60 Minutes with Barack and Michelle Obama

President-elect Barack Obama is reading Lincoln, selecting a national security team, meeting with economic advisers, and preparing to bring a puppy--and maybe his mother-in-law--to the White House.

Obama and his wife Michelle opened up about their life when they sat down with journalist Steve Kroft for their first interview since the election, and the soon-to-be president talked about the economy, the auto industry, the bailout and the expectations set for him.

Asked how his life had changed since he was elected, Obama said "there seem to be more people hovering around me." On the other hand, he said, he is now sleeping in his own bed instead of in hotel rooms on the campaign trail.

In the wide-ranging interview on CBS' 60 Minutes on Sunday, Obama said he had been spending the week focused on several pressing issues, including putting together a national security team, which he said is issue number one. He said the team was important because "transition periods are potentially times of vulnerability to a terrorist attack." 

Obama said he hoped to make "as seamless a transition on national security as possible," but he did not say if he would retain Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his position at the Pentagon. On Thursday, Obama met with Senator Hillary Clinton and reportedly discussed her role as a possible Secretary of State, but he would not tell 60 Minutes if he planned to select her for a cabinet post. "You know, she is somebody who I needed advice and counsel from," Obama said. "She is one of the most thoughtful public officials that we have."

Obama's other focus the past week: the economy. He said he had been talking to top economic advisors" and had assigned someone on his transition team who interacts with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on a daily basis. 

Asked if the country's economic crisis was similar to the Great Depression year of 1932, Obama demurred. "Well, keep in mind that 1932, 1933 the unemployment rate was 25 percent, inching up to 30 percent," he said. "You had a third of the country that was ill housed, ill clothed, unemployed. We're not going through something comparable to that. But I would say that this is as bad as we've seen since then. And if we don't take some significant steps then it could get worse."

The president-elect also offered support for the ailing auto industry but declined to give a "blank check" to the Big Three auto makers. "For the auto industry to completely collapse would be a disaster in this kind of environment, not just for individual families but the repercussions across the economy would be dire," Obama said. 

He said any assistance to the industry should be "conditioned on labor, management, suppliers, lenders, all the stakeholders coming together with a plan" for a sustainable U.S. auto industry. Obama also seemed to invoke language from the presidential campaign when he said the U.S. should create "a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere."

The incoming president disagreed with the notion that the U.S. should relax its efforts toward energy independence now that the price of oil under $60 a barrel. "It's more important," Obama said. "It may be a little harder politically, but it's more important."

He said the U.S. pattern had been to go "from shock to trance" in which policy makers go into a flurry of activity when oil prices go up, but when the oil prices go down, "we act like it's not important, and we start...filling up our SUVs again." He said this pattern explained why the U.S. failed to make progress toward oil independence and called it an "addiction" that had to be broken. "Now is the time to break it," he said.

Obama also pledged to shut down the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and reaffirm U.S. policy against torture. "Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world," he said.

The new president said he had consulted with his predecessors, who had warned him of a certain "loneliness" to the job he is about to take on. But he also expressed a willingness to work with people from all sides and to take ideas from various camps. "Whether it's coming from FDR or it's coming from Ronald Reagan, if the idea is right for the times then we're gonna apply it. And things that don't work we're gonna get rid of," he said.

So what was it like in that Chicago hotel room when he found out he was going to be president? "I remember," said Michelle Obama, "we were watching the returns and, on one of the stations, Barack's picture came up and it said, 'President-Elect Barack Obama. ' And I looked at him and I said, 'You are the 44th President of the United States of America. Wow. What a country we live in.'