Chicago: For many men, turning 50 can be a day of reckoning, marked by graying hair, a slowing step and the wistful recognition that you are probably never going to make it to the corner office. What could be better, at such a melancholy moment, than to celebrate at home, among old friends?
But if you are already in the corner office, and it's oval, you get to celebrate your 50th at a fund-raiser in a Chicago ballroom, with Jennifer Hudson singing "Happy Birthday," Herbie Hancock jamming and 100 "friends" paying $35,800 a plate to commiserate over dinner, while bankrolling your bid to keep your job.
"It is true that I turn 50 tomorrow," President Obama told the raucous hometown crowd, "which means that by the time I wake up, I'll have an e-mail from A.A.R.P., asking me to call President Obama and tell him to protect Medicare."
For Mr. Obama, just about any place would be better than where he spent the last month of his 40s - pinned down in the wet-blanket heat of Washington, fighting over health care benefits and tax breaks for corporate jets with an insurgent band of House Republicans eager to paint him as a liberal fossil.
The fund-raiser was Mr. Obama's first overtly political event since the deal over the debt ceiling was reached, and he threw a few jabs that offered a preview of his line of attack on the Republicans as Washington catches its breath and girds for another round of debate over how to cut the towering federal debt.
"I hope we can avoid another self-inflicted wound like the one we just saw over the last couple of weeks," he said, "because we don't have time to play these partisan games. We've got too much work to do."
Mr. Obama warned Democrats that the United States did need to get its fiscal house in order. But he added, "Economic growth, making ourselves more competitive, isn't just about cutting programs."
For the most part, though, the mood was celebratory. Mr. Obama was introduced by Chicago's mayor, Rahm Emanuel - his former chief of staff - who praised the president's role in bailing out the auto industry.
"When it comes to doing what's right for the country, he never takes the easy road," Mr. Emanuel said, adding with a twinkle, "I can tell you that because I first came to tell him to take the easy road."
For the Obama campaign, the fund-raiser will help make up for a lost month, when the White House was forced to cancel several events featuring the president because of the debt talks. Obama campaign officials said they expected to raise significantly less money in the third quarter than in the second quarter, when Mr. Obama raised $86 million, far more than any Republican candidate.
Mr. Obama, whose youth and relative inexperience were used against him in the 2008 election, has aged visibly, most noticeably in his hair color, now less salt-and-pepper than a generous dusting of salt. After two and a half years in which he soldiered through the Great Recession and sent a Seal team to assassinate Osama bin Laden, this president stopped seeming young a long time ago.
Yet he can take solace in the fact that he is still younger than any of the Republicans who have declared their candidacy for his job. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who turned 50 last November, comes close. But Michele Bachmann is 55, while Mitt Romney, who sent his birthday wishes in the form of a video lambasting the president for letting down everybody who believed in him, is 64.
When asked before a cabinet meeting on Wednesday whether he was "ready for 5-0," Mr. Obama, seated between Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, 73, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, 63, joked that he was going to ask his cabinet members for advice on "how to handle this milestone."
It is not clear what kind of an answer he would get from Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who turns 50 this month and has been pleading with the president to release him so can he can go home to New York, where his son is beginning his last year of high school. Now it looks more likely that he will stay.
But if you are already in the corner office, and it's oval, you get to celebrate your 50th at a fund-raiser in a Chicago ballroom, with Jennifer Hudson singing "Happy Birthday," Herbie Hancock jamming and 100 "friends" paying $35,800 a plate to commiserate over dinner, while bankrolling your bid to keep your job.
"It is true that I turn 50 tomorrow," President Obama told the raucous hometown crowd, "which means that by the time I wake up, I'll have an e-mail from A.A.R.P., asking me to call President Obama and tell him to protect Medicare."
For Mr. Obama, just about any place would be better than where he spent the last month of his 40s - pinned down in the wet-blanket heat of Washington, fighting over health care benefits and tax breaks for corporate jets with an insurgent band of House Republicans eager to paint him as a liberal fossil.
The fund-raiser was Mr. Obama's first overtly political event since the deal over the debt ceiling was reached, and he threw a few jabs that offered a preview of his line of attack on the Republicans as Washington catches its breath and girds for another round of debate over how to cut the towering federal debt.
"I hope we can avoid another self-inflicted wound like the one we just saw over the last couple of weeks," he said, "because we don't have time to play these partisan games. We've got too much work to do."
Mr. Obama warned Democrats that the United States did need to get its fiscal house in order. But he added, "Economic growth, making ourselves more competitive, isn't just about cutting programs."
For the most part, though, the mood was celebratory. Mr. Obama was introduced by Chicago's mayor, Rahm Emanuel - his former chief of staff - who praised the president's role in bailing out the auto industry.
"When it comes to doing what's right for the country, he never takes the easy road," Mr. Emanuel said, adding with a twinkle, "I can tell you that because I first came to tell him to take the easy road."
For the Obama campaign, the fund-raiser will help make up for a lost month, when the White House was forced to cancel several events featuring the president because of the debt talks. Obama campaign officials said they expected to raise significantly less money in the third quarter than in the second quarter, when Mr. Obama raised $86 million, far more than any Republican candidate.
Mr. Obama, whose youth and relative inexperience were used against him in the 2008 election, has aged visibly, most noticeably in his hair color, now less salt-and-pepper than a generous dusting of salt. After two and a half years in which he soldiered through the Great Recession and sent a Seal team to assassinate Osama bin Laden, this president stopped seeming young a long time ago.
Yet he can take solace in the fact that he is still younger than any of the Republicans who have declared their candidacy for his job. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who turned 50 last November, comes close. But Michele Bachmann is 55, while Mitt Romney, who sent his birthday wishes in the form of a video lambasting the president for letting down everybody who believed in him, is 64.
When asked before a cabinet meeting on Wednesday whether he was "ready for 5-0," Mr. Obama, seated between Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, 73, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, 63, joked that he was going to ask his cabinet members for advice on "how to handle this milestone."
It is not clear what kind of an answer he would get from Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who turns 50 this month and has been pleading with the president to release him so can he can go home to New York, where his son is beginning his last year of high school. Now it looks more likely that he will stay.
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