SLATE: What Barack Obama learned on his summer vacation

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After the Big Think:
What Barack Obama learned on his vacation.

By John Dickerson

During Barack Obama's vacation, we got a chance to see him eat shave ice with his daughters, play golf and body surf. But did he get a chance to think? Did he reacquaint himself with the "big picture" he worried he'd lost on the campaign trail? ...

... But I have discovered a few things about what he appears to have learned while on vacation.

1. Keep it big:
According to aides, Obama returned from Hawaii resolved to put even more emphasis on an earlier theme: This is a turning-point election....

2. Show them how you feel:
Speaking in Albuquerque, N.M., Monday about equal pay for women, Obama said that he didn't want his daughters "to ever confront a situation where they are disadvantaged because of their gender. The thought of it makes my blood boil." ...

3. Stay in McCain's face:
Obama has been going after John McCain since before he won the Democratic nomination. It was, for a time, part of the compulsory primary exercises to show that he was tough enough to handle the Democratic nomination. Before he left for vacation, he was hitting McCain on energy policy and, more pointedly, suggesting that McCain was trying to use his race against him.

But in the last few days he's made his attacks even sharper, emphasizing the link between McCain and Bush and portraying McCain as a poll-driven Washington insider out of touch with regular people....

to think and think big.

I'm so glad he took that vaca to Hawai'i! :bounce: