Opinion: The briefly humdrum life of president-elect Barack Obama

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Pretty amazing how a president-elect can settle into a routine during the two-month interregnum between election and inauguration.

This morning Barack Obama will work out at his usual neighborhood gym. He’ll make the now-familiar 13-minute commute to his downtown Chicago transition office.

And probably by 6 p.m. or a little after, he’ll be back home with his family again, a routine he’s rarely been able to keep during, first, his U.S. Senate campaign and then since February 2007, chasing the presidency with such disciplined determination.

There is some irony that it took winning the presidency for Obama to settle into a schedule that from the outside these days borders on the humdrum.

For now, he wakes up in his own bed, goes into the office, comes home and has dinner with his family -- a far cry from the frenzied campaign life he chose for the previous 21 months.

While offering more routine, his existence is also more surreal, as he moves through Chicago largely sequestered in a tightened security bubble. Still, Obama seems to be savoring his time between the election and the Jan. 20 inauguration, one of the....

...longest stretches the ambitious politician has allowed himself at home in five years.

On Friday, he made time to leave the office briefly to pick up a corned beef sandwich and cherry pie from Manny’s Coffee Shop & Deli, a favorite spot for Chicago politicians and a good opportunity to make a media appearance.

See The Ticket item here. See video of that visit by clicking on the ‘Read more’ line below.

‘I’m just glad to be out,’ Obama said amid applause and shouts of congratulations from local diners.

Obama has made it clear that he wants quality time with family before he’s sworn in Jan. 20 as the 44th president. As he settled into his new and temporary homebody life, aides suggested a block of time for political calls during evening hours when his two daughters are still awake. Uh, no, he said.

‘He said, ‘Can we back that up, guys?’ ‘ an aide said. ‘He wanted to read to them and tuck them in, so we do the calls a little bit later.’

Obama is a man of discipline and routine, and he has had exactly that in recent days, even finding time Wednesday evening to watch his daughter in a performance.

After his morning workout, Obama typically heads into his transition office in the Loop between 9 and 10 a.m. Most days, he’s home by about 6 p.m. The trade-off, of course, is that he has lost some of the few freedoms he had before the election.

After appearing before massive campaign crowds two or three times per day, Obama now typically only sees most people on the other side of tinted glass, as he makes the commute between downtown and his South Side Hyde Park home.

The security restrictions have gradually increased around Obama ever since May 2007, the earliest point in a campaign cycle that the Secret Service began providing protection for a candidate.

Our colleague John McCormick has much more on the transitioning life of the president-elect right here.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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