Why Obama Had to Go to Hawaii

In light of the news that Barack Obama is cancelling campaign appearances later this week in order to tend his ailing grandmother, Michael Crowley at The New Republic points to an important fact. After his mother’s death, Obama said “the biggest mistake I made was not being at my mother’s bedside when she died.” Obama’s mother died of ovarian and uterine cancer in 1995. “I didn’t get there in time,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004, which, perhaps, makes it all the more important that he be there now.