When President Obama's duties at the D-Day commemorations are over he plans to dodge the Sarkozys and have fun with his family in Paris. Here is a chief executive who knows his priorities.

President Sarkozy's hopes of a Barack and Nicolas Show that would see him standing shoulder to shoulder (with the aid of a footstool?) with the most popular leader on the planet, have drained into the Seine.

President Kennedy quipped that he was “the man who accompanied Jackie Kennedy to Paris”. Mr Obama may be remembered as the father who brought Sasha and Malia. His daughters are expected to join Michelle and him for sight-seeing and dinner at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

The President has form here. On a trip to Prague he snubbed his hosts to go out for dinner with Michelle. He has a keen sense of how to avoid the unnecessary nonsense that comes with the job.

Rude? Not a bit. We should applaud him for cutting the crap. And if we want him to have a fresh and focused mind we need him to have a bit of fun too.

Last week he took his wife to a Broadway show, fulfilling a promise made during the campaign. Republicans carped at the security cost and complained that he shouldn't be out enjoying himself while General Motors was going bust. This was fatuous and not just because a president should always keep campaign promises, especially to his wife.

And anyway the publicity delivered a shot in the arm to the Broadway economy. He signalled that it was important in hard times to get out with your family and splash a bit of cash if you can.

Does anyone, apart from a few unreconstructed Republicans, seriously think that Mr Obama is not working hard enough? He succeeds a President who needed an executive summary of the executive summary. George W. Bush made the mistake of thinking that all he needed to do to be as great a President as Ronald Reagan was to maintain the same light schedule as the Great Communicator.

Mr Bush, though, stood out in an age of workaholics. By weaving family time into a gruelling foreign tour, Mr Obama shows that it is possible to get the work-family balance right.

And if he can move effortlessly from making a speech on relations with the Muslim world in Cairo to playing the tourist with the kids in Paris, then anyone with a less demanding schedule (that would be the rest of us) should be able to juggle their responsibilities too.

Once again President Obama sets the tone for his time. His lead is one we can all follow.

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