WASHINGTON – Inside the Oval Office, the president and his soon to be successor pose awkwardly for the cameras. The first question shouted to the President-elect, "Are you going to inherit a recession from the President?" The president in that scenario was Bill Clinton and standing next to him was George W. Bush.

That was how the scene unfolded eight years ago when Bush made his first visit to the White House as President-elect on December 19th, 2000. At the time, both Bush and Clinton brushed aside the question about the "R-word." But Clinton did offer this advice, "He'll have economic challenges and we ought to give him a chance to meet them, not try to figure it all out in advance."

Fast forward to the present, Bush's own successor won't have the same luxury of time. Thursday's report that the economy shrank 0.3 percent in the July-September period provides further evidence for economists who say the country is in a recession and probably has been for several months.

Even the president's top economic advisor, Edward Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, recently weighed in that parts of the country are in a recession.

The White House tried to downplay today's GDP number, saying that while weak, it was not unexpected. Press Secretary Dana Perino said in a statement, "The President is taking forceful actions to return the economy to growth and job creation by early next year. While we continue to face serious challenges, the United States remains the best place to do business, and we're positioned to bounce back."

Although Bush did not answer the question in the Oval Office back in 2000, he's often talked about how he did inherit a recession when he took office.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the country slipped into a recession in March 2001 and came out of it in November of that year, and that the downturn was prolonged due to the September 11th attacks.

When President Bush poses for the cameras with his successor, the question for the next president won't be whether he's inheriting a recession, but likely how deep and how long will it last and what he plans to do to get the country out of it.

Click here for complete coverage of Decision '08

WASHINGTON – Army Sgt. Jeffrey Hardaway, 35, of Killeen, Texas, hobbled on his crutches to a microphone to say a few words after receiving a Purple Heart recently at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. 

"First of all I'd like to thank my wife for putting up with me," he said to laughter and applause from a roomful of soldiers in Walter Reed's Joel Auditorium on Oct. 23.

"And second, I'd like to thank everyone here at Walter Reed for helping me ... ," he continued. "Thirdly, I'd like to, ah, what a lot of people don't know is we lost our embed reporter that day, and his name was Julio. He was from Spain, and, um ... "

At this point Hardaway lost his composure and broke down.

" ...  I'm sorry," he said moments later. "He became a close friend. I wish I could say something to his family."

VIDEO: Army Sgt. Jeffrey Hardaway became emotional about the death of reporter Julio Parrado during his Purple Heart ceremony.

Hardaway was talking about Julio Parrado, 32, a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo and an embedded reporter with the U.S. Third Infantry Division at the outset of the war in Iraq. He was killed on April 7, 2003, by the same missile that seriously wounded Hardaway.   

After the Purple Heart ceremony, Hardaway talked some more about his friend Julio.

"Julio was with us for months," he told me. "He was like family. We got real, real close to him. That's why it was really hard on the whole unit when he was killed."

Julio Parrado, a reporter for El Mundo, who was killed during his military embed in Iraq on April 7, 2003.

Hardaway described how Julio would send e-mails home for the American soldiers on his portable satellite computer.

"Everyone thought we were e-mailing them all through the war," he said.

But he explained Julio was really sending a mass e-mail to his newspaper's New York office, which would forward the e-mails on an individual basis to the soldiers' families. 

"So that was a blessing for all of us," he said. 

Hardaway asked me as a reporter to help him find an address for Julio's family so he could contact them. 

"I would like to write his family a letter or something, because his family wasn't there when he was killed," he said. "I was."

Julio is survived by his father, also named Julio, mother Antonia, sister Ana, brother Juan Antonio and half-sister Carmen.

I was able to get their address in Cordoba, Spain, with the help of Carlos Fresneda of El Mundo in New York and Stefano Albertini of New York University, both friends of Julio's family. Julio had been based in New York for several years and had reported extensively for El Mundo on the aftermath of the 9/11 attack.

I asked Hardaway what he wanted to tell Julio's family.

"I've been thinking about that," he said. "I just knew him temporarily, but he was a good person. I could tell that much. He was real friendly. I had been invited to go over to Spain to visit. He was just a generous, genuine person."

Julio Parrado is one of 153 journalists who've been killed in Iraq since the war began on March 19, 2003. Allied troop casualties during the same period have totaled 4,502.

 HONOLULU – "I was trippin' when I found out (Barack) Obama worked here – I was like, what?!" Jason Juan discussed the Democratic presidential candidate's first job as he scooped ice cream at the Baskin-Robbins franchise on South King Street where Obama once worked.

"Newscasters came here, people came here from Japan; it was pretty cool," the 19-year-old said.

Jennifer Carlile/ msnbc.com

Jason Juan, who has worked at Honolulu's South King Street Baskin-Robbins for four years, gives an embarrassed grin as his picture is taken.

Although the store is just a few blocks from Obama's old high school, Punahou, I was also taken aback to find out the presidential candidate received his first W-2 from this address, as it was my first place of employment as well. However, we probably donned the famous pink shirts about 15 years apart, and while it gave him a life-long distaste for ice cream, I still have a healthy appetite for the 31 flavors.

Last April, Obama told a crowd in Malvern, Pa., that working at the ice cream chain "was actually kind of embarrassing because you had to wear, like, a brown cap and stuff [like] the apron," he explained. "Girls would come in and you'd be trying to talk to them, and they wouldn't give you the time of day, because you were wearing this cap." 

Today's uniform of blue T-shirts forgoes the old-fashioned charm, but is far more face-saving than the accessorized pink polo Obama wore in the late 1970s and I wore in the mid 1990s.

"I'm trying to imagine how he looked like cause he's really tall, I think," said customer Ed Del Banco, a 50-year-old coconut frond hat maker whose first job was also scooping ice cream at another establishment close to Ala Moana Beach Park.

Jennifer Carlile/ msnbc.com

Ed Del Banco sports one of the coconut frond hats he makes and sells in Waikiki as he finishes off an ice cream scoop at the Baskin-Robbins on South King Street, in Honolulu.

"I don't remember him here, but he certainly chose a nice family place to start at," said Del Banco's friend Joe Rossi, who has been coming here for ice cream "for at least 20 or 30 years."

As I looked around the store, I remembered some of my fellow former colleagues  – the three guys from my high school, Roosevelt, who all got their names tattooed in Hawaiian heritage lettering across their backs, the University of Hawaii student from Moloka'i who told me her island consisted of basically one road and a stop light, and the serious ice cream cake-maker from China who was the only one out the dozen or so of us that wasn't a student. Like most things in Hawaii, the workplace was a melting pot of races and character types.

The store's owner, Day Goswami, would bring in her small son Omar and buy us all Sunday lunches of yummy local foods like ahi and tako poke (raw tuna and octopus in a mix of seaweed, soy sauce and spices).

As well as serving cones, splits and cappuccino blasts, we learned to decorate ice cream cakes. I once even designed one with Edward Munch's "The Scream" for a class project.

Jennifer Carlile/msnbc.com

Manager Sherill Fernandez, who has worked at the store for 8 years, serves up a taster spoonful of "cookies and cream" flavored ice cream.

Reminiscing, I wondered what Obama's days here were like – and if back then he ever imagined he'd have a flavor named after him – let alone be running for president.

The Democrat's signature scoop, "Whirl of Change," beat John McCain's "Straight Talk Crunch" in Baskin-Robbins recent online "flavor debate" vote.

SLIDESHOW: Sen. Barack Obama's life in pictures

"He's come to Hawaii, but not here," said the store's current manager, Sherill Fernandez. "I wish he'd come here 'cause two times I seen myself in the TV for interviews about him, but I never met him," the 33-year-old said, describing the media's interest in Obama's former haunt.

Asked if she thought the job would produce any more presidential candidates, she laughed and said "I don't think so – well, we don't know."

Thanks to Mom, powerful people wear red.

Tiger Woods has said he wears red when he competes on Sundays, usually the final day of golf tournaments, because his mother told him it symbolizes power.

And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said recently that thanks to her mother's advice, she wears red when she wants "to feel really on top of things."

AFP/Getty Images file

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Oct. 16.Â

In an interview conducted with Girl Scout magazine in September and just released by the State Department today, Rice told a group of Girl Scouts that her favorite color is navy blue, but on some days she feels the urge to wear red.

Getty Images file

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, speaks during a campaign rally on Sept. 29 in Ohio.

"I love navy blue," Rice said. "But when I want to feel really on top of things I wear red I wear red because my mother told me once ...when I was younger, I liked to wear pretty muted colors. And my mother said, 'When you get to be 35, all of a sudden you're going to want to wear red.' I had no idea what she meant, but she was right. So when I want to feel really on top of things, I wear red."

In fact, Woods and Rice seem to have gotten good advice from mom. A study done by British scientists in 2005 concluded that athletes who wore red were more likely to succeed than those wearing other colors.

Based on studying the outcomes of four sports in the 2004 Olympics, the scientists determined that wearing red was more than just a lucky hunch.

"We find that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning," the researchers wrote in an article in the journal Nature. 

AFP/Getty Images

Sen. John McCain and his wife Cindy McCain attend a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Oct. 21.Â

And while red is the symbolic color of the GOP, did Rice pass her mother's advice onto Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain? The vice presidential candidate and McCain's wife have been frequently sighted on the campaign trail wearing red.

HOLLAND, Ohio – In a modest suburb, on a modest street, sits the modest ranch-style home of "Joe the Plumber." The Holland, Ohio resident whose name was bandied about at last night's presidential debate more than twenty times. 

If the powers that be had their wits about 'em they'd name a street after him. Joe's Way perhaps. Maybe they could make it a one way street leading to the local H&R Block franchise.

VIDEO: 'Joe the Plumber' steals the show

Today it is all Joe from coast to coast as we all scramble to find out how he's doing while his fifteen minutes flash by.

Now this leafy neighborhood festooned with pumpkins and decorations is living its own private Halloween – complete with satellite trucks, bright lights and journalists pounding on doors trick or treating for tidbits of information.

VIDEO: 'Joe the Plumber' speaks out

So far, Joe remains amazed at being thrust into the spotlight. Let's see how long that lasts.

Video analyzer: How many mentions of 'Joe the Plumber' during debate
Click here for debate analysis in First Read

WASHINGTON - Army Staff Sgt. Tara Harrilson was wounded three times in Afghanistan, the first time when she was stabbed while on a Special Forces mission in 2004.

"I was outside the wire with my team, and it was pretty much – long story, short – it was a setup, and there were a whole lot of bad men and four of us," the 27-year-old native of Gaithersburg, Md., said recently. 

Louie Palu/ZUMA Press

Army Staff Sgt. Tara Harrilson at Walter Reed Medical Center on Sept. 26.Â

"I didn't realize it until afterward, but I had been stabbed several times from different angles while trying to get out of the area," she said. "I can't go into more details than that."

Tara was wounded two more times in a series of explosions in 2005. In one of them, some body armor was blown off a hook and landed on top of her head, herniating her brain into her neck and causing a spinal cord injury. She also suffered shrapnel wounds on her arms, legs and chest in the explosions.

"I've lost a lot of vision in my left eye, hearing in the left ear," she said. "I can use my left side pretty good, just not real fine, like to grip and open a bottle, and I've lost a lot of feeling in it."

'A slow process'
Tara, who walks with a cane, is still recovering from her wounds at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

"I think I'm doing really good for someone who just had brain surgery," she said.

She faces possibly more surgery on her brain, surgery on her spine, and a lot of physical therapy.

"It's a slow process, and it can get frustrating," she said. "Some days are better than others."

One challenge is her lengthy commute for treatment. The closest affordable housing the Army could find for Tara and her family was at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., 50 grueling miles up Interstate 270 from Walter Reed.

"It's not the distance," she said. "It's the traffic that's the killer."

Tara has to allow two and a half hours in the morning to get to Walter Reed, and it can take up to two hours to get home at night. She can't drive because of her injuries and depends on her husband or her brother to get her back and forth as often as five times a week.

"It's really hard," she said.

While she struggles to recover from her wounds, Tara and her husband are raising their three daughters, ages 2 to 7.

"Yes, all girls, and a lot of hair to do in the mornings," she said, laughing. "They've really sacrificed a lot, but they've been dealing with it real good, and they're interested in all the medical stuff that's going on with me."

Tara, who enlisted in the Army right out of high school, nine years ago, appears remarkably sanguine for someone who has trouble making ends meet on her Army paycheck and has no idea what's in her future.

"I'm getting to see my kids go to school and come home and swim in the pool, and that's a lot to be thankful for, because it could have been a lot worse," she said.