WHIMS SEEMS AWFULLY BENIGN:

Today is Barack Obama's 56th birthday, and so there's a lot of chatter about him. As a result, I just read a story about his relationship with the secret service (and other staffers) that I hadn't heard before. It comes from Michael Lewis, who spent 6 months hanging around Obama to write a profile in Vanity Fair back in 2012. You can watch him tell the story at about 26:30.

Here's a transcript provided by Jason Cham: [...]

"The Secret Service that protect him love him. He wears this watch that's this goofy looking watch. It looks like a scuba diving watch. Its got all the knobs and you look over it and you expect to see an odometer on it. It is so out of character because everything about him is so spare and minimalist. At some point I said, 'You know, your watch just doesn't fit you. It is an odd thing that you have that watch. That watch is a geeky, dorky watch. And you're kind of cool and that's kind of odd.' And he said, 'I'll tell you about this watch. When I was running the campaign-the first campaign-Michelle and I just started inviting the Secret Service in. They weren't getting fed when they were watching me. So we would have them in.' And they said-I don't know if I can say this-previous Presidents didn't treat them that way. And the Secret Service pooled their money to give him this watch. And he wore it because of that.

"He has that kind of loyalty. Not just from the people who protect him but the people who work for him feel that way too. He creates-and I watched him do this for me-a safe place for people to operate in. They don't feel like they are going to be backstabbed or they are going to be subject to the whims of some kind of whimsical leader. They feel safe with him.

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