Obama. Still. A. Hunk.

Notes ToI’s Matti Friedman:

Some reporters watching Wednesday’s visit by Obama to the President’s House in Jerusalem might have been reminded of his last visit nearly five years ago.

The Israeli president was the same Shimon Peres. The flag-waving children looked the same, but weren’t — the ones who serenaded Obama this time might have been born around the time of that visit, in July 2008, or not too long before.

But Obama himself has changed. At the time, he was merely a senator who was hoping to be president. His motorcade and security detail were a fraction of the size.

There was no white in his hair then, and he looked not five but perhaps ten years younger.

During that visit, one of Peres’s young female staffers emerged from a closed meeting between Peres and Obama, came over to two reporters waiting outside, waved her right hand as if to fan herself and said, “He. Is. Such. A. Hunk.”

In 2013, this older Obama’s charisma still appears to be working. Rina Matzliach, a veteran Israeli TV reporter, was thrown off and seemed quite starstruck when Obama greeted her personally as he walked by; she interrupted her broadcast to reply, “Hi,” and had trouble calming down for a little while after that.