New York Times: “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.)”
Washington Post: “America’s 50th state, and its most isolated and exotic paradise, is not only the president’s birthplace and holiday getaway. It’s also his political utopia, which has embraced policies that have been coldly received on the mainland.”
