Mr. President, I’m sure your life has been a whirlwind since Election Day–since the day you announced your campaign, really–but, uh, the work is just getting started. Two weeks into the job seems a bit early to be getting “tired of being in the White House.”
On the rockiest day of his young administration, President Barack Obama did what surely made him happy for a while.
He left.
With little notice, the president and first lady Michelle Obama bolted the gated compound of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in their tank of a limousine on Tuesday. They ended up at a Washington public school, greeted by children who could not care less about the collapse of a Cabinet secretary nomination.
“We were just tired of being in the White House,” the president candidly told the gleeful second-graders at Capital City Public Charter School.
“We got out! They let us out!” Mrs. Obama said as the kids and their teachers laughed.
Those of us who were skeptics of the Hope and Change Express in 2008 couldn’t help but notice that throughout his career, Obama rarely spent much time in one place, often quickly moving to the next promotion. From a short piece I wrote for NR last year:
By Election Day, Obama will have spent 59 of the preceding 112 months campaigning for higher office. That total excludes any perfunctory campaigning to retain his seat in the Illinois legislature, but includes seven months of a failed bid for Bobby Rush’s House seat, an astounding 29 months running for the U.S. Senate, and his current marathon for the presidency. Put another way, Obama spent more of the past decade asking voters to promote him than did any other American—even more than John Edwards, who has invested 48 months in a Senate race and two presidential bids since 1997.
“Being in the White House” and dealing with messes like building bipartisan support for the stimulus and controversial appointments is what you spent the last two years working for, Mr. President. Fate all but guarantees that your presidency is going to have much tougher days than yesterday.