Yeah, sure, it’s the president. Click.

Here’s why bipartisanship never works in Washington: Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida got a call on her cellphone this week from the 312 area code. She answered. The caller identified himself as Barack Obama, the president-elect.

Yeah, right, Ros-Lehtinen thought. Sure thing. She knows about southern Florida radio stations’ prank calls to public figures. She hung up.

Two minutes later, another call. This guy identified himself as fellow representative Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic president-elect’s chief of staff, and he was ca -- click.

It wasn’t until another member of Congress known to Ros-Lehtinen called to tell to her to stop hanging up on the next president that she realized: No prank.

They did have a nice chat after all.

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Oprah gets to wear that gown

Shortly before the Nov. 4 presidential election, talk-show diva and noted Obama backer Oprah Winfrey announced that she’d already picked out her inaugural ball gown, a sign of overconfidence that she did not have to pay for in the end.

Now that Barack Obama’s inauguration is virtually certain (unless the Supreme Court’s ponderings lead it to get involved), Oprah has announced she’s taking her Chicago talk show to Washington. (And that’ll allow her to write off the gown cost as a business expense.)

She’s rented the 2,300-seat Kennedy Center to do two shows there around Jan. 20.

You may remember Oprah came out early for her fellow Chicagoan. She held a huge celebrity fundraiser for him at her Montecito house.

And she emceed giant primary rallies for him in Iowa and North Carolina, which he won, and New Hampshire, which he lost to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first serious female presidential candidate whom many fans thought Oprah should support. Winfrey’s ratings took a hit.

We don’t want to let anything out of the bag and spoil the screaming.

But wouldn’t it just be a perfect television moment if, while Oprah is talking to the excited Kennedy Center audience in January, a certain someone who’s about to become president and maybe his wife too walked out on the stage behind the show host?

Everyone would cry, except those execs watching the ratings.

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Just how much is $8.5 trillion?

So far, Washington has pledged $8.5 trillion to the bailout of the financial sector.

Now, we’re hearing about the Big Three automakers asking for $34 billion, seemingly on the platform of “you’re giving out free money? Cool!”

But let’s hold it a second. Seriously, $8.5 trillion sounds like a lot of money, right? That’s, like, trillions of dollars. With a T. As in 1,000 billions times 8.5.

How often do you, in your daily life, deal with trillions of anything? Not counting the popcorn and candy prices at movie theaters.

Keep thinking. We’ll wait.

“When you talk about trillions of dollars, people’s brains just shut off,” said Barry Ritholtz, writer for the Big Picture, a top-ranked financial blog.

For his upcoming book, “Bailout Nation,” Ritholtz has tried to put the amount in more easily understood terms. He compared the costs of other government programs with the current bailout.

James Bianco, president of Arbor Research and Trading Inc., crunched the inflation numbers for nine key government expenditures. The current bailout, as it turns out, costs more than all of them.

Combined.

With figures adjusted for inflation, the Marshall Plan cost $115.3 billion; the Louisiana Purchase, $217 billion; the race to the moon, $237 billion; the S&L; crisis, $256 billion; the Korean War, $454 billion; the New Deal, about $500 billion; the invasion of Iraq, $597 billion; the Vietnam War, $698 billion; NASA’s lifetime budget, $851.2 billion.

Total: $3.92 trillion.

So is it time to panic? Maybe not. Although Washington has guaranteed $8.5 trillion to the various banks, the actual figure will probably total nowhere near that amount.

-- Mark Milian

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Read more Top of the Ticket at latimes.com/ticket

andrew.malcolm@latimes.com