MICHELLE ANTOINETTE AND LOUIS BARACK XVI

The White House held a briefing on Iran policy Aug 4 for a handful of selected journalists.   Among others, David Ignatius of the Washington Post came away mystified.

"It was an odd situation," Mr. Ignatius said. "Can’t remember anything quite like it."

It was odd, for two reasons:

First, the journalists in attendance came away uncertain about what they’d been briefed on. Mr. Ignatius and Christiane Amanpour of ABC News thought the administration is about to make a new diplomatic overture to Iran. But Robert Kagan of The Weekly Standard and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic said the briefer emphasized what the administration is doing to get tough with the mullahs.

The journalists heard what they wanted to hear. Ms. Amanpour thinks the mullahs are malleable, while Mr. Kagan and Mr. Goldberg doubt they would respond favorably to diplomacy. But it was the briefer’s mixed messages that made confusion possible.

The briefer was President Barack Obama himself.

Now, why would the president conduct a "background" briefing?

"It isn’t because we want to have him show off how smart he is," a White House aide told The American Spectator’s Prowler blog. "It’s to blunt criticism he’s not engaged in foreign policy."

But the confusion among the journalists about what they’d been briefed on isn’t likely to enhance their view of either the president’s intellect or his engagement.

In what he imagines is a flattering profile of the president and his aides,  Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair noted Barack Obama typically gets to the Oval Office about 9:30 a.m.  That is, about three hours later than did President Bush.

His aides told Mr. Purdum the president works late into the evening.  But not all those hours are spent on affairs of state.

"While President Obama’s wife and younger daughter were conducting international relations in Majorca … the commander in chief was at home hosting a fantasy camp for himself," wrote Dana Milbank of the Washington Post Tuesday (8/10).

"He and his buddies had a birthday weekend barbecue and basketball game with LeBron James, Alonzo Mourning, Magic Johnson and other legends of the sport. The day before, it was a four hour golf outing for Obama and the boys. On Monday (8/09), he hosted the Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints at the White House and talked about his own exploits on the gridiron last year with Saints quarterback Drew Brees."

Mr. Obama already has played 44 rounds of golf, Mr. Milbank said. "That’s about six times the number of news conferences he has held."

President Bush played only 24 rounds of golf in eight years as president. "Liberals who once mocked George W. Bush’s ‘watch this drive’ moment on the golf course now speak of the need for Obama to clear his head," Mr. Milbank noted.

Mr. Obama is living well at our expense. But he’s a piker compared to his wife. Some are calling her "Michelle Antoinette" after her vacation this month at a resort in Spain where room rates begin at $330 a night.

Michelle paid for her hotel room herself, and reimbursed the government for the equivalent of first class air fare. But taxpayers picked up the tab for the bulk of the cost of operating Air Force Two, and for the Secret Service.

Gossip in the National Enquirer about a "feud" between the first lady and second lady Jill Biden has fueled suspicion Michelle Obama has regal pretensions.

"What’s got her seething is that Jill doesn’t seem to treat Michelle with the reverence the first lady expects," the Enquirer’s source said.

Since when has the president’s wife been an object of reverence? Laura Bush – whose vacations with gal pals were spent hiking in Washington state’s Olympic National Park – never regarded herself so. Nor did her recent predecessors.

No one begrudges the first lady some down time. Perhaps she was exhausted after vacationing at the Malibu mansion of billionaire Howard Marks in June, or her weekend last month in Bar Harbor in Maine. And Ms. Obama must steel herself for the ordeal at Martha’s Vineyard at the end of this month.

But, noted liberal columnist Kirsten Powers in the New York Post, it’s hypocritical of the Obamas to call upon others to cut back when they have no intention of doing so themselves.

" ‘Sacrifice for thee but not for me’ is not a great campaign slogan," noted Ms. Powers.

No wonder commentators like Nile Gardiner of the London Telegraph are now comparing the Obama Presidency to the Ancien Régime of pre-revolutionary France.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.