Obama's Hawaiian Memories; He Didn't Miss White House

Obama Trying To "Mount an Hawaiian Coup"


On the last day of his Hawaiian vacation, President Barack Obama declared that he did not want to go home.

Asked during an after-hours tour of the Honolulu Zoo if he was ready to head back to Washington, Obama and his family replied in unison: "No!"

"Let's stay," first lady Michelle Obama joked to reporters. "We'll all stay. Are we all in? I'm trying to mount a coup."

The president spent some of the final hours of his 11-day trip at the zoo, on the golf course and visiting the cemetery where his grandfather is buried.

Obama's Sunday began in the way he started each of his vacation days: at the gym. Afterward, he played 18 holes on the Marine Corps Base Hawaii's Kaneohe Klipper Golf Course with his friends Marty Nesbitt of Chicago and Bobby Titcomb and Mike Ramos of Hawaii.

Obama's motorcade then headed to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl, where he spent about 10 minutes before heading over to the zoo to meet up with his wife and daughters, Sasha, 8, and Malia, 11.

Just as when they went to the movie "Avatar" and went snorkeling at Hanauma Bay and had a picnic on the beach, the first family had the zoo all to themselves as the sun set over the Waikiki tourist attraction.

Wearing a black polo shirt with dark olive slacks and sandals, Obama walked with Malia as they checked out the white-handed gibbon, ring-tailed lemur and Francois monkey, according to a pool report. The first lady walked with Sasha.

Obama returns to Washington Monday morning to face a packed agenda, after learning a lesson that numerous presidents have figured out the hard way, too: The holidays are rarely a time for total relaxation.

Last year, when Obama was president-elect, President George W. Bush was dealing with an outbreak of violence in Gaza. The year before, Pakistan was embroiled in conflict in the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

During Christmas week in 1997, President Bill Clinton was in Bosnia, handling the volatile situation there, and Bush faced an international crisis the day after Christmas in 2004, when tsunamis wreaked havoc on Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India and Thailand.

As Gaza fell into violence in December 2008, Obama insisted the country had "one president at a time" — and it wasn't him just yet. But in the last two weeks, as commander in chief, Obama was forced to confront the most significant terrorism scare inside the United States in years.

He is set to hold a meeting in the Situation Room Tuesday with top national security and intelligence officials, following last month's attempted bombing of a Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.



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Sources: Politico, Google Maps