Meet Obama's Mouthpiece

Get used to this sight for the next four years: Robert Gibbs standing at a podium, taking questions from a suddenly skeptical press corps. In a profile in The New York Times Magazine, Mark Leibovich writes that Gibbs, Obama’s new press secretary will enjoy an advantage over this Bush predecessors in that he actually knows the president. Obama is his “traveling buddy,” his fellow football fan, and Gibbs has “walk-in privileges” in the Oval Office. On the campaign trail, Gibbs could hold a grudge—a few reporters were punished by being dropped from the campaign plane. (“He can be pretty tough on folks at times,” Obama tells Leibovich.) Moreover, Gibbs and the rest of the Team Obama subscribe to the “Bush model” of information dispersal—meaning, don’t expect a new and richer relationship between president and press.