Below in an excerpt of an article by Jon Dickerson at Slate. It details how a President must compartmentalize his day and juggle both the mundane and critical aspects of his job on a day-to-day basis. It really does provide some useful perspective.
A president criticized for playing golf or spending time in Brazil on the eve of the Libyan invasion would have been relentlessly skewered for engaging in banter with the press on the eve of a dangerous military operation. But it wasn't just Saturday night that the president had to keep his serious brain cordoned off from his less serious brain. During the final phase of the multiyear operation, Obama chaired the National Security Council on five occasions to discuss progress. A look at those five days tells the story of not just how quickly a president must switch between his public and private duties but also how silly some of the public calls for his attention must have seemed to him at the time.
March 14: The president attends Kenmore Middle School in Washington's Virginia suburbs and gives a speech about education policy. He meets with Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen of Denmark. In the late afternoon, he chairs the meeting on Bin Laden. Shortly thereafter, he attends a Democratic Party fundraising dinner. The news of the day is that the president and Republican leaders have agreed to a second stopgap measure to keep the government open and avoid a shutdown.
March 19: The makeshift command center Obama used in Brazil is thought to be simply the place where he discusses Libya planning on the eve of U.S. operations. But it turns out Obama has been occupied with more than one military operation. The day's activities also include a diplomatic arrival ceremony, a press conference, public remarks and a few receptions.
April 12: The consuming story in Washington is the president's coming budget speech. Liberals who had been angry that Obama had not been a public presence in the budget fight with Republicans over extending government operations for the rest of the year are skeptical that Obama will deliver a forceful rebuttal to the House budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan.
April 19: The president starts his day with an Easter Prayer Breakfast, then performs in a town hall with voters, followed by a meeting with various interested parties to discuss immigration. His official schedule ends with a meeting with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
April 28: The president announces his new national security team, meets with Hispanic leaders, and then meets with the president of Panama, with whom he delivers statements to the press.
Of all the secrets President Obama has had to carry, the details of the Bin Laden operation was probably one of the biggest. He may have had a special delight in bringing it to the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, where much of the audience lives to publish a president's secrets before he can reveal them. A year earlier, as Obama spoke at the same dinner, the Times Square bomb plot was being foiled. Obama was informed of this shortly after he left the stage. The public wouldn't know for a few hours. Unlike the dinner, such crises are not an annual event. For a president, though, they happen every day.
http://www.slate.com/id/2292754/
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