On breaks, Obama will return home to city streets

[babylonsister]

On breaks, Obama will return home to city streets

By DEANNA BELLANDI
Associated Press Writer


CHICAGO (AP) -- When President-elect Barack Obama heads home for a break from the White House, he won't go to a sprawling ranch or private seaside compound.

Obama will come back to a crowded city neighborhood, creating different security challenges for the Secret Service and perhaps headaches for his neighbors.

No other recent first family has lived in a city neighborhood like the Obamas. The $1.6 million mansion he and his wife, Michelle, share with their two young daughters sits just off a busy street - a stretch of which has been closed to traffic - and his closest neighbors are just a few feet away.

"My Kennebunkport is on the South Side of Chicago," Obama said in a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune. "Our friends are here. Our family is here. We are going to try to come back here as often as possible ... at least once every six weeks or couple months."

His busy South Side neighborhood affords none of the privacy of President George W. Bush's 1,600-acre Texas spread or President George H.W. Bush's seaside summer retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine. President Ronald Reagan's White House in the West was his mountaintop Rancho del Cielo in California. President Bill Clinton moved to the White House from the governor's mansion in Arkansas.

But Obama is a Chicago transplant whose campaign was rooted in the notion that he's not like the other guys, and living in an urban neighborhood near the University of Chicago is a symbol of that, said Paul Light, a presidential historian at New York University.

more...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBAMA_URBAN_PRESIDENT?SITE=CONGRA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[elfin]

1. We shall see - I think

the new fab first family will find Camp David very congenial to hosting close friends, and important visitors with occasional treks back to Chi Town for other business and photo ops.

[Pab Sungenis]

2. Can the Secret Service and Communications Office properly equip the Obama house?

In some cases in the past, they needed to build new buildings for security and communications. Is there space in that house for the facilities they will need?

They can't buy the Rezko house next door because it wouldn't look good.

[Peregrine Took]

3. Plus its surrounded by condo buildings - some apts still for sale.

I think the Secret Service will be getting heartburn whenever he's here is town.

[babylonsister]

4. The SS has been providing security for the Obamas for months.

From the article, sounds like they have it down pat, though I don't know if they'd need to make things more permanent should the Obamas do lots of traveling back and forth.

[mwei924]

5. Finally, a city President!

[uponit7771]

6. Don't know if you can call their house a "mansion" but it's nice to have a city president now

[FrenchieCat]

9. Yeah. 1 million dollars doesn't buy mansions in Chicago......

more like a nice house, perhaps.

And that was when the buying was overpriced....before Bush's economy fell apart on us.

[Orsino]

10. Republicans live on "ranches." Elitist Dems live in mansions on estates. n/t

[Odin2005]

7. Yay! Nice to have a Prez that's a Northern Cities guy!

Northern Cities guys don't like Southern dumbass union-bashers.

[Clio the Leo]

8. Just TRY to harm that man in Chicago.....

... I triple dog dare anyone.

Probably thousands of young men who'd take a bullet for him ..... and none of them are wearing a suit.

[Cleita]

11. I'm hoping he's a full time President and doesn't abuse his office with

many vacations like Bush took. It should lessen the security problems if this is so.