With his 50th birthday coming up fast (Aug. 4, according to his Hawaiian birth certificate) President Barack Obama has taken to musing on middle age, Amie Parnes reports at Politico.
“We’ve been governing for 2½ years,” Obama told supporters on a conference call this month. “I don’t look that young anymore. I’m grayer, I have bags under my eyes, but that core spirit is still there.”
An aide said Obama began introducing references to his graying hair and other manifestations of aging spontaneously, and speechwriters started incorporating them into his formal remarks.
“It’s not weighing on him – he’s very comfortable with the stage of life that he’s in,” Valerie Jarrett told Parnes. “He shares it in a very lighthearted way.”
In any case, he’ll have one consolation: He’s likely to once again be the youngest major-party candidate in the 2012 presidential campaign.