QUICK, A PILLOW!  A BLANKEE! – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  I consider this a national emergency, as serious as war itself.  From AP:

WASHINGTON – 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.

I feel my heart breaking already.

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.

Well, actually the bank bailouts began under Bush, but who needs facts?  As for the rest, that's what presidents do.

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...

Wait.  Didn't he apply for this job?  What does he want, overtime?  Look, we'll give him his letter of recommendation and he can go.

That weight was particularly striking during the president's exhaustive, three-month review of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Images of a visibly tired Obama, his black hair now flecked with gray, greeting the bodies of fallen soldiers at Dover Air Force Base and walking through rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery sparked rumors that he was skipping meals and losing weight.

Is this a weird story, or what?  The reporter obvious adores the guy – maybe a little too much.  She's writing about soldiers killed in action and she's worried about her guy losing weight?

And people wonder why we say that a good chunk of the media is in the tank for Obama.

Aides who have known Obama since before he took office say he seems more sober than he did a year ago, but also increasingly focused on the issues facing the country.

Now just wait a second.  What are they admitting here about the "old" Obama?  Weren't we told by the media during the campaign that he was the Second Coming? 

You mean he wasn't?

As a presidential candidate, Obama was known to get grumpy about grueling travel schedules, questioning why so many events had to be layered on top of each other and why the days had to be so long. He not only hated being away from his family for long stretches but, in his typically rational style, questioned the reasoning behind the craziness of the campaign trail. Aides came to dread having tell him about certain aspects of his schedule.

I don't know how much more of this I can take.  Do we laugh?  Do we cry?  This is the president of the United States we're talking about.  Maybe he thought it was Student Government.

But for all of its stresses, the presidency has provided Obama ways to cope. He persuaded advisers early on to let him keep his beloved BlackBerry to stay in touch with a handful of friends outside the White House. Aides try to include time in his schedule for morning workouts in the White House gym and weekend rounds of golf.

Good God, this is embarrassing.  Imagine what historians will think.  Compare please to Lincoln fighting the Civil War, or FDR, in a wheelchair, fighting World War II.

In a city where virtually anything can become political, Obama has said that one of the things he values most about his wife and daughters is the refuge they provide him from the folly of Washington.

Yeah, and the greatest folly of all was electing a guy who thought it would be easy.

December 29, 2009