AP Pity Party: Obama 'Escapes'

I suspect most readers' first reaction to this will be, "There's no way George W. Bush would ever have gotten this level of sympathy from an Associated Press writer."

You see, poor Barack Obama was having a hard time and getting stressed out after his first two weeks on the job. So he "escaped" with his wife to a Washington, DC public school.

The Associated Press's ever-sympathetic (or, I should say, absolutely pathetic) Ben Feller broke out the Kleenex:

On a tough day, Obama escapes for a while

On the rockiest day of his young administration, President Barack Obama did what surely made him happy for a while.

He left.

With little notice, the president and first lady Michelle Obama bolted the gated compound of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in their tank of a limousine on Tuesday. They ended up at a Washington public school, greeted by children who could not care less about the collapse of a Cabinet secretary nomination.

"We were just tired of being in the White House," the president candidly told the gleeful second-graders at Capital City Public Charter School.

"We got out! They let us out!" Mrs. Obama said as the kids and their teachers laughed.

The White House said the Obamas' trip had been planned, just not publicly announced.

..... The stop at the school underscored a promise that the Obamas made and insist they will keep: to avoid getting caught up in a White House bubble. They say they will be visible parts of the Washington community - even in the midst of a hectic day. Or a difficult one.

Oh brother.

I suspect that if George Bush had something like this, and had said "We were just tired of being in the White House," it would have been interpreted as a sign that he couldn't handle his job.