From  Helene Cooper's "Marathon Over, A Quiet Return to the White House," New York Times, Nov. 8/9, 2012

[....] Two days after his re-election, Mr. Obama had made no public remarks outside his victory speech early Wednesday, which many people missed because they had gone to bed.

That will change on Friday. Aides say the president will speak to Americans about the economy from the White House. And early next week, Mr. Obama will have a news conference, his first since June 20, when he took three questions from reporters during an economic summit meeting in Mexico.

Those forays into the public eye will be opportunities for the president to drop a hint about his negotiating position on the deficit reduction and debt ceiling talks with Congress. This is the same point when President George W. Bush, after his re-election, declared that he had a mandate and planned to use it to tackle Social Security.

Of course, that did not work out so well for Mr. Bush [....]