Obama spends rare night at home, eager to putter

[June 02, 2012]  CHICAGO (AP) -- All President Barack Obama wanted to do was go home.

No, not to the fancy government house in Washington. He wanted the familiar bed at his Kenwood/Hyde Park house in Chicago. The comfy chair. Maybe watch some ESPN. Chill.

"I am sleeping in my bed tonight," he told a group of fellow Chicagoans at a fundraiser Friday evening. "I'm going to go into my kitchen. I might cook something for myself, putter around in the backyard a little bit."

Can't blame him, not after a day like Friday. Not with a jobs report that could put his own job in jeopardy. So there he will be, home alone, with his own thoughts and a security detail, puttering. His wife, Michelle, and his two daughters would not be joining him.

He'd been pining for this for a while. Last month, while in Chicago for a NATO summit, the leader of the free world couldn't even buy a ride home.

"Despite being 15 minutes away from my house, nobody would let me go home," he said at a post-summit news conference. "I was thinking I would be able to sleep in my own bed tonight. They said I would cause even worse traffic. So I ended up staying in a hotel."

No such limitations this time.

The last time Obama stopped by his home was in January. It was a quick visit, not an overnight stay.

If you have a nice house with a mortgage between $500,000 and $1 million at a rate of 5.265 percent (according to his 2011 financial report), you might want to spend a night or two in there.

He last slept in the house on April 2011, when he was in Chicago on a fundraising trip.

He was fundraising in his home city again on Friday -- three events packed into four hours -- adding at least $4 million to the estimated $1.8 million haul he raked in earlier in the day in Minneapolis.

But the love bestowed by his high-dollar donors was weak solace compared with the dismal jobs report he received earlier in the day. Only 69,000 jobs created in May and an uptick in unemployment to 8.2 percent, the first increase in nearly a year.

Obama had no clue what the jobs report would say when he first made plans to spend the night at his house.

But he recently had the notion on his mind that his place at the White House is fleeting.

At a ceremony Thursday for the unveiling of former President George W. Bush's portrait, Obama reflected on the White House's different roles as a working office, a living museum and as "an enduring symbol of our democracy."

"I think it's fair to say that every president is acutely aware that we are just temporary residents -- we're renters here," he added.

In Chicago Friday, he told a crowd of donors gathered at the Chicago Cultural Center: "It's good to be home. The White House is nice, but I'm just leasing."

For as long as he is allowed.

[Associated Press; By JIM KUHNHENN]

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