Gail Collins: The Obama Holiday Tour

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The Obama Holiday Tour

By GAIL COLLINS
Published: April 10, 2009


Happy holidays! This is one of those times of year when families and friends can forget their troubles and join together for a Passover seder, as President Obama did on Thursday, or commemorate Easter with the traditional egg hunt, as President Obama will do on Monday. Americans with less religious inclinations can look forward to the upcoming Earth Day celebrations, when the president is planning to do something as yet unannounced, but undoubtedly special, and Arbor Day, when rumor has it that he will not just plant a tree, but personally reforest a large swath of the nation of Mali.

The president is back from his eight-day overseas trip, where, by my count, he visited six countries, held 25 meetings, eight variations on the theme of press conference and two town halls. He attended three summits and several receptions, gave two speeches, laid a wreath, walked across a bridge, took several tours of spots of local interest and made a quick stop in Iraq before arriving home in time for that seder.

In these troubling times, it’s comforting to have an omnipresent leader, although we are a little worried about the fact that in the Czech Republic, his press secretary felt compelled to wake Obama up to tell him that North Korea had launched their missile. After all, everybody knew it was going to happen and the missile did fall into the sea shortly after it left the ground.

Was it just because of that old Hillary Clinton campaign commercial? Was the administration afraid to admit that when it was 3 a.m. in the White House (or 4:30 a.m. at the Prague Hilton, if you’re being literal) and the phone rang, the president wasn’t awake to pick up the receiver?

This seems like a bad precedent. I think I speak for us all when I say they should at least reserve the knock on the bedroom door for successful missile launches.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/opinion/11collins.html?hpw