President Obama and the first family looked glum when they stepped off Marine One outside of the White House after their summer vacation.
They had been on Martha’s Vineyard for the past two weeks, enjoying their annual summer break – and they seemed far from happy to be home.
En route to the capital on Sunday, they stopped off at Cape Cod to swap their first helicopter for the President’s plane Air Force One, and they managed to smile at crowds on the tarmac.
But as the family disembarked Air Force One at Andrews Air Force base, before taking another helicopter back to their official residence, the happy faces had vanished.
At the White House, a serious-looking Obama took the hand of his 17-year-old daughter Malia, while his wife and Sasha, 14, followed behind.
Obama perhaps had more reason to smile than anyone else in the family – he had managed to squeeze in a final game of golf before the trip home, playing with former UBS chief Robert Wolf.
He also finally shed his summer curse – which had seen his vacations gripped by controversy, crises and plummeting popularity.
Instead, the summer of 2015 has been among the most productive stretches of Obama’s presidency.
Late June victories in the Supreme Court on health care and gay marriage, along with a win for his trade agenda on Capitol Hill, were followed by the landmark Iran nuclear deal in July and the raising of the U.S. flag over a new embassy in Cuba in August.
Instead of being overshadowed by the 2016 presidential campaign, Obama’s agenda has often been driving the debate among the candidates running to replace him.
And yet to the president, one of his summer’s biggest successes may simply be making it through his annual vacation on the tiny Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard largely uninterrupted. While his summer troubles have often trailed him on previous vacations, he closed out this year’s trip without a single public appearance or statement to the press.
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