All Work and No Play
A president's day is more than whatever appears on his public schedule.
Elsewhere in Slate, Daniel Byman analyzes the future of al-Qaida after Osama Bin Laden, Annie Lowrey asks who might get the $25 million reward, and Jack Shafer says to follow the news skeptically. Dahlia Lithwick says it's time to end the war on terror, Chris Beam explains the mood in Pakistan, and Dave Weigel looks at Congress' reaction. For the most up-to-date-coverage, visit the Slatest. Slate's complete coverage is rounded up here.
April 19: The president starts his day with an Easter Prayer Breakfast, then performs in a town hall with voters, followed by a meeting with various interested parties to discuss immigration. His official schedule ends with a meeting with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
April 28: The president announces his new national security team, meets with Hispanic leaders, and then meets with the president of Panama, with whom he delivers statements to the press.
Of all the secrets President Obama has had to carry, the details of the Bin Laden operation was probably one of the biggest. He may have had a special delight in bringing it to the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, where much of the audience lives to publish a president's secrets before he can reveal them. A year earlier, as Obama spoke at the same dinner, the Times Square bomb plot was being foiled. Obama was informed of this shortly after he left the stage. The public wouldn't know for a few hours. Unlike the dinner, such crises are not an annual event. For a president, though, they happen every day.
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John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at slatepolitics@gmail.com. Read his series on the presidency and his series on risk. Follow him on Twitter.
Photograph of Barack Obama by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images.