Obama keeps diary (Woodward wants it)

This would be some interesting bedtime reading: President Obama's diary.

Journalist Bob Woodward told Politico that the major thing he would like to learn about Obama is the contents of that diary, saying it might help unlock some of the mystery surrounding the president.

"What's driving him? Who is Barack Obama?" Woodward said. "A description of that inner life will be something, if it's candid."

Obama told Woodward he is keeping a diary during an interview for the latter's book on the administration's economic policy, The Price of Politics.

Speaking with Politico, Woodward noted that Obama tends to keep a lot of thoughts to himself, in contrast to predecessor George W. Bush.

"There wasn't a lot of mystery about how Bush felt," Woodward said. "He was a gut player and, as he said, it was his job to put some calcium in the spine. But I think Obama is a little bit more of an uncertain figure."

The young Obama gained a measure of fame in 1995 with a memoir called Dreams From My Father.

Presumably, his diary will be one of the sources for his presidential memoir.

"I think when he writes his own autobiography about his time as president -- and there is more excavation of all this -- we're going to discover that he's working it out as he plays the game," Woodward said.