I obviously wanted to play for the Kansas City Royals. (Laughter) I also knew that was far-fetched. The truth is I don't really know what I wanted to do.

When the president offered me this job, he told me that if there were situations in which I needed to speak to him or I needed his advice or I needed to ask him a question, that I could go into the Oval Office and I could ask him.

The President and first lady did hold a private party at the White House over the weekend, but given the private nature of that event, I don't have a lot of details to discuss from here.

The thing that I try to remember is that in the briefing room it's not a debate. I'm not supposed to go in there and win a debate with the press corps. If that's what I try to do, then I'm going to lose.

The most frequent way that I will communicate with him Obamacis when we're traveling. We talk about what's in the news, and I hear him talking about issues that are important to him.

My mom and my grandmother definitely were (Democrat supporters). It wasn't a sense that, "Well, we vote for Democrats no matter what," but it was sort of the sense that, "Democrats are typically the ones that are looking out for working people like us."

There was always this sense, even early on in the campaign, that if the senator Obama could score this upset victory in Iowa, that there was a pretty good chance that he would end up being president of the United States.