I suppose I was slightly surprised to learn that, at this point in his
life, Barack Obama is already working his way down a bucket list. I mean, once he leaves office he’ll be able to
do anything and everything he wants, so why not wait till then?
Still, when you have a spiritual vortex on your list, i.e. Stonehenge,
and you happen to find yourself in England for a NATO summit, I can see that you
might decide to make a detour, and use all the facilities of the president’s
office in order to go for a walk there.
It would be a great photo op if nothing else. And so it proved.
The best thing (and the least convincing thing) about the pictures of
Obama walking at Stonehenge is that he seems to be completely alone there. We know this can’t really be the case. The visit was unexpected apparently, so they hadn’t
closed the whole thing down, and therefore you know there must be large numbers
of common or garden tourists lurking just out of the frame. For that matter we also hear that he was
being shown around by a curator, who did in fact make it into one or two
photographs.
And then, being a man of the people, Obama had a "chance meeting," over the barbed
wire fence surrounding the site, with a passing family. And this is where it all falls apart. We see now that although the Pres. has managed to appear to walk alone around Stonehenge, there’s no way he can
engage with the public unless his secret service men are close at hand. A good walk spoiled some might say.
