For Obama, a Real and Rare Vacation in Hawaii

By ASHLEY PARKER
Published: January 4, 2014

KAILUA, Hawaii — After a two-week vacation on the windward side of Oahu, ensconced with his family in a private beachfront rental, President Obama prepared on Saturday to return to the chillier clime — both politically and weather-wise — of the nation’s capital.

In an end-of-year news conference before he left Washington, the president said he hoped that his annual tropical getaway would leave him refreshed and ready for the challenges of 2014. “I am sure,” he said, “that I will have even better ideas after a couple days of sleep and sun.”

He may have gotten his wish. As the people around here say, “Mahalo!” (Thank you!)

No News Is Good News

Air Force One was barely off the ground for the 10-hour flight when White House aides began making bold predictions: They expected no urgent news to break during the trip. And this year — for the first time since Mr. Obama took office and began making a regular Christmas sojourn to Hawaii, where he lived as a teenager — they were right.

Mr. Obama’s winter vacation has often been delayed, cut short or interrupted by the demands of the Oval Office — in 2009 by the fight over the health care law, in 2010 by the question of extending President George W. Bush’s tax cuts and in 2011 by the extension of unemployment insurance and a reduction in payroll taxes. (Mr. Obama was also in Hawaii in 2009 when a terrorist tried to bring down a trans-Atlantic flight bound for Detroit with a bomb concealed in his underwear.)

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/us/politics/for-a-pressured-president-a-real-and-rare-vacation-in-hawaii.html?ref=politics&_r=0