Obama: Can’t a fellow just take a Tuscan break?

Ed Morrissey
HotAir.com
10/1/2010

After spending most of Recovery Summer on some sort of vacation and/or golf course, one might expect a young President like Barack Obama to feel rested and fit for the tough job of governing.  According to Byron York, though, Obama mused publicly yesterday about the prospect of escaping to Italy for a little sun and pasta:

The fundraiser — $30,400 per person — was at the home of Linda Douglass, the former CBS and ABC News reporter who joined the Obama White House to sell national health care to a skeptical public. Douglass is now a top executive at Atlantic Media, the Washington-based company that runs The Atlantic, National Journal, and other publications. Douglass’ husband, John Phillips, is a wealthy lawyer, and according to a White House pool report, he introduced Obama tonight by saying, “I can remember walking down those snowy streets of Des Moines in the primary…We sleep much better knowing that you are our president at this difficult time.”

According to the pool report, Obama thanked Phillips for the work he and his wife have done for Team Obama. Then the president mentioned that Phillips and Douglass have an opulent place in Italy and wondered why there had been no invitation to visit. “I’d appreciate a little break and some Tuscan sun,” the president said, according to the pool report. “Some pasta. I can use it.”

My goodness, of course he does.  It’s literally been weeks since his last vacation…

…this report from John Podhoretz and Mark Knoller’s Twitter stream from the event just after the fundraiser might make a good argument that the White House needs to get the boss a little more rest (emphasis mine):

“Now’s not the time to quit…it took time to free the slaves…ultimately we’ll make progress.”

“I need you to be fired up.”

“There better not be an enthusiasm gap, people.”

It took time to free the slaves? It took 87 years and a war to free the slaves, and another hundred years to secure the civil rights of their descendants.  If Obama wants people to wait that long for him to get his act together, that’s not exactly an effective rallying cry for enthusiasm.

It’s also a weird equivalency.  Does Obama really think that spending $787 billion on a failed economic stimulus gives him the stature of a Lincoln?…

Read the whole thing at HotAir.com

Comments from around the internet include jedgarlives, “Yeah, and a Republican President too!”;  tobybear, “Luckily for the slaves, Abraham Lincoln wasnt a big Golfer!”; and Maelstorm, “Translation: Obama: ‘It takes time to enslave the free.’ ”

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