According to the Financial Times, Obama is bored in the White House. The smallness of politics is tedious; he longs for more exalted pursuits. As an aide paraphrased:

“Just last night I was talking about life and art; big, interesting things, and now we’re back to the minuscule things on politics,” Mr Obama complained after a dinner last month with Italian intellectuals in Rome. His cabin fever is tangible. On the plus side, there are only two and a half years to go.

Reminds me of another thoughtful man in power. Alexis de Tocqueville served in the Chamber of Deputies throughout the July Monarchy. Despite his rhetorical support for liberal-ish democracy, the reality — parliaments, the rule of law, legislative haggling — bored him to tears. A “little democratic and bourgeois pot of soup” was how he described it to one of his closest friends.