"Mr. President, what are you doing here?" I kept asking myself as the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner wore on (and on).
This wasn't the first time I'd wondered why presidents sat through Washington journalism's interminable spring rite of self-celebration. But with Baltimore seething 70 km away, wasn't this the year for the president to just say a few words and make his excuses? Yet there he was, and there he remained, chortling along with celebrities large and small (Jane Fonda! Ivanka Trump!) as a comedian from "Saturday Night Live" dished out jokes about abortion.
It was the wrong call and you wish the president's gut, or at least his staff, had told him so.