Sometimes stories just write themselves. Or in this case, sometimes the Associated Press writes them.
This cloying AP story explains that being the so-called leader of the so-called free world is tiring. Very tiring, indeed.
CAPITAL CULTURE: Big first year leaves Obama tired
After a sleepless, overnight flight to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, President Barack Obama made a not altogether surprising admission. He was tired.
Who could blame him? The president was on his ninth foreign trip to his 21st country; he added a 10th trip the following week. The year had been bookended by the two most intense periods of his young presidency – the early decisions to bail out the nation’s banks and automobile industry, steps the president deemed unpopular but necessary, and his December orders to deploy 30,000 additional U.S. troops to fight the war in Afghanistan.
Throw in an unemployment rate in the double-digits, a health care bill still stuck on Capitol Hill, and last-minute negotiations on a global climate change agreement, and aides say it’s no secret that the president is tired, and looking forward to recharging during his year-end family vacation in Hawaii.
Obama himself has been candid about the pressures of being president during what he has called an “extraordinary year.”
“You have a convergence of factors that have made this a difficult year not so much for me but for the American people,” he said in an interview with CBS News last month. “Absolutely that weighs on me.”
That weight was particularly striking during the president’s exhaustive, three-month review of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Images of a visibly tired Obama, his black hair now flecked with gray, greeting the bodies of fallen soldiers at Dover Air Force Base and walking through rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery sparked rumors that he was skipping meals and losing weight.
Why that poor, tired man. Who would have thought that socializing the American economy could be such hard work?
Might we humbly offer a suggestion, Mr. President? If you’re really as tired as you say, take a nap every afternoon. Lay off the golf. And the photo shoots for all those magazine covers. And the appearances on all those TV shows. And the bowing to foreign dignitaries. Especially the bowing to foreign dignitaries.
Source: Associated Press
