Obama Reaches Across The Table
The dinner was not announced – according to the pool report, the fact that it was Will's home was deduced from tax records, while other dinner guests were spotted through a window by a photographer.
Quipped pooler Kenneth Bazinet of the New York Daily News, in reference to the gathering of the new Democratic president and the conservative old hands: "The bloggers are going to love this one."
The transition office did not release details of the dinner table conversation.
UPDATE: It's not just the conservatives who are getting an audience with Mr. Obama. This morning, as Politico reports, the president elect met with a group of prominent moderates and liberals, among them E.J. Dionne, Eugene Robinson, Gerry Seib, Ron Brownstein, Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, Andrew Sullivan, and Rachel Maddow.
The "totally off the record" meeting took place around a conference table at transition headquarters, and one attendee described it to Michael Calderone as an "intense back and forth about a lot of stuff."