Day 51 -- Photographer/Vice President Joe Biden

Are my friends and I the only ones who noticed dear little Malia Obama snapping pictures like mad on the podium while her father took the oath of office?  At one point, I am quite certain she even handed off the camera to, of all people, Vice President Joe Biden presumably because he had a better vantage point to whatever it was she was trying to capture.  Still, Malia, checked his work before releasing him from his assignment. 

It is curious how we Americans are captivated by the Obama girls.  Sure we have had the Bush twins for eight years and Chelsea Clinton before them, but Sasha and Malia somehow make Barack Obama more three-dimensional and also force us to reexamine the bizarre journey it would be to be the child of the Commander in Chief.  To that end, the Bush twins wrote an open letter to the new first daughters in today’s Wall Street Journal on precisely that experience.  I couldn’t help but wonder if there was another person on the podium who was equally the child of a President who might tell the girls a different sort of story.

Of course, the outgoing President was an adult when his father, George H. W. Bush was President, but I believe his life was no less punctuated by his father’s residence in the White House than those who lived there during their formative years.  Some might argue his entire candidacy was nothing more than a prodigal son’s attempt to please his father.  Perhaps.  In the end, as George W. Bush faded out of Washington D.C. with much ceremonial pomp and circumstance, he was his father’s son.  Boarding the helicopter just before the outgoing president were his parents and I wonder if he might be more like the camera wielding Malia than we suspect.