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First lady Michelle Obama, accompanied by daughters Malia and Sasha and mother Marian Robinson, is off to China Wednesday with plans to make friends, see the sights, promote education, and charm anyone willing to listen.
On this, her third solo foreign trip abroad, sticky, tricky issues such as human rights and international trade abuses are decidedly not on her agenda, at least not in an obvious way. She is not expected to be making dramatic pronouncements about, say, women's rights, as former FLOTUS (and possible future POTUS candidate) Hillary Clinton once did on a trip to China.
That's not Obama's FLOTUS style. She has turned out to be a skillful blend of first-lady convention and innovation, seamlessly switching from workouts with kids on the White House lawn, to glittery state dinners in couture fashion to "mom-dancing" with Jimmy Fallon on his late-night gab show. But she rarely says or does anything truly controversial or explicitly political, and she isn't planning to start in China.
"I'll be focusing on the power and importance of education, both in my own life and in the lives of young people in both of our countries," she said in her first post on her travel blog of the trip.
On this, her third solo foreign trip abroad, sticky, tricky issues such as human rights and international trade abuses are decidedly not on her agenda, at least not in an obvious way. She is not expected to be making dramatic pronouncements about, say, women's rights, as former FLOTUS (and possible future POTUS candidate) Hillary Clinton once did on a trip to China.
That's not Obama's FLOTUS style. She has turned out to be a skillful blend of first-lady convention and innovation, seamlessly switching from workouts with kids on the White House lawn, to glittery state dinners in couture fashion to "mom-dancing" with Jimmy Fallon on his late-night gab show. But she rarely says or does anything truly controversial or explicitly political, and she isn't planning to start in China.
"I'll be focusing on the power and importance of education, both in my own life and in the lives of young people in both of our countries," she said in her first post on her travel blog of the trip.
Look, I'm the first to defend Presidential vacations. Being President is a 24/7 job. Once elected, one is never not the President. You take time when you can to unplug. I get that. I support that. Whether it's a few hours on the golf course on a Tuesday afternoon or a weekend at Camp David, you take what you can get. And even when you're on vacation, you're still on the job.
But there's taking time where you can, with consideration of what's on your plate, and then there's just abusing that privilege. The Obamas passed that about six exits back. This is just asinine. Michelle and a thousand of her closest friends going on a tour of China because she wants to amuse herself is just beyond the pale. This is wasting money and living in opulence for the sake of wasting money and living in opulence.
Now, predictably, the usual suspects will be along telling us all about how Bush going "on vacation" at his own home is just like the Obamas spending millions upon millions of dollars renting out entire estates in Hawaii for their own personal use on the taxpayer dime....
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