Barack Obama has his dinner with four grassroots campaign donors and it turns out to be a rather brilliant move. Sure, the whole thing is staged for the little camera (news photographers click like cicadas as the party sits down but then are evicted). But after usually seeing Obama on YouTube before cheering crowds, we get to see him in a somewhat intimate, almost casual moment. He comes off charming, full of information, but still buttoned up.

He talks about the war with the wife of a soldier who fears he will go back to Iraq after his training is done but Obama says he will have the troops out by then. About the withdrawl: “It’s not going to be simple. It’ll be messy. I think it is the best of a bad situation.”

The youngest at the table asks whether Obama has seen Li’l Bush. Since he hasn’t, she tells him about his cameo on the cartoon. Obama talks about seeing yourself in Jay Leno monologues and cartoons and he pulls out his ears: Barack as the artists see him.