When generator shows up to his vacation home, Obama just says no

HONOLULU - You didn't have to be David Copperfield to read Barack Obama's mind the night the lights went out on Oahu. You only had to be from Chicago.

Anyone who was vacationing in Hawaii and was from Chicago, Mr. Obama's adopted hometown, knew exactly what he was thinking when the island suffered a complete power failure.

"Just say no!" were undoubtedly the first words that Mr. Obama thought on the evening of Dec 26. As visions of last summer's embarrassing ComEd generator scandal in Chicago danced in his head, the president-elect knew that there was just one answer if Hawaii officials fast-tracked a generator to his vacation home: "Just say no!"

Why would Mr. Obama be so sensitive to some generator generosity from Hawaiian officials? After all, he claims to have been born in the 50th state and is considered a native son.

It's simple: who could forget what happened in August during a long power outage on Chicago's northwest side? You remember, when a portable generator showed up at the home of Dave Ochal, Mayor Daley's airport operations boss?

It was a ComEd crew from O'Hare Airport, where Ochal worked, that towed the equipment to Ochal's neighborhood.

When the clout-in-action was exposed, Mayor Daley called it stupid and his face grew more crimson than usual.

The power utility would later rule that there was no preferential treatment for Ochal just because he was a clout-heavy city boss who did business with ComEd. Besides, a ComEd official said that "the crew did not know that it was Mr. Ochal's home." Nobody really believed that though. I mean, this explanation came from the same company that guesses how much electricity we use every month and expects us to pay that amount.

Unlike Ochal, no one could claim that they were unaware Barack Obama was staying in the rented, $11 million Pacific-front spread. It's hard to hide all those black SUVs with machine gun nests in the back and D.C. license plates, stern-looking Secret Service agents, rolling roadblocks and front page local newspaper stories.

In fact, either Obama or somebody on his team must have been smart enough to foresee the possibility of an Oahu power outage and the need to avoid a Dave Ochal-style public relations fiasco. According to the mayor of Honolulu, not one, or two, but three backup generators had been installed at the Obama rental compound before they all arrived before Christmas.

Despite that, when a lightning storm knocked out power to nearly 300,000 electric customers, including Barack and Michelle Obama, their two daughters, friends from Chicago, staff members and security personnel, conflicting stories began eking out.

First there was a report that the Obama home still had lights on. Then there were reports that it was dark. The Hawaiian Electric Co. (Honolulu's version of ComEd) sent out another portable generator to the Obama beachhead just to make sure that there was enough juice to go around.

Hawaii's Gov. Linda Lingle deployed the military out to Obama's house with some backup communications equipment and sent along state civil defense officers to make get the portable generator up and running by 11:30 p.m.

"We stayed until we were certain that he was all taken care of," Gov. Lingle said.

By Saturday morning the electricity was restored to some of the island including the Obama residence. By that time Obama's aides were powering up a different story. They were saying that the Obama party did not use generators to provide power during the outage.

"Power went out during the 7 o'clock hour last evening at the residence in Kailua where the President-elect and his family are staying." said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt. "The Obama family is grateful for the offers of assistance from local officials."

By the time the 18-hour blackout had ended and power was restored to everyone, even the story of the fourth generator had changed. That generator, the one that Hawaii's governor said was set up by her civil defense workers by 11:30 p.m., had actually been refused by the Obamas.

When the doorbell rang, Mr. Obama apparently just said no.

"He replied he didn't need anything, was grateful for our offer and was going to put his family to bed," said Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann.

If the Obama clan plans to continue holiday visits to Hawaii, they may want to consider investing in some backup power that is a little more dependable and far less politically risky: solar.

Now there's this guy over at city hall who knows a guy in the solar cell business ...

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by email at chuckgoudie@gmail.com