The Obama Effect – Are They Bringing Sexy Back to the White House?

It seems a November article on the Huffington Post has touched off a flurry of internet speculation regarding President Obama and his Oval Office sex life. And everyone, I believe, wants to know if the Obamas will have sex in the White House? Has it happened already? Will it happen in just one room or say the Lincoln Bedroom, the rose garden, the oval office, the state ballroom? Will the Secret Service be listening in? Is it better when done on a rug with the Presidential Seal? Or will it be like sex in prison, as writer Amy Friedman described in this past Sunday’s NYT Modern Love column “Kept Together by the Bars Between Us” - “Yes, we did it, every three months in a trailer on the prison grounds, behind walls and gates and lock and key.” How badly do you have to screw up (no pun intended) as a Secret Service Agent to be on Presidential bedroom detail?

Like the world awaiting the election of a new Pope, watching for smoke to come from the Sistine Chapel, Americans are watching closely for an extra bounce in the President’s step as he enters the Oval Office, walks to a press conference or boards Air Force One. We all watch and wait, like Hitchcockian voyeurs, because the bottom line reality is that Republican politician sex is just not exciting. When was the last titillating Republican sex scandal, at least one that did not include tapping in a men’s room or confessions of erectile dysfunction. Historically, when Democrats (Howard Dean and his Vulcan mating ritual references excluded) get it on, it is one rollicking, hot, steamy, freaky, scandal-filled affair. The party can thank the Kennedy men (all of them), Bill Clinton and Thomas Jefferson for that reputation, I suppose...

But, what I love about Barack and Michelle Obama is that as a couple, they seem real. Whatever may go on behind closed doors, be damned. Because out in public, with the cameras on, they seem to be a caring, united front -genuinely affectionate, protective of each other and dare I say in love. In a time of national cynicism and divorce, when many people are staying in and “nesting” to weather the economic storm, isn’t it apropos that such a couple are in the White House. I hope their time in Washington brings them closer together and makes them stronger. I hope it brings us, as a nation, closer together and makes us stronger. So Mr. President, the gauntlet is laid down - bring sexy back and let love rule!