The president ran his prime-time press conference like a grad-school class.

As the president answered the last question of the night, he finally shifted his weight off his two feet, which had been planted for nearly an hour. He crossed one behind the other—relaxing a little, perhaps, because he knew he had helped his case for the stimulus bill without flubbing or because he had covered all of the material on time. He waved and turned to walk down the red carpet at 9 p.m., exactly an hour after he'd begun.

Correction, Feb. 11, 2009: The article originally and incorrectly said that Barack Obama said the hardest part of his job was writing letters to the families of fallen servicemembers. That was not the case. Obama talked about signing such letters and said they had brought the weight of his office home to him. (Return  to the corrected sentence.)