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.
Not that the commander in chief really thinks he can escape his duties, even on an island. Amid golf, tennis, gym workouts and dinner, Obama has been called on to monitor the airliner attack in Detroit last Friday and what appeared to be another attack on Sunday — that incident turned out to be a false alarm. On Monday, Obama worked out in the morning and played tennis before making his first public remarks on airline security, then hit the golf course.
So much for putting aside the stress of work. 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.”
The first 20 or so seconds of this video about sum it up!
Dude, you volunteered for the job. Stop whining!
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