Earlier this week, Obama's campaign announced that his "Road to Change" bus tour was going to conclude somewhere in southeast Pennsylvania. I'm at home now and don't have access to my work e-mail, so I can't double check. But I believe it was Thursday when they announced he'd be appearing in Lancaster and Harrisburg.

Just the day before, I'd interviewed Abe Amoros, a former York councilman and director of community development who is filling in as acting director of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. (The director, Mary Isenhour, is now heading up Hillary Clinton's Pennsylvania campaign. Whether this will turn into a full-time gig for either Amoros or Isenhour remains to be seen.) I overheard a conversation where Amoros remarked that it seemed odd Obama hadn't put in an appearance in the Harrisburg area yet. Hillary Clinton appeared at a rally earlier this month, and Bill Clinton was in Carlisle last week.

I'll be covering Obama's Harrisburg rally tomorrow evening, and the Lancaster one Monday morning. The announced starting times keep changing, which is not unusual. Political campaigns are inherently chaotic, and I have yet to attend a campaign event that's started at its scheduled time.

I hope to bring my camcorder along and shoot another video. If I do, I'll post it here.

Last night at about 9 p.m. I got a call on my cell phone from the Obama campaign. It was my work phone and I wasn't on the clock, so in retrospect it's fortunate that my phone was both turned on and within earshot.

An Obama staffer told me the senator would be available at 4 p.m. today for a five-minute phone interview. Would I be interested? Absolutely.

I'll post the text of that interview presently.

This morning, I was trying to think of questions to ask him. Then I got an idea. I'd head down to the Central Market, and ask some people from the community what they would like to ask him. I figured that in addition to providing questions that people from the area are genuinely curious about, it would also serve as a snapshot as to what local people's concerns are.

During the interview, a couple of things struck me. First, he appeared to be in a hurry. No surprise there. He wasn't rude, but he did manage to convey that he wanted to get right to the business at hand.

It also struck me that he's a good politician. I don't mean that in a negative way.

If I may digress for a moment, I think it's absurd the way that the term "politician" has turned into a derisive term for someone who's insincere and manipulative. I'm not talking about Obama specifically here, but politicians in general.

People presumably take a political office in the first place because they have some idea of what good public policy should be. The way they get that policy implemented is by persuading the public and their colleagues that it's advisable. I don't see why the fact that someone does that effectively should be held against him or her.

I wasn't aware of it at the time I was speaking to Obama, but something struck me as I was looking over my notes. Perhaps this comes with his experience of dealing with the time constraints inherent in campaigning, but he was very efficient in mentioning several of his policy goals in the course of answering a single question.

He managed to work his proposed middle class tax cut into an answer about his energy policy. He mentioned a job creation proposal while answering a question about his environmental goals. And he did it all so seamlessly that it didn't seem incongruous.

Granted, most of the questions dealt with issues that he's gone over many times. That's OK by me, as long as the questions are relevant and the answers are forthright. The only question that seemed to throw him at all was the one regarding the teaching of evolution in public schools.

To my knowledge, it hasn't been an issue in the campaign, and I guess he wasn't expecting it. The only reason I asked it was because York County recently attained a measure of national prominence -- some would say notoriety -- because of the Dover "intelligent design" trial.

When he answered that question, he noticeably slowed down, apparently choosing his words carefully, But to his credit, he didn't engage in any rhetorical bobbing and weaving, and gave a straight answer.

OK, here's the piece I wrote about the interview:

Barack Obama was available for five minutes to answer questions from a York Daily Record reporter on Saturday afternoon. The York Daily Record asked three questions of its own, and presented three questions asked by members of the community. The answers are as follows:

York Daily Record questions:

Q: Are you coming to York?
A: "I hope that I get a chance to come to York. We've got three-and-a-half more weeks of campaigning."

Q: What do you see as the key to communities such as York getting past their history of racial discord?

"I think the critical thing is to start with our kids. If we're giving all children an opportunity for early childhood education and making sure there are after-school programs in place to keep kids out of trouble, that will lead to changes in attitude. When kids are happy and healthy, they don’t have time for the racial bias that sometimes creeps into our communities."

Q: York County was recently in the news for a lawsuit involving the teaching of "intelligent design." What's your attitude regarding the teaching of evolution in public schools?

A: "I'm a Christian and I believe in parents being able to provide children with religious instruction without interference from the state. But I also believe our schools are there to teach worldly knowledge and science. I believe in evolution and I believe there's a difference between science and faith. That doesn’t make faith any less important than science. It just means they’re two different things. And I think it’s a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don’t hold up to scientific inquiry."

Questions from the public:

Christine Laws of York, 68
How do you intend to get the troops home from Iraq?

Obama said he wants to begin an immediate process of withdrawal at a pace of about one to two brigades a month. Assuming that he's elected and begins as soon as he takes office, that would have all U.S. troops home in about two years.

"That should give more than enough time for the Iraqi government to negotiate a settlement between the various factions. … We’ve got to recognize that we can’t sustain a $10-billion-a-month operation in Iraq without it having an impact on our own economy."

Mike Carrigan, 63, manager of the Central Market in York
Q: How do you intend to lower gas prices?

Obama believes that the U.S. needs to increase its refinery capacity. He also believes that a "more sensible" policy in the Middle East, with less threat of conflict, would bring down old prices.

He said that the cost of gas and the need to offset it is one of the reasons he's proposing a middle class tax cut, affecting those making $75,000 per year and less.

"I think it's important for us to recognize long term that the only way to bring down oil prices is less consumption. And that means more fuel-efficient cars."

Melissa Grove, 39, Dallastown
How do you intend to change the world from an environmental standpoint?

"We've got to recognize that global warming is real, it’s serious, and we have to do something about it."

Obama supports a cap on the emission of the greenhouse gases that are causing global warming.

He's also proposing a plan to invest is a workforce devoted to clean energy. In addition to helping the environment, he believes that would help the economy. He envisions workers from closed steel plants going back to work building solar panels.