Obama Has Made a Break for It

Published: December 26, 2008
HONOLULU — In the news-free zone that is Barack Obama’s preinauguration Hawaiian vacation, this passes for a bulletin: The president-elect ditched his “press pool” of media minders to take his daughters to a water park on Friday morning.
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In making his dash — with his Secret Service security detail, to be sure — Mr. Obama drew attention both to the seemingly odd but important rituals of the presidential (and prepresidential) bubble and to just how much this very private public man chafes under its constraints.
For decades, presidents and presidents-elect have had to move in motorcades that include the Secret Service, an ambulance and vans with a television camera crew, one or more press photographers and a representative for newspaper, magazine and radio reporters. The last is known, somewhat ghoulishly, as “the protective pool,” to be on hand should the worst happen and more generally to limit the number of reporters at events where allowing all comers would be impractical.
A reading of the dozens of pool reports during Mr. Obama’s seven-week-old transition would suggest that the only requirement for the job is a stopwatch to record the times of his travels to the gym.
Friday started out typically: The press pool assembled before 6 a.m. Hawaii time for the roughly 30-minute trip to the Kailua resort where Mr. Obama is staying. At 7:52 a.m. he and a longtime friend from Chicago, Dr. Eric Whitaker, left for the 10-minute trip to Marine Corps Base Hawaii and its Semper Fit fitness center.
At 8:58 a.m. Mr. Obama, in White Sox cap and sweaty clothes, emerged to shake hands with some onlookers. By 9:09 he was back home. Eighteen minutes later, Samantha Tubman, the Obama staff member charged with shepherding the press pool, gave it “a lid.” That is, she conveyed the word from Mr. Obama, through his security detail, that he would not be going out anymore that day, and that the press was free to go.
Unless Mr. Obama changed his mind, which he soon did. As Philip Rucker of The Washington Post, Friday’s newspaper pooler, was soon reporting from a van rushing to catch up, “President-elect Barack Obama left his vacation home with daughters Malia and Sasha about 11:45 a.m.”
The pool got to Sea Life Park at 1:10 p.m., so it had to take on faith the staff’s word that Mr. Obama had arrived there exactly an hour earlier. “Your pool was not allowed inside the park,” Mr. Rucker reported, adding, “It is unclear whether the Obamas swam with dolphins, and Obama’s clothing did not appear wet.”
Jeff Goldman, a CBS producer and “chief” of the press pool here, said in an e-mail message later: "I don’t think they were necessarily trying to ditch us. However, I have let them know that, this is important to us.”
Mr. Obama may have gotten the message. The next stop was the Koko Marina Center, where he ordered a tuna melt for himself — on 12-grain bread with cheddar cheese, tomatoes and no mayonnaise (details thanks to the pool report) — and shave ice treats for the children. The president-elect offered to buy shave ice for the entire pool. “I don’t think this is against policy,” he said. “You want one, I can tell.”
Maybe so, but there were no takers, according to the pool report.
More Articles in US » A version of this article appeared in print on December 27, 2008, on page A16 of the New York edition.
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