Obama's daughters: School's in

by Mark Silva

There's got to be a morning after.

And this morning -- the day after President Barack Obama publicly made fun of Washington, D.C., for closing its schools, including his daughters' school, in the face of an ice pack jamming the region's roads earlier this week -- the president and first lady drove to their younger daughter's school for a little parental visit.

It was clear, sunny, the ice gone from the roads today -- as if the 15-vehicle presidential motorcade, complete with communications and Hazmat and medical teams and a small army of Secret Service and armored limousines equipped with steel truck tires couldn't get through a little snow and ice -- as the motorcade arrived at the Sidwell Friends School campus in Bethesda, Md., where 7-year-old Sasha attends school.

Malia, 10, was bound for Sidwell's campus in northwest Washington.

The first couple left tthe White House in the presidential motorcade around 8 a.m. EST for the ride to the Bethesda campus of Sidwell Friends. Neither Sasha nor sister Malia could be seen by reporters in the motorcade, indicating that they likely were already in class when their parents arrived for a visit.

Obama, the day before, had gently ridiculed local officials closing schools, saying "we're going to have to apply some flinty Chicago toughness to this town." Chicago's public schools haven't closed for inclement weather in 10 years. The University of Chicago lab school that the Obama girls attended had closed once in 30 years, a staffer said.

Obama , who has maintained that he will place diplomacy ahead of confrontation, may have been delivering some Washington softness to this schoolhouse..