- nytimes White House Memo: Obama Is Serious About His Vacation. And, Please, No Shirtless Shots. http://nyti.ms/dKFPvN
- Know Your Meme: Dramatic Prairie Dog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta-Cg6nPhng&feature=more_related
- Dramatic Prairie Dog - Hawaii Five-0 Remix http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACQ1bbKOBdc&feature=related
- Alyssa_Milano I highly suggest Bobby V's Pizzeria on Kauai! Yumm. So good.
Obama Is Serious About His Vacation. And, Please, No Shirtless Shots.
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
HONOLULU — President Obama has accomplished something extraordinary during his Hawaiian escape from Washington: his White House has gone dark for more than a week.
Here on Oahu, where Mr. Obama and his family are staying in a luxury oceanfront rental home in the sleepy town of Kailua, the president is cloaked in the comfort of a news-free zone. The public does not see much of him, except for when he is zipping by in his armored sport utility vehicle, and it does not much seem to care.
Images of the president at leisure — sharing a Hawaiian shave ice with daughters Malia and Sasha, golfing, dining out with his wife — have trickled out, orchestrated by aides who have also taken care to allow pictures of the president at church and visiting the troops on Christmas Day. His advisers calculate that there has been roughly one photo opportunity every day and a half.
News photographers are grousing. They were kept at a safe distance and given strict instructions to put away their telephoto lenses when the Obama family went snorkeling on Tuesday at the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, where green sea turtles and fish in all shapes and colors dart in and out of a coral reef. (The president does not want to be photographed with his shirt off, and the preserve is closed on Tuesdays, so the public was not around, either.)
Mr. Obama spent Thursday on the island’s North Shore, which is famous for its monster waves and the sweet, succulent shrimp that are sold from trucks on the side of the road. But there was no presidential sighting; he was tucked away at the beachfront home of his childhood friend Bobby Titcomb, who throws an annual barbecue for the Hawaiian White House.
On Friday, the president played golf — his fourth round so far this trip — and he spent a quiet New Year’s Eve at home, a gathering that included a talent show with family and friends, an annual Obama tradition. Again, no photos.
“There haven’t been many pictures, and there haven’t been many stories,” said Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton. “Part of it is that the allure is gone. The president and his family on vacation are less interesting; the Camelot glow is gone, so people just don’t care as much.
“And I think the White House is extraordinarily cautious about getting the right pictures out there, not sending the wrong message, because going off to Hawaii two years into a recession when a lot of people are unemployed does not come off well,” he said. “You don’t want the president bodysurfing when the public doesn’t have a job.”
Mike McCurry, who served as one of President Bill Clinton’s press secretaries, says the one image the public has not seen thus far this trip is of Mr. Obama reading. “Believe me,” Mr. McCurry said, “by the time the vacation is over, you’ll have a picture of him studying some manual.”
Maybe, maybe not. As has been reported, Mr. Obama brought along Lou Cannon’s biography of Ronald Reagan, another president who was confronted with a divided Congress. But he also brought two novels, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet,” a historical romance by David Mitchell about a Dutchman in Edo-era Japan, and “Our Kind of Traitor,” by the spy novelist John le Carré. The president’s wife makes a brief guest appearance in the le Carré book; in one passage, characters cannot visit the gardens of the Champs-Élysées in Paris because “Michelle Obama and her children are in town.”
Fortunately for Mr. Obama, no crisis has demanded his attention, as was the case last year when a Nigerian was accused of trying to blow up a passenger jet that was bound for Detroit.
And the people of Oahu seem content to let the president be. Gov. Neil Abercrombie explained their attitude in a recent interview by describing a drawing by Corky Trinidad, an acclaimed political cartoonist here who died in 2009. It shows Mr. Obama sleeping on a beach next to an endangered Hawaiian monk seal, a creature that Hawaiians know must not be disturbed.
“There was a little rope around them,” Mr. Abercrombie said, “and people were putting their fingers up to their mouths going, ‘Shhhh.’ ”
Analysts say Mr. Obama’s Hawaiian disappearing act carries little political risk, in part because the public has just watched him slog through a difficult but productive lame-duck session of Congress. And there is an upside to peace and quiet for a president who is wrapping up one rough year and preparing for another, said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University in Maryland who studies the presidency and the press.
“The amount of time that he has had by himself is important for thinking and long-range planning,” Professor Kumar said. “You can do a type of thinking in these kinds of circumstances that you can’t at the White House. It just gives you time to develop perspective.”
Advisers to Mr. Obama, who is scheduled to leave here for Washington on Monday night, say he is indeed giving some thought to a range of topics: his State of the Union address, expected in late January; his budget; his legislative agenda; his relations with Congress; and a staff reshuffling that will include the selection of a new deputy chief of staff and a replacement for Lawrence H. Summers, the president’s top economic adviser, who returned to Harvard to teach.
But Mr. Obama has not risked any public utterances on these or other matters; his announcement on Wednesday that he was bypassing the Senate to make six recess appointments was done with a news release.
“They have managed to figure out how to really go into what amounts to a full lid on the news,” Mr. McCurry said with a degree of admiration. He said Mr. Obama is smart to lie low, because the public is not paying attention anyway. “I think what’s worse is when they try to make some pretense that they’re actually doing work in between golf rounds.”
Here on Oahu, where Mr. Obama and his family are staying in a luxury oceanfront rental home in the sleepy town of Kailua, the president is cloaked in the comfort of a news-free zone. The public does not see much of him, except for when he is zipping by in his armored sport utility vehicle, and it does not much seem to care.
Images of the president at leisure — sharing a Hawaiian shave ice with daughters Malia and Sasha, golfing, dining out with his wife — have trickled out, orchestrated by aides who have also taken care to allow pictures of the president at church and visiting the troops on Christmas Day. His advisers calculate that there has been roughly one photo opportunity every day and a half.
News photographers are grousing. They were kept at a safe distance and given strict instructions to put away their telephoto lenses when the Obama family went snorkeling on Tuesday at the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, where green sea turtles and fish in all shapes and colors dart in and out of a coral reef. (The president does not want to be photographed with his shirt off, and the preserve is closed on Tuesdays, so the public was not around, either.)
Mr. Obama spent Thursday on the island’s North Shore, which is famous for its monster waves and the sweet, succulent shrimp that are sold from trucks on the side of the road. But there was no presidential sighting; he was tucked away at the beachfront home of his childhood friend Bobby Titcomb, who throws an annual barbecue for the Hawaiian White House.
On Friday, the president played golf — his fourth round so far this trip — and he spent a quiet New Year’s Eve at home, a gathering that included a talent show with family and friends, an annual Obama tradition. Again, no photos.
“There haven’t been many pictures, and there haven’t been many stories,” said Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton. “Part of it is that the allure is gone. The president and his family on vacation are less interesting; the Camelot glow is gone, so people just don’t care as much.
“And I think the White House is extraordinarily cautious about getting the right pictures out there, not sending the wrong message, because going off to Hawaii two years into a recession when a lot of people are unemployed does not come off well,” he said. “You don’t want the president bodysurfing when the public doesn’t have a job.”
Mike McCurry, who served as one of President Bill Clinton’s press secretaries, says the one image the public has not seen thus far this trip is of Mr. Obama reading. “Believe me,” Mr. McCurry said, “by the time the vacation is over, you’ll have a picture of him studying some manual.”
Maybe, maybe not. As has been reported, Mr. Obama brought along Lou Cannon’s biography of Ronald Reagan, another president who was confronted with a divided Congress. But he also brought two novels, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet,” a historical romance by David Mitchell about a Dutchman in Edo-era Japan, and “Our Kind of Traitor,” by the spy novelist John le Carré. The president’s wife makes a brief guest appearance in the le Carré book; in one passage, characters cannot visit the gardens of the Champs-Élysées in Paris because “Michelle Obama and her children are in town.”
Fortunately for Mr. Obama, no crisis has demanded his attention, as was the case last year when a Nigerian was accused of trying to blow up a passenger jet that was bound for Detroit.
And the people of Oahu seem content to let the president be. Gov. Neil Abercrombie explained their attitude in a recent interview by describing a drawing by Corky Trinidad, an acclaimed political cartoonist here who died in 2009. It shows Mr. Obama sleeping on a beach next to an endangered Hawaiian monk seal, a creature that Hawaiians know must not be disturbed.
“There was a little rope around them,” Mr. Abercrombie said, “and people were putting their fingers up to their mouths going, ‘Shhhh.’ ”
Analysts say Mr. Obama’s Hawaiian disappearing act carries little political risk, in part because the public has just watched him slog through a difficult but productive lame-duck session of Congress. And there is an upside to peace and quiet for a president who is wrapping up one rough year and preparing for another, said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University in Maryland who studies the presidency and the press.
“The amount of time that he has had by himself is important for thinking and long-range planning,” Professor Kumar said. “You can do a type of thinking in these kinds of circumstances that you can’t at the White House. It just gives you time to develop perspective.”
Advisers to Mr. Obama, who is scheduled to leave here for Washington on Monday night, say he is indeed giving some thought to a range of topics: his State of the Union address, expected in late January; his budget; his legislative agenda; his relations with Congress; and a staff reshuffling that will include the selection of a new deputy chief of staff and a replacement for Lawrence H. Summers, the president’s top economic adviser, who returned to Harvard to teach.
But Mr. Obama has not risked any public utterances on these or other matters; his announcement on Wednesday that he was bypassing the Senate to make six recess appointments was done with a news release.
“They have managed to figure out how to really go into what amounts to a full lid on the news,” Mr. McCurry said with a degree of admiration. He said Mr. Obama is smart to lie low, because the public is not paying attention anyway. “I think what’s worse is when they try to make some pretense that they’re actually doing work in between golf rounds.”
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