Barack Obama was just photographed leaving the White House carrying a copy of GQ magazine. Not unusual for a stylin’, hip guy like the Bama. What IS unusual is that the cover photo . . . is of him.

I’m glad he admires himself, because fewer and fewer Americans do.

Ever increasingly, the Bama lives in a bubble. Most presidents fight the bubble: the insularity of the White House, the tight inner circle, the movement restrictions. Most presidents want to bust out, meet and talk to average Americans, hear their concerns. Most presidents hate the bubble. They rebel against it, until they grow so exhausted from the fight that they just kind of give up and end up making peace with the bubble.

The Bama seems to revel in the bubble. The White House is his own kingdom. This is where he hosts everything from “Latino music night” to “poetry jams” to his beloved “summits” (on jobs, Afghanistan, and—you’ve got to appreciate the irony of this one—deficits. A summit on how to cut deficits! LOL! I’ll save them the bother. Here’s how you cut the deficit: stop spending like drunken sailors on leave in Times Square! Actually, that’s an insult to drunken sailors on leave in Times Square.)

The Bama seems oblivious to the sky-high unemployment rate, the record rate of home foreclosures and loan and credit card defaults, the tax revolt already underway, the public rejection of all of his key initiatives from the stimulus to health care to cap and trade, and the public’s demand for decisive action . . . on ANYTHING.

He’s oblivious because he’s in the bubble. He’s happy in the bubble. But the lesson of the bubble is that the bubble smothers presidencies. The bubble makes an already out-of-touch president even more remote. Making oneself at home in the bubble makes governing actively and effectively impossible.

On second thought, that may not be so bad, given what we’ve seen from this guy so far. Sir: stay in the bubble.

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