This President’s Escape Is Sweet Home Chicago
By HELENE COOPER
Published: February 15, 2009
CHICAGO — For years, America has watched as its presidents retreated to ranches or New England retreats far from the madding crowds and the political gridlock of Washington.
But not President Obama.
On his first weekend back home in Chicago since being sworn in, Mr. Obama signaled that his time away from the White House would be spent on decidedly less rural pursuits.
In an interview with a hometown newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, in December, Mr. Obama said he planned to return to Chicago every six or eight weeks.
“My Kennebunkport is on the South Side,” Mr. Obama said, in a reference to the picturesque retreat of President George Bush on the coast of Maine. And just days after they moved into the White House, Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, told a group of children at a Washington elementary school that they already needed to get out of the official first residence.
But heading to one of the nation’s busiest cities for a presidential getaway is quite a different undertaking than retreating to a bucolic rural setting.
Throughout the weekend, flight restrictions for small planes were in place for a broad area around Mr. Obama’s Hyde Park home. The neighborhood itself was cordoned off with police barricades and the heightened security measures with which residents have grown familiar when Mr. Obama is in town.
When Mr. Obama took his wife out for a Valentine’s Day dinner on Saturday night, their heavily armored sedan was trailed through the city streets by a cavalcade of black S.U.V.’s, police cars, Secret Service vehicles and a bus for news people.
Still, leaving the protracted battle over the economic stimulus plan and the difficulties of some of his cabinet nominees behind him, Mr. Obama sought a return to the familiar in Chicago: He worked out at a favorite gym. He played basketball with his buddies at the Chicago Laboratory School. He got a haircut from his favorite barber at a friend’s apartment. “This weekend was a good time for the family to spend time in Chicago and see a few friends,” the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said in an e-mail message.
“The presidency follows you everywhere,” said Gordon D. Johndroe, who, as a White House spokesman, often accompanied President George W. Bush to Crawford, Tex., for long weekends. “But the opportunity to go back to your home state or your personal home is one that presidents relish.”
On Friday, Mr. Obama and an entourage that included his wife; her mother, Marian Robinson; his daughters, Malia and Sasha; friends; and even a few columnists boarded Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and landed at O’Hare International Airport just as the sun was setting over the city. The family then transferred to a helicopter for the flight into the city, skimming over backed-up freeways before sweeping past downtown skyscrapers to land at Daniel Burnham Park alongside Lake Michigan.
All of Chicago was immediately abuzz. “This is V-103, the president’s radio station!” a radio announcer voice blasted in a continuous loop on Chicago’s old-school R&B station all weekend.
“The Obamas are back home this weekend,” the bartender at the Grill, a local eatery, confided to a couple of Valentine lovebirds stationed at the bar Friday night.
For their Valentine’s Day dinner, the Obamas went to Table 52, the chef Art Smith’s upscale Southern-style restaurant, nestled in a 19th-century carriage house of the Biggs Mansion near Lake Shore Drive.
On Sunday morning, Mr. Obama played basketball for two hours with staff members and friends, including the really tall Reggie Love, the former Duke basketball player who is Mr. Obama’s aide, and the even taller Marvin Nicholson, the White House trip director. Also on the basketball court were three Obama friends, Marty Nesbitt, Eric Whitaker and Alan King. They played four games, and Mr. Obama’s team lost the championship game by a basket.
On Sunday night, the Obamas went to Mr. Nesbitt’s apartment to watch the N.B.A. All-Star Game. Malia and Sasha also visited with their friends over the long weekend, aides said.
Obama aides said that getting out of Washington helped the president reconnect to the rest of the country. “Part of his job is to stay in touch with the American people, and the White House can be a very suffocating place if you don’t get out and talk to people,” David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, told "Fox News Sunday."
Mr. Johndroe, the Bush aide, said that his former boss looked forward to his Crawford visits even though many of his White House worries followed him there. “I suspect,” Mr. Johndroe said, “President Obama feels the same way about Chicago.”