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A 'regular guy,' but with Secret Service
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Even a guy running for president has to take his wife out on a date.
So on a recent night, Barack Obama escorted his wife, Michelle, to a swanky Italian restaurant along Chicago's Michigan Avenue. A van of reporters sat outside in case their night turned into national news. It didn't.
Real life for Obama isn't what it used to be. When he ditches his work clothes for flip-flops and jeans to go to a park to watch his oldest daughter play soccer, Secret Service agents come along -- trailed by a pool of reporters.
A $20 haircut at his neighborhood joint -- a South Side barbershop he has gone to for years -- requires a five-car motorcade that disrupts traffic.
He is followed nearly all day, including during down time and his vacation in Hawaii this week. The Secret Service contingent on the vacation is unusually large, with agents covering the candidate, his wife and daughters, Malia, 10 and Sasha, 7. They trailed along while Obama played golf, had a sno cone with his daughters, visited his grandmother and caught a showing of the "The Dark Knight." The agents try to blend in by wearing Hawaiian shirts, still with the earpiece coming out of the collar.
This exhaustive coverage began more than a month ago for Obama. Republican John McCain, who often spends quiet time at his Sedona, Ariz., vacation compound, only recently agreed to it. All-hours monitoring can produce regular-guy photos that can help the candidate seem down to earth, but it also has perils. Any gaffe is likely to be written about, and any videotaped move could show up in a rival's campaign ad.
Tom Patterson, a Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor, said voter perception of candidates as "regular guys" helps only a little. But when voters don't relate to a candidate, the negative effect can be huge. "It was hard to connect to [Al] Gore, to relate to Gore in 2000," he said. "The question of Bush, and who you'd rather have a drink with, may have said more about Gore than George [W.] Bush."
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