On Plane, Obama Reaches Across the Aisle

By Peter Baker

CHICAGO – It was another day on the speculation roller coaster.

Not long after leaving the White House on Monday afternoon, President-elect Barack Obama talked by telephone on his plane with Senator Richard G. Lugar, a Republican from Indiana.

Aha! So maybe Mr. Obama really is considering Mr. Lugar for secretary of state, as many in Washington have been assuming. But wait. Mr. Lugar’s office said the conversation Monday had nothing at all to do with the Cabinet.

“It was not about secretary of state,” Andy Fisher, a Lugar spokesman, said in an e-mail message. “Lugar is not interested (as he explains repeatedly). Nothing about that position was discussed during the call. They discussed ways in which they will continue to work on a number of foreign policy fronts as Lugar continues his Republican foreign policy leadership in the Senate.”

The call to Mr. Lugar was one of three Mr. Obama made after visiting President Bush at the White House, then stopping for a private, 40-minute meeting at a fire station at the airport. Aides would not describe whom he met with. It’s a fair guess that he may have been meeting with a candidate for the Cabinet. But then again, that’s also just a guess.

In this transition period, reporters are literally left trying to read tea leaves. And even lips. At one point on the plane, Mr. Obama stood in the aisle in the front, one leg up on a seat, a mobile phone pressed to his ear and faced toward the back, where the pool of reporters following him around was located. The reporters strained to hear what he was saying. A few snatches of his end of the conversation were audible:

“I am not going to be spending too much time in Washington over the next several weeks,” he was overheard telling the other person on the phone.

“I don’t want us to go lurching so far in one direction,” he said at another point.

“If we come up with some good solid sensible options … ” he said a little later.

What he was referring to was yet another mystery. After a couple minutes, Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama’s adviser and soon to be his White House press secretary, noticed that the reporters were intently listening and jumped to his feet to tell the president-elect, who then turned around so that he could not be overheard.

Mr. Gibbs later came back to talk to reporters and joked about blocking for Mr. Obama. The overheard call, he said, was not the one with Mr. Lugar.