I'm glad Obama is on vacation

Live your best life, Barack Obama. YOLO.

Obama and his family visit Indonesia's 9th-century Borobudur Temple in Magelang.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Pius Erlangga)

I don't know exactly where Barack Obama and his family are as of this writing, but I really do hope he's enjoying himself.

Being president is a terrible-sounding job. If it were offered to me tomorrow I would not accept it. And so the impulse to spend one's first six or so months out of office visiting estates in Palm Beach, country clubs in Oahu, private islands owned by slightly dotty billionaires and deceased Academy Award-winning actors, and $2,000-a-night resorts in Bali is totally understandable. (All of this is assuming one has written enough bestselling memoirs or given the requisite number of paid speeches on Wall Street to afford what one American poet memorably termed "a license to chill.")

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.