TipsFocus.com

This afternoon, President Bush welcomed the president-elect Barack Obama and his wife for Obama’s first trip at the White House. Just a week ago, the two men viewed each other as the personification of political evil. Today, they were new best friends.

Topics included “the need to get the economy back on track,” Gibbs said, and “what’s going on in the auto industry.” The discussion of the auto industry wasn’t limited to any one of the nation’s three largest car makers, he said. “It was a discussion about the broad health of the industry, and they also spoke about the housing industry and foreclosures.”

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino described the sessions as “good, constructive, relaxed and friendly,” while Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said the two men engaged in “a broad discussion about the importance of working together throughout the transition of government in light of the nation’s many critical economic and security challenges.”

They wouldn’t go any further. “Since it was a private meeting,” Perino said, “the White House will decline to comment on specifics,” except to say that Bush “pledged a smooth transition to the next administration.”

Bush allowed Obama to enter the historic office first as they prepared for a private talk about the challenges of leading a nation freighted in this hand-over of power by a crippling economic downturn and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The country’s troubles fall to Obama when he takes office Jan. 20.

At the end of their highly symbolic visit, Bush walked Obama to a waiting black limousine for the trip to the airport and the return flight by jet charter to his transition headquarters in Chicago. His team is working there to put together the next Cabinet and to fill the hundreds of jobs that come open in a change of administrations.