Ernie Fitzpatrick asked:
Hopefully the power outage in Hawaii over the weekend that left Obama in the dark is not some sort of prophecy about his presidency. Barack Obama was without electricity for 12 hours at his vacation home on Oahu following a major blackout across Hawaii's most populous island. What's the odds?
The outage on Friday night left hundreds of thousands of people, including Obama and his family, in the dark as an electrical storm rolled over Oahu. Residents of Oahu said blackouts, albeit on a much smaller scale, are common. The last major power cut was in 2006, they said. Hawaiian electricity company spokesman Darren Pai said that by 7 a.m. local time, electricity had been restored to about half of the customers affected by Friday's outage.
And the fact that he's about to be the next president of the United States is finally being felt. It's not easy giving up your liberties to be the head hancho of the United States. The media glare, the constant security appendage and the sheer production that has become a morning jog or a hankering for an ice cream cone – it’s been closing in on Barack Obama for some time.
There are disadvantages to being president of the United States.
The president-elect appears increasingly conscious of the confines of his new position, bristling at the routine demands of press coverage and beginning to chafe at boundaries that are only going to get smaller. Obama even took the unusual step Friday morning of leaving behind the pool of reporters assigned to follow him, taking his daughters to a nearby water park without them.
It was a breach of longstanding protocol between presidents (or presidents-elect) and the media, that a gaggle of reporters representing television, print and wire services is with his motorcade at all times. All presidents and would-be presidents struggle with “the bubble” – the security detail and the always-there reporters that impose barriers to any spontaneous interaction with the outside world.
But Obama seems to be struggling particularly hard, particularly early. Welcome to your new life, president-elect. :-)
plumbing 101
Hopefully the power outage in Hawaii over the weekend that left Obama in the dark is not some sort of prophecy about his presidency. Barack Obama was without electricity for 12 hours at his vacation home on Oahu following a major blackout across Hawaii's most populous island. What's the odds?
The outage on Friday night left hundreds of thousands of people, including Obama and his family, in the dark as an electrical storm rolled over Oahu. Residents of Oahu said blackouts, albeit on a much smaller scale, are common. The last major power cut was in 2006, they said. Hawaiian electricity company spokesman Darren Pai said that by 7 a.m. local time, electricity had been restored to about half of the customers affected by Friday's outage.
And the fact that he's about to be the next president of the United States is finally being felt. It's not easy giving up your liberties to be the head hancho of the United States. The media glare, the constant security appendage and the sheer production that has become a morning jog or a hankering for an ice cream cone – it’s been closing in on Barack Obama for some time.
There are disadvantages to being president of the United States.
The president-elect appears increasingly conscious of the confines of his new position, bristling at the routine demands of press coverage and beginning to chafe at boundaries that are only going to get smaller. Obama even took the unusual step Friday morning of leaving behind the pool of reporters assigned to follow him, taking his daughters to a nearby water park without them.
It was a breach of longstanding protocol between presidents (or presidents-elect) and the media, that a gaggle of reporters representing television, print and wire services is with his motorcade at all times. All presidents and would-be presidents struggle with “the bubble” – the security detail and the always-there reporters that impose barriers to any spontaneous interaction with the outside world.
But Obama seems to be struggling particularly hard, particularly early. Welcome to your new life, president-elect. :-)
plumbing 101
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