The presidency has taken on the paragon of joylessness. President Obama, who has accelerated a trend of “sneaking off” for activities, seems disinterested in the challenges of his job, which are immense, and invested in the escapist perks, which could be described with the same adjective in a starkly different context. Matthew Continetti wrote about the contrast with enviable eloquence and humor; in framing the domestic and foreign issues of the current administration, he bitingly observed, “These subjects are far too small and mundane for our president. He prefers contemplative and thoughtful and nuanced symposia on philosophy, quantum mechanics, and how best to spend inheritances — all accompanied by Tuscan wine,” a nod to a dinner he enjoyed among some sophisticates in Italy this March.
Just Sunday, the Associated Press reported about a family trip he took to California for Father’s Day weekend — an excursion that any man of any profession with the requisite means has the right to do. It was the story’s description of the president’s current frame of mind that was unsatisfactory, and would be funny were reality a movie. It’s troubling since reality is the real thing.
“I think frankly we’ve all been through a cold and bitter winter and the bear has cabin fever,” said Obama friend and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. “His cabin is a little bit bigger and harder to escape than most.”
Obama has fantasized about being “on a beach somewhere drinking out of a coconut” or simply being able to walk out of the White House gate and stroll around unrecognized.
Hibernating bear metaphors, coconut cocktails — the characteristics of a serious job. He’s departed the White House to get away from it all a few times in recent weeks, strolling to a nearby Starbucks and requesting that reporters back off, taking Education Secretary Arne Duncan out for a casual lunch, stopping by a little league baseball game. The AP added that he’s planning to take a “longer-than-usual,” two-week vacation to a Massachusetts getaway in August. Who knows what unaddressed crises will have emerged by then.
There is a human desire to flee difficulty and stress when they arise, and to condemn that urging would be to encourage misanthropy. But these negatives are inherent of a uniquely daunting, unwieldy job, President of the United States of America, and to run from them is an act of dereliction. The presidency is not a tape that can be paused or fast-forwarded. It plays out in realtime, and nothing can be skipped.
After four years, which included a stubbornly sour economy, an uncertain world on the path to destabilization, congressional logjam, an electoral repudiation of his policies, and the obviousness that he could not superimpose his once-lofty campaign rhetoric onto the grind of governing, Barack Obama surely realized the unglamorous nature of the gig. Did he think he could change it? Did he think he could ignore it? Did he, heaven forbid, think he could overcome it by altering his approach, switching off of campaign mode, building relationships with the legislature, managing his expectations and his underlings, and finding solace in the dignity of hard work and not the flight of a well-struck 5-iron?
The cumbersome, systemic problems befalling the current presidency — power gone rogue, power abused, adversarial power emboldened abroad — are the products of an administration, a man, that is not interested in the challenge, different from just “not up for it.” A tenure of scandal suggests unaccountability, and chess among rivals is economic — they move where they sense weakness. Order has eroded inside this White House, and the head of the home will be slipping away to a burger joint, a coffee shop, a vineyard near you. He could’ve done so, voluntarily, as an ex-president.
