm
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Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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