November 18th, 2008
Doing the Dishes–All in Day’s Authentic Brand
Slate.com’s John Dickerson calls Barack Obama The Dishwasher in Chief today. He asks why, on Sunday night, “out of the blue, was he telling 60 Minutes viewers about the soothing power of dishwashing?”
I so get this. As will most most people who find the daily-ness of life’s checklist to be a much-needed break, a standing-in-one-place and letting the warm water, the soap and the sponge wash over for awhile.
Writes Dickerson:
Any professional who has been on the road for a long period of time can identify with the drift away from a normal life. Your cooking skills are replaced by room-service-ordering skills. Gradually, you forget which floor your office is on or whether you take a left or a right turn from home to get to church. A presidential candidate experiences this bubble-wrapped life completely. He lives in a world where his meals, movements, and laundry are all taken care of for him. This is necessary so that he can focus on NAFTA and Afghanistan. If he makes a wrong turn, there is a hand to direct him gently down the correct hallway.
I was moved by the same moment that Dickerson was in the Obama interview. Looking off to the side of the camera, down at his shoes for a moment, a meditative Obama was clearly glad to be home, if even for a mere sixty odd days, after almost two years on the road.
This highly artificial life makes a body starve for the reality it used to know. It was clear that Obama was sensitive to the simple pleasures of returning to his home environment when he described hearing his wife move around the house when she wakes up before him. He’d been away from it so long, it probably rang like thunder.
And this:
Sure, the new president has a brutal agenda ahead of him, but in this twilight moment of pause he can luxuriate in being free of the thousands of immediate details of campaign life. And unlike any incoming president in modern memory, Obama has returned from the prison of campaign life to a relatively normal life. Yes, he has the constant Secret Service protection, and he can’t drive his own car. But within the four walls of his home, it feels normal.
Let’s hope that as the days grow shorter as we march head-long into the waning months of this turbulent year, that Obama’s twilight days at home can last–for him– as long as possible.
