Pat Dollard

Tweet

New York Post:

O, MY BOD! IT’S BEACH BARACK

NEXT PREZ HEATS UP HAWAII

By MAGGIE HABERMAN

Buff-bodied President-elect Barack Obama put his chiseled frame on full display – as seen on Page 1 – during a stroll in Hawaii while on vacation with his family.

PHOTOS: Obama’s Trip To Hawaii

Looking more like a relaxed beachgoer than the leader-to-be of the free world, Obama walked shirtless amid lush greenery with a water bottle in one hand, his eyes covered by shades, on Sunday.

It’s a sight that Americans are increasingly getting used to – an extremely hard-bodied 44th president of the United States, whose toned pecs and abs have become as well documented during the transition process as have his policy positions.

And it’s no surprise – the pool report from the press corps following Obama begins every day with a description of him heading to the gym.

Yesterday, for instance, the Obamas left their vacation home at 7:08 a.m., arriving at the Semper Fit Center at a Marine Corps base for their workouts.

The president-elect wore a baseball cap and gray shirt, while his wife was clad in workout clothes.

Team Obama has said the future president, who’s a basketball-lover, enjoys using the elliptical trainer, the treadmill and weights.

“He does look very buff . . . He must be doing major cardio. His skin is gorgeous,” said Manhattan fitness expert Marina Kamen.

“I’m sure the health is unbelievable in terms of what he’s ingesting. It’s written all over him.”

Even California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former bodybuilder who famously mocked Obama as a girly-man right before Election Day, has eaten his words.

“Look, I’ve seen him playing basketball. He’s a better basketball player than I am,” Schwarzenegger recently told ABC’s “This Week.”

WaPo:

Paparazzi Photog Gets a ‘Pec-tacular’ Obama Shot

By Philip Rucker

HONOLULU — More than a dozen photographs of a bathing suit-clad President-elect Barack Obama surfaced online Monday showing the shirtless Chicagoan accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters on the white-sand beach in front of their vacation home.

Reporters, photographers and television camera operators traveling with the Obamas have been banned by the Secret Service from approaching the oceanfront estate in nearby Kailua where the family is vacationing. But an enterprising paparazzi photographer wearing a Hawaiian shirt apparently strolled along the beach, saw the Obamas, took out his long-lens camera and started shooting.

The photographer was less than 200 feet from the Obamas, said Frank Griffin, co-owner of Bauer-Griffin, the California-based paparazzi agency that snapped the shots. But the Secret Service agents guarding the property did not ask the photographer to leave the beach.

“There was tacit approval that he was able to shoot what he could shoot. It’s a public beach,” Griffin said in a telephone interview Monday with The Washington Post. He declined to identify the photographer, but said he is a contractor who lives in Hawaii and whose family has a house not far from the Obama’s vacation property.

“The guy just walked along there. He had a camera in his hand. He wasn’t hiding behind the bushes. He took some pictures. Everybody saw him. And then he walked off,” Griffin said. “It was as simple as that.”

Griffin added that the Secret Service “didn’t seem to mind.”

“He wasn’t hiding behind the trees, he wasn’t on a boat and he wasn’t doing anything that we are used to doing,” Griffin said.

Asked whether the photographs constitute a security breach, Obama spokesman Ben
LaBolt declined to discuss the matter, saying only: “We don’t comment on security.”

Griffin said the photographs were taken on Sunday, the first full day the Obamas spent in Hawaii. In the pictures, Barack Obama was wearing only a pair of black board shorts. The Bauer-Griffin Web site boasts, “Enjoy our EXCLUSIVE pics of your pec-tacular President-elect.”

The shots of Michelle Obama show her wearing a black one-piece bathing suit with a bright-colored beach towel wrapped around her waist. Their daughter, Sasha, 7, was photographed in a blue bikini, her hair in a bun. Several other guests of the family are in the photographs, as well.