"I just miss — I miss being anonymous," he said at the meeting in the White House State Dining Room. "I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks. I can't take a walk."
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His impossible dream: "I just want to go through Central Park (in New York) and watch folks passing by...Spend the whole day watching people. I miss that."
Other presidents have felt the same way. Our chapter on the presidency quotes a 1982 interview with President Reagan:
You kind of live like a bird in a gilded cage. And I sometimes look out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue and wonder what it would be like to be able to just walk down the street to the corner drugstore and look at the magazines. I can't do that anymore.
