Obama abs get hunk rating

WASHINGTON — Forget Barack Obama's staff making contact with a governor charged with corruption. What's got everyone talking is the president-elect's fine first form.

"FIT FOR OFFICE: Buff Bam is Hawaii hunk," the New York Post gushed on its cover Tuesday above a photo of the future president strolling without a shirt in Hawaii. The Drudge Report called him "President Beefcake" while TMZ said the president-elect is "still humble enough to do laundry — ON HIS ABS!"

The photos were distributed by Bauer-Griffin, a photo agency more typically found on the corners of Hollywood. Photographer Chris Behnke strolled along the beach to get the shot, said agency co-owner Frank Griffin.

Obama "wasn't hiding. He was completely out in the open," Griffin said.

Griffin said Behnke had gone to the beach to get general views of the estate where Obama is vacationing but instead found easy access to a view of the first family hitting the beach. "We use the expression, 'He gave it up,' " Griffin said.

Members of the White House media corps traveling with Obama have been careful to respect his privacy. A spokesman traveling with Obama in Hawaii did not comment.

Griffin said he doesn't expect his agency to stake out Washington on a regular basis but added that Obama is "now the world's biggest celebrity, just after Angelina and Brad. I guess they're neck and neck right now."

Should we be surprised?

When President Kennedy was pictured shirtless, there were media accounts fretting about the threshold we had crossed as a country, said David Greenberg, a professor at Rutgers University who is working on a history of political spin.

"There was John F. Kennedy by the beach, shirt off, this young, glamorous president," Greenberg said.

Since then we've had Lyndon Johnson lifting his shirt to show reporters his surgery scar and pictures of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton in swim trunks.

"It was kind of an erosion of what had been boundaries of formality between the president and the public," Greenberg said. "We've had 'boxers and briefs' and a real acquaintanceship with a personal side, an uninhibited side, an unclothed side of the president."

Obama's physique has been well-exposed; photographers snapped him body surfing in Hawaii during the campaign. He was on the November cover of Men's Health and detailed his workouts for the magazine: 45 minutes, six days a week, alternating weights and cardio.

Greenberg can see why Obama might allow the beach photos to be taken.

"I'm sure if he didn't do it on purpose, he's not exactly crying in his coffee about it," he said. "I don't see any downside."

Well, maybe one: Might world leaders take the president less seriously if they can picture him in his underwear?

Fortunately, French President Nicolas Sarkozy beat him to it with stripped-down beach photos, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was pictured shirtless on a fishing expedition.

The Drudge Report weighed in with an online poll in which readers were asked to choose between Obama and Putin — with his stomach sucked in — during the fishing trip. With nearly 100,000 votes cast, Vlad the Inhaler held a comfortable 30-point lead.

Information from the San Jose Mercury News is included in this report.