Michelle Obama’s Spanish Flytrap

It smacks of the political tone-deafness that got Bush in trouble over Katrina that Obama sees nothing wrong with commissioning Air Force One (and all of the resources his presidential travel entails) just to fly him and his wife up to New York City for dinner and a play.

(Obamas’ Marie-Antoinette faux pas, The iPINIONS Journal, May 31, 2009)

Alas, for the first family, a vacation is never just a vacation…

But, given the fickle, simplistic, myopic and polarized nature of political debate these days, I feel obliged to make three points crystal clear before venturing any further:

• I am as avid a supporter of Barack Obama today as I was even before he declared his candidacy for president of the United States in January 2007;
• I think the world of Michelle Obama, and she’s clearly the best thing that has ever happened to him; and
• By all objective criteria, he’s doing a terrific (in fact, a truly transformative) job as president, she’s doing a terrific job as first lady, and they’re doing a terrific job as first family.

That said, my opening quote demonstrates that I am not one of those yellow-dog liberals who believe that the Obamas can do no wrong. This brings me to Michelle’s highly publicized vacation to Spain last week, which has become quite a political flytrap.

First of all, I’m not sure what to make of the fact that she went on this European vacation with their youngest daughter Sasha and a few of her friends, leaving Barack behind to celebrate his 49^th birthday with Oprah and a few of his friends.  This, after all, is a first family that has preached about the virtues of dining as a family unit … every night.

Apropos of preaching, it was none other than Michelle who went down to the Gulf Coast just a few weeks ago and preached about the patriotic duty of vacationing there to help businesses affected by the BP oil spill to recover.  Yet here she was flying off to Europe on board Air Force Two at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Reports are that the destination and timing of this trip were determined by her desire to honor the request of a grieving personal friend. But, if true, this is even more self-indulgent than Obama taking Air Force One to New York City to honor a special date he promised Michelle: It’s one thing for the president to take some liberties with the taxpayer-funded perks of his job to appease his supportive wife. It’s quite another for the first lady to do so to console one of her girlfriends.

Mind you, I would have no complaint whatsoever if Michelle had traveled to Spain to further some declared public policy agenda.  In that case, I would not begrudge her a little sightseeing too.  Indeed, in criticizing the Obamas’ trip to New York City, I specifically noted that it would have been prudent for them to coordinate this date with one of the number of official trips both of them had already taken to this city. 

To be clear, though, I think Michelle would do a great deal to further her husband’s foreign policy agenda if she were to take many more solo official trips like the first one she took to Mexico earlier this year. Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush made many such trips on their husband’s behalf with nary a word of protest.

Her unconditional supporters argue that Michelle is entitled to have a personal life, and that if this means vacationing in Europe with her daughter and girlfriends, so be it. It’s axiomatic, however, that all first families must endure public scrutiny, including censure, of their personal lives. They know full well that this scrutiny is inherent in the nature of the office they seek, and that it’s a material part of the grand bargain they strike with the American people.

Of course, this is not to suggest that the Obamas should be so politically driven that they commission polls to determine where and when to take family vacations the way the Clintons did. But it’s instructive to note that Laura Bush was sensitive (and sensible) enough to vacation with her daughters in U.S. national parks when she was first lady….

Incidentally, it completely misses the point to argue that taxpayers only paid for Michelle’s travel and security because she paid for her food and five-star hotel accommodations out of personal funds.  After all, it’s the blithe extravagance of the whole trip, especially during these hard times, that offends all notions of political sensibility.

Consequently, this trip to Spain now makes the Obamas’ plan to visit the Gulf Coast for one day this weekend – at the beginning of their 10-day family vacation to ritzy Martha’s Vineyard – seem like an imperious and patronizing afterthought.

Clearly the Obamas are too politically savvy to have been oblivious, not only to the political fodder this trip would provide their detractors but also to the hypocritical message it would send about how much they truly feel the pain of ordinary Americans.

Therefore, this leaves one to conclude that, like King Louis XVI and his first lady, Marie Antoinette, they just don’t care what people think about their regal indulgences. In point of fact, her hobnobbing with the King and Queen of Spain now makes one think that the surprising familiarity she assumed with the Queen of England was no commoner’s faux pas at all….

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Obamas’ Marie-Antoinette faux pas